I'm very sorry that you have lost all that work.

There is one condition that can cause the loss of savegames in one of the Mac versions. If you launch the game and put it into the background before the game completely loads, you run the risk of corrupting the savegame files. That particular version doesn't run in the background, and if you forget it and leave it in the background for more than about 5 minutes, it never finishes loading and the savegame files are damaged. You can test to see if your version is affected by running the game in windowed mode, then going to the Nursery screen and putting the game in the background. If the customers stop moving, you know that your game doesn't run in the background. Unfortunately, if you have indeed lost your savegames to this condition, all of the files (including the backup) have been corrupted and cannot be recovered.

There are several things you can do to prevent this data loss in the future. The first is to regularly back up your files, so that they can be recovered at any time in the future. The second is to make sure that you let the game completely load before putting it into the background (turn your Mac's sound down first if you can't stand the loud angelic choir sound). Finally, you can submit our Support Form and we can provide another version that will run in the background, but you should be aware that we have found that it does not run on some Macs.