tl;dr - I am dumb and didn't realize the file that needs to be turned into an executable for Mac had a different name then the actual App name, so, in my inexperience with terminal, the guides suck and have no clarification. So using my frustration, I was motivated to make this more comprehensive (read as: elaborates more than the stackexchange post) guide for Mac users that are also dumb like me.
So for any Mac users that are bumbling oafs like me, in order to get the game up and running, as of 10/18/24 & v5.03:
First,
open up Terminal (its an app thingy, you can use Spotlight to search for & open it)
Second,
Type in (or copy&paste)
cd [folder]/Max_the_Elf_v5.03_MAC/"MTE v5.03 MAC.app"/Contents/MacOS/ into the Terminal prompt.
ALSO!!, replace [folder] (also remove the brackets) with the name of wherever u put the file. For example: if you put the file in Downloads, replace it with "Downloads", which would result in cd Downloads/Max_[... and so on].
ALSO, if you put it in multiple folders, you'll have to put slashes between them, in the order of first to last enclosing file/folder. Ill give an example: I put my app in a folder named "SayGex", which is inside a folder named, "Cool Games", which is finally housed in my "Desktop". So, you would have to rewrite [folder] in the command as Desktop/"Cool Games"/SayGex. Note that any folders or apps or whatever with spaces will have to be enclosed in quotations, such as with "Cool Games."
Basically, what this command does is it follows a path from the start (the very first enclosing folder) all the way to a folder within the app called "MacOS." This folder houses a file that's causing the app to not open. It'll be fixed in step three.
Third,
Type in (or copy&paste)
chmod +x "MTE MAC" into the Terminal prompt.
So, before you type in this command, you're "looking" (in air quotes) at the 'MacOS' folder within the 'Contents' folder, within the app. What this command does is it turns a document file within the 'MacOS' folder into an executable file. This 'doc' needs to be an executable file in order for Mac to run the game.
Basically, fix a file to run game on Mac b/c devs lazy. or not, idk the situation on their end.
Fourth,
Run the game. You still have to go through the Mac software firewall though. The one that's like "OH AN UNIDENTIFIED APP KILL IT KILL IT!!" After that you should be good to go.
also as a note: I think this is a problem for a bunch of Unity games that say they're on Windows and Mac, but don't open for Mac. This kind of formula should work for those too, you just have to replace the folder names, app names and broken-document-files-that-need-to-be-executable names from this post with the respective equivalents for the game you're trying to fix. You can gather those by "Open Package Contents" for an app and just looked at what u downloaded.
