Part 7: Descent into Madness

Last King of Africa: iOS: Part 1: Update 2: Descent into Madness

Well, today gschmidl is both the hero and the villain of the update.



God dammit.





A strange lock you say? Well let's take a look then.



Oh it's just one of these. I'm good at these.





BLAM!





Okay. I solved a puzzle. We lookin' fly, we smell like... fire(?). Let's go waltz past that guard!



...NO. WHAT? NO



I'M SCREAMING I CAN'T STOP SCREAMING





Once I wipe the tears of blood from my eyes we get the stupid checker pieces from the garden and make our way back to him. At least I like playing checkers, this shouldn't be hard.



That doesn't sound anything like checkers.



Son of a bitch it's a lights out puzzle. I really suck at these. I just pressed buttons randomly for a minute or two until it was right.





Get out of my way you fat piece of shit.

Time to talk to the prince! His dialogue is wildly fucking different from in the PC game for some reason. He's still a jerk, though.



...want, outsider?



The prince then proceeds to talk forever. He says Ann Smith is a journalist who visited Maurania to write a novel but she's since died. He tells us how the rebellion is an "uprising of the ignorant" who only want a share of Maurania's emeralds, and that we can't use the airport since it's been taken over by rebels.





This dude is nuts.

The prince goes on to tell us that the only way out of Maurania is to go to the south and meet King Rodon in person, since you need personal face-to-face permission from the fucking king to leave the country on foot.









So, wait wait. You can't leave the country if you don't see Rodon in person, but the only way he'll grant an audience is if you're travelling with a magic fucking leopard. What a country.

Also I keep losing my shit at "STICK A PHOTO OF YOURSELF HERE, IDIOT". Thanks prince. Thanks writing team. Thanks everyone involved.





IT'S NOT YOUR BOOK WE JUST ESTABLISHED THAT THE REAL ANN SMITH IS DEAD WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU okay calm down, gotta calm down.



Right here I missed a screenshot of literally the only 3d character models in the game. It's a 2 second shot of Aicha standing next to Ann, really super small in the background of this area. It happened so fast I didn't even have a chance. I tried to replay the game but... we'll just get to that later.

Aicha hands us the film and wishes us luck on figuring out how to develop it by ourselves before leaving. Let's go take a look around.







Oh hey Hassan you've changed locations cool! Wait what is-



Hmmm... Well, let's take these. No one's around so I leave.



So much for just asking someone for a key! This version of Ann is even crazier than the PC version.



Tap the arrows to move the tumblers (latches??) inside the lock around. Moving one moves the others, blah blah I just tap this randomly until it works as well.







The photo studio is pretty much exactly the same. The light still has three settings for reasons I don't understand. No carpet merchants today though.





The photo paper is to the left here. I picked it up by accident, which is good because I would have been even more fucking furious if I couldn't find it.



Notice I have the film equipped because I'm an idiot. Smashing the film against this thing should not give you a tip that says it accepts film when that isn't what it goddamn does.



I quickly remember this thing exists and slap the film into it.









What a creepy goddamn thing to say, Ann.



...and by foot you risk being captured by the rebels! It is said they don't take prisoners...

Aicha pops up to tell us we should go to the mechanic.



HELL YES IT'S FUCKING HASSAN!





Well. That was curt. Let's get those parts then.





The spring and the battery are still here in the plane. You can't interact with the documents.



Here's another critical fucking item I found completely by accident. Since I'm already here I decide to go pump the fuel into the car now.





This causes Aicha to swoop in and screech at us with her harpy's voice not to touch the truck yet. Jesus christ lady fine whatever! Why are you still following me!?





The path beyond the photo shop has opened up. Passing through the archway triggers the Molgrave cutscene, still with no video. Gschmidl claims the video worked in previous versions of iOS, which suggests this is an iOS 6 specific bug rather than the intended presentation. That's nearly a relief.



We pick up the tires from the dock. Moktar does not make an appearance.



It's time to visit the barber.







This is all the same as it ever was. The dialogue strikes me as just slightly more insane than before, but eh.



Slap in dat spring.







This dude is fucking stone cold. I'd also like to point out that the fan in the background is animating nicely. I think this screen and the one with the little fan are the only animated backgrounds in the game, and it looks great! Why didn't they bother doing this anywhere else at all??



Speaking of great, when you tap on the moving fan here this is the message you get. I didn't remember there was a button there for about half a minute.



Great! Okay, let's start with the battery then. I'll just tap to put it in and...



AAGGHHH fuck fuck fuck. FINE.







I got stuck here for way, way too long. I couldn't remember you need to use a winch to pull the truck down, so I wandered around tapping on everything and being confused.



I even checked the objectives screen to find it just as useless as before. Finally I accidentally clicked on the front of the truck.





Another black cutscene of the truck rolling out here. All I could see was my super fucking pissed off reflection in the screen so I tried recreating the experience for you:



We're then teleported back to the palace to a surprising cameo from the gardener.





...pond!





Blah blah, all the same. Tap on the fish feeder here to put food in the small pond.



You futz around with this to let the fish in, then close it behind them.





Once you enter the middle here, you tap a lever to engage the controls. Here comes our first red flag something bad is happening:



I need to... what? Um, okay. That metronome in the background is ticking back and forth.



Take a real good look at this screen. This is the final screen of the game for me. Nothing on this screen is interactive. I don't know what broke, that lever on the right is supposed to be what you pull, but it does nothing. I spent a long time furiously tapping, shaking, smashing, pushing, smudging my finger across it. Fucking nothing.

Thankfully for all involved our good friend GSCHMIDL hates himself and contacted me with screenshots from the rest of the game in the iPad version! Seriously man, thank you again I can't even believe you did this.





Well stated, insane bizarro Ann.





Flip that switch and let's go!!!!



I... um... Oh. Welp.

But what do all those FANTASTIC EMERALDS do, I hear you ask?? Well, they unlock BONUS GAMES.



Fucking



GOD



DAMMIT



NO. FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK.

Well guess what guys. Gschmidl actually beat all of the bonus challenges. What do you get for beating it?



This screen gets colored in. That's literally it. No concept art, no cool picture. Nothing.

Before I go, though, I have a brief epilogue.

Before gschmidl sent me these screenshots, I thought that maybe the bugs were being caused by loading from a saved session rather than playing straight through in one go. I decided to replay it from the beginning and grab a few screenshots I missed. I loaded a new game, erasing my old data and blasted through as fast as I could. I reached the checker sequence when I decided to check a text message quickly. I came back to the game to find this:



There's something very important here. Can you tell what it is?

THE GAME FUCKING ERASED ALL THE WALKING ICONS. There is NO WAY to leave this screen now. Tapping around occasionally makes the screen flicker black, but that's it. I'm trapped here forever. And I give up. Goodbye Paradise Episode 1. Goodbye for good.

...

STAY TUNED FOR LAST KING OF AFRICA IOS EPISODE 2: THE GUN IS IN MY MOUTH NOW OH GOD SWEET RELEASE