''Crystal Key 2'', known in Europe as ''Evany: Key to a Distant Land'', is a 2004

graphic adventure game An adventure game is a video game genre in which the player assumes the role of a protagonist in an interactive story, driven by exploration and/or puzzle-solving. The genre's focus on story allows it to draw heavily from other narrative-based ...

developed by Canadian studio Earthlight Productions, together with Kheops Studio. It was published by

The Adventure Company The Adventure Company was a Canadian video game developer and a former publishing division of DreamCatcher Interactive. It was sold to THQ Nordic GmbH in 2011 following DreamCatcher's parent ( JoWooD Entertainment) assets being sold after enteri ...

, and is the sequel to the 1999 title ''

The Crystal Key ''The Crystal Key'' is a 1999 Graphic adventure game, graphic adventure video game developed by Earthlight Productions and published by DreamCatcher Interactive. A work of science fiction, it casts the player as an interstellar explorer on a que ...

''.

Gameplay and plot

''Crystal Key 2''s plot builds upon that of the original, and casts the player as Call, who seeks to stop the minions of Ozgar and save the world of Evany.

Development

The game was revealed by

DreamCatcher Interactive DreamCatcher Interactive Inc. (also known as DreamCatcher Games) was a Canadian video game publisher founded in 1996 by Richard Wah Kan. It was best known for its adventure games. In 2006, the company became a subsidiary of JoWooD Entertainmen ...

's Adventure Company label in April 2003, at first under the name ''Crystal Key II: The Far Realm''. It was among a slew of announcements in preparation for the 2003

Electronic Entertainment Expo E3 (short for Electronic Entertainment Expo) was an annual Trade fair, trade event for the video game industry organized and presented by the Entertainment Software Association (ESA). It was held principally in Los Angeles from 1995 to 2019, wit ...

(E3), and Marek Bronstring of ''

Adventure Gamers ''Adventure Gamers'' is a computer game website created by Marek Bronstring in March 1999 dedicated to the genre of adventure games. It publishes reviews and previews of adventure games, as well as opinion articles and interviews with game de ...

'' called it one of the publisher's "top titles premiering at the show", alongside '' Traitors Gate II: Cypher''. Earthlight Productions developed the game with Virtools and V-Ray. It was designed to feature spherical 360° panoramas, unlike its predecessor's more limited viewing areas. According to John Matheson, Earthlight sought to overcome the problems that had affected ''The Crystal Key''s production pipeline and give its art team more room "to be as creative as possible". Initially developed by Earthlight and set for a late-2003 release, the game underwent "many years" of production and took longer than The Adventure Company had wanted, Benoît Hozjan of Kheops Studio later remarked. As a result, Kheops was hired to co-develop the game late in production, which Hozjan said included "the programming and the integration, hand in hand with John Matheson." In July 2003, Matheson estimated the game as 75% complete and on track for December, but it ultimately launched in the U.S. in March 2004.

Reception

The game received "mixed" reviews according to the

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website

Metacritic Metacritic is an American website that aggregates reviews of films, television shows, music albums, video games, and formerly books. For each product, the scores from each review are averaged (a weighted average). Metacritic was created ...

References

External links

* {{Kheops Studio 2004 video games The Adventure Company games DreamCatcher Interactive games First-person adventure games Single-player video games Video games developed in Canada Video games developed in France Windows games