History VideoGame / TheCrystalKey

* ShinyLookingSpaceships: A crashed Arkonian ship on one of the colonies looks like this, with bright colors and curved surfaces all over, contrasting with [[[[StandardHumanSpaceship your ship]] and the blocky, industrial design of Ozgar's crafts.

* ShoutOut: The game is heavily inspired by ''Franchise/StarWars'', with clear examples ranging from Ozgar's very Death Star-inspired ship, to an Arkonian submarine that looks strikingly like the ''Slave I''

* ShoutOut: A submarine below the desert world bears an uncanny resemblance to the ''[[Franchise/StarWars Slave I]]'' on the outside.

* MundaneMadeAwesome: One segment in the desert world involves placing a rock into a machine that results in a loud, dramatic manufacturing sequence...only to end with the production of a single golden coin.

* NoNameGiven: None of the Arkonian colonies have official names, leaving fans to make up their own in walkthroughs.

* BeautifulVoid: The Colony planets you explore in-game are ripe in detail and places to explore, but not a single being is in sight. The only area that averts this is Ozgar's mothership, where he and his guards are still running around. [[JustifiedTrope Justified]] since these planets were all evacuated by the Arkonians prior to the events of the game.

* [[spoiler: Hologram]]: Used as journals by the Arkonians.

* SuddenlyVoiced: In some of the bad endings, you can hear Ozgar summon his guards by telepathically speaking, '' "Guards...there is an intruder." '' This is the one time he ever speaks in the entire game.

* Hologram: Used as journals by the Arkonians.

* CoolKey: The translucent blue Crystal Key. It's used to interface with portal devices made by the Arkonians, and each plane added to it, [[FetchQuest which you'll eventually collect]], contains coordinates for one of various the colony worlds, plus their sun.

* TheCallKnowsWhereYouLive: In the first game, the Arkonian distress signal arrives just days before Ozgar attacks your planet, and the Balial find and kidnap Athera on Evany just after she meets you.

* LostWoods: One of the colonies contains an enormous, and dark forest terrain, with only a pair of crashed spaceships to provide variety.

* AlternateNumberSystem: Subverted. At one point you have to decipher alien numerals to type in coordinates, but they're in a base-10 system like ours. This system seems to be shared both with the Arkonians and Belial.

* MundaneUtility: The only reason the Arkonians ever made a piece of the Key that links to their sun is, [[WordOfGod allegedly]], for the purposes of incinerating the trash they collected from the colonies.

* InNameOnly: While the Key does exist and a fair chunk of the backstory does carry over from the first game, the only time it's ever used is during the prologue on Evany. Once you step through the portal to Meribah, you basically enter a whole other type of game entirely.

* MindRape: Athera reveals how the mysterious Balial trance works: The Balial troops strap unsuspecting victims into a chair, then unleash an invisbile beetle that "captures [their] soul" and leaves them as an EmptyShell. [[spoiler: Your gift from the Ruler of the Far Realm allows you to see these beetles and the string-like nodes used to capture them for this process.]]

* CallBack: In one entry of her journal, Athera found your father's crashed ship and traced it back to Evany. Another mentions a trip she took to Suralon; apparently it's still sunken, and now also home to dozens of sea birds.

* CoolKey: The translucent blue Crystal Key. It's used to interface with portal devices made by the Arkonians, and each plane added to it, which you'll eventually collect, contains coordinates for one of various the colony worlds, plus their sun.

* CallBack: One of the entries in Athera's journal mentions her making a trip to Suralon. Apparently it's still sunken, and now also home to dozens of sea birds.