Mysterious Journey II is a first-person puzzle adventure game developed by Detalion in 2003 and published by The Adventure Company. It was marketed as a sequel to Schizm: Mysterious Journey, but shares no story connections to it whatsoever. Unlike Detalion's previous titles, this game uses CGI characters and a First-Person Shooter interface for navigation, using a modified version of Monolith's Jupiter engine used in TRON 2.0 and No One Lives Forever.
The game opens on a space station orbiting the planet Saarpedon, where a man named Sen Geder awakens from cryonic sleep. Soon after, a prerecorded hologram of another person called Tensa activates, and he explains that Sen had been preserved for 214 years as punishment for reducing Saarpedon to a single valley, and that the station will fall from orbit in 16 days, taking Sen with it. From there on, it's up to Sen to get down to the planet and clear his name before that happens.
Mysterious Journey II contains examples of
- Alternate Number System: The Transai have a base-12 number system, and the Ansala use base-3. At one point you even have to convert one to the other.
- Arc Number: The Numbers of Power, which Sen receives from multiple characters throughout the game. They're used for the game's final puzzle.
- Arc Symbol: Sen finds a strange circular glyph in four separate locations around the environment, and cannot discern what it means. It's actually an upside-down diagram for the final puzzle of the game.
- Before the Dark Times: Old stories fed to most of the population, told to Sen by Arko and a Transai member named Carluen, describe Saarpedon as a much better place 300 years ago. But one day, an alien starship entered the system, and the people divided themselves over whether to make contact or not. The two groups quarreled until the conflict escalated into a war that downed the ship, and the alien machines that survived the crash tried to help. From there on, the conflict had been continuing to the present, which is how the Transai and Ansala formed.
- Beeping Computers: In various flavors on the space station and the crashed ship, Lyra. The cryo-chamber Sen first wakes up in has an EKG-esque tone to it.
- Benevolent A.I.: The companions, large alien machines who help Sen in his quest along the way.
- Broken Bridge: Sen has to cross four of these to reach the tribes' inner sanctums, two for each tribe, with a force field gate between them.
- Broken Masquerade: Sen's disguise as Ansala member Triga falls apart when the real Triga shows up from the badlands, which results in the Ansala council locking Sen into a cell.
- Call-Back: In one of the few references to the first game, you can see a bunch of living ships from planet Argilus when you first land on Saarpedon. You also visit one of them later in the game.
- Catchphrase: Sen says, "Hello! Can you hear me?" every time he first speaks to one of the Companions.
- Drone of Dread: Most of the soundtrack consists of droning ambient music, generally creating an unsettling atmosphere throughout the game.
- Force-Field Door: Both tribes use these in various flavors to protect their inner sanctums. The main gate in and out of the Transai domain even talks.Force gate: "Identify or withdraw."
- His Name Is...: A laser blast destroys Tensa's hologram before he can explain the last part of Sen's punishment. Talen later admits that he tried to feed off its power source but overloaded the device as a result.
- Hope Spot: Sen finally gains control of an Ansala shuttle after striking out with the Transai, only to find himself brought back to Touchstone again.
- Ghost City: Done with both of the tribes' domains toward the endgame.
- When the Ansala can't find Sen, everyone evacuates Brada Coe to look for him. The only member left is one of their amblates in a hidden area.
- Sen's return visit to Touchstone is also devoid of life, save for the Oracle and a hidden Companion.
- Insurmountable Waist-High Fence: Several obstacles that look passable but aren't come off this way, usually in the form of puzzles that can't be passed without being solved. One ridiculous example of this shows up in one of the bridges to the Transai domain, which Sen refuses to cross if it's just one inch off from the cable it's meant to be aligned with.
- Laser-Guided Amnesia: The minute Sen wakes up, he claims to have no memories of his crimes or even his name. He just rolls with what Tensa says he is from there on. It turns out that Talen took Sen's memories so he could be more prepared upon coming back to the station near the end.
- Late to the Tragedy: By the time Sen reaches Saarpedon, the place is barely inhabited, with the people there divided into two tribes: The technology-oriented Transai and nature-loving Ansala.
- Lie to the Beholder: Sen's Chameleon tech allows him to blend in with the Transai and Ansala, with some of the later Companions adding profiles of missing members for him to use. At one point midway into the game, another companion even gives him an Invisibility Cloak feature. Sen never changes appearance to the player, however.
- Light and Mirrors Puzzle: The way to open the space station's hangar doors involves directing lasers around a grid of strange alien pods so that they converge at one point to form a larger beam that unlocks the door.
- Our Ghosts Are Different: The Ansala can create Amblates, ghostly beings resurrected from their dead. They can also "turn" technology to Organic Technology.
- Master Computer: The Great Oracle acts as this for the Transai Council, remotely linked with the other Companions. Played with later on, as the one the Council honors is a decoy, while the real one and an Ansala equivalent are hidden away elsewhere.
- The Maze: An infamous example shows up in the Transai domain's airport. A grid of tiles shrouded by a cloud of fog serves as this, which can only be mapped out from underneath. Lights on the edges serve as gridpoints, and stepping on each tile produces a sound. A single misstep makes the maze scramble into a new layout, but crossing the finish line kills the fog, so players don't have to solve it again.
- Mutual Disadvantage: In one cutscene shortly after Sen meets both tribes, they fight each other using laser beams and force fields while trying to commandeer Sen's crashed shuttle. After finding that neither can defeat the other, they blow the ship up instead.
- Mr. Exposition: Most of Arko's and Carluen's scenes are dedicated solely to giving backstory.
- Nature vs. Technology: The driving force between the Transai and Amsala, having been locked into warfare for the past few centuries.
- Robot Buddy: Talen, the first companion you meet in-game. He was left on the station, and you have to fix him to find out what's going on. At the end, you even get to bring him down to the planet just before the station falls.
- Powers as Programs: Talen uploads flight skills and Chameleon tech into Sen's brain simply by firing a laser into his forehead.
- Shining City: Touchstone, the Transai domain is a cliff-built technocracy led by the Great Oracle. The buildings and bridges also appear to hover as well.
- Solve the Soup Cans: A majority of the puzzles in this game, most of them having no justification for being there.
- Space Station: You start and end the game on one, which looks like a hollowed-out asteroid on the outside. During your cryonic stasis, most of the place was locked down, and all non-essential machinery was destroyed, the rest hidden behind "scramble locks".
- Take a Third Option: Arko, who refused to side with either of the tribes, and instead hides out in a cave in the planet's neutral zone. He's also close friends with the companions, especially Wookash, who hides his cave.
