History VideoGame / CrimeOClock

* AIIsACrapshoot: [[spoiler:The various criminal masterminds causing crimes in the past with the goal of changing the future mostly turn out to be EVE-like artificial intelligences that don't want EVE to be the dominant model. It emerges that the AI they form when complete, ORACLE, was supposed to safeguard the timeline but could only focus on [[HumansAreBastards how humans always seemed to be their own worst enemies,]] leading it to conclude that the only way to save time was to erase it entirely.]]

* HintSystem: Clicking on EVE during a case will show your current objective and up to three covered hints. If a minute passes by without progress, a lightbulb icon will appear next to EVE, and one of the hints can be uncovered. Usually, the first hint will indicate what to look for and the last hint will state where to find it.

** The sequence of EVE [[spoiler:assimilating RAGE]] is depicted as [[VideoGame/PacMan EVE gobbling three items anchoring their target and then the target itself]].

* YouAllShareMyStory: [[spoiler:"Five Minutes to Midnight" has the player use characters from various unconnected past cases as examples of virtues, such as Deckard and Nina falling in love in the Aeon Age as a display of Love, the Axl Blood concert in the Information Age as a display of Music, and the siblings from "The Iris Poisonous" as a display of Family.]]

* ButtMonkey: Dumas Gloomsbury, a character in the Steam Age, is murdered in multiple cases; [[spoiler:he's even murdered multiple times in the same case, as Walter Heisenberg tries to abuse time travel to keep him dead.]]

* TheBet: One case in the Lost Age features two merchants, Shoshan and Ufa, playing a game called "Kahp'tl'sm" in which the goal is to make the most profit (which of course evolved over time into modern capitalism). It then turns out that the loser had to permanently forfeit their marketplace stall to the winner, which, combined with a little prodding from criminal mastermind "Rage", led to an anomalous crime taking place.

* MakeWrongWhatOnceWentRight: The various criminal masterminds causing anomalous crimes by influencing people in the past are motivated by trying to change the future and create a timeline where their goals are achieved.

* AIIsACrapshoot: [[spoiler:The various criminal masterminds causing crimes in the past with the goal of changing the future mostly turn out to be EVE-like artificial intelligences that don't want EVE to be the dominant model.]]

* TeleporterAccident: The case "The Amethyst Gate" focuses on a LoveTriangle between Jonas and two sisters, Havel and Kain, that ends with [[MurderTheHypotenuse Kain removing a warning sign for a broken earthgate and watching Havel disintegrate herself with it]]. Unfortunately, the paradox is Kain getting away with it, not the murder itself, [[GoodIsNotNice so Havel must remain fragged in the True Timeline]].

** The Fulcrum Story for "MAIN CHARACTER" in the Aeon Age is backwards, getting an assignment in Tick 10 and escaping with the loot in Tick 1.

** The [[AdvancedAncientHumans technologically gifted]] Lost Age's preventative measure to warn people about a malfunctioning earthgate that has the capability to TeleporterAccident them is a single wooden sign with an "X" on it placed in front of said gate, which is easily removed in one case to get someone killed.

* ShoutOut:

*** The Aeon Age has you track [[Franchise/{{Terminator}} the robotic "Eliminator" that's supposed to destroy all romance but ends up falling in love]], [[Anime/AstroBoy the little robot "Astro Guy" defending the city with energy beams and jet-powered legs]], [[Series/TheMandalorian "Din Djar Djar" the part-time bounty hunter and adoptive father of a being he's named Baby Yogurt]], [[Manga/BattleAngelAlita "Doc Daisuke" the roboticist that finds the head of a young cyborg girl and builds her a new body]], [[Franchise/MenInBlack "Agent Molly" of the They in Grey organization that wipes the memories of anyone that discovers secret Atlantean Age descendants living in their era]], and [[Franchise/TheMatrix the "Chosen One" that's trained to bend metal with his mind and fly in the air]].

* LoveTriangle: Multiple cases involve one that leads to one member instigating a crime, such as "The Brown Clay Pot" showing a man vehemently breaking up with a woman after he catches her falling for a CharmPerson, "The Scarlet Snake" having a woman in an affair upsetting the man she's cheating with so much that he frightens her husband to death, and "The Amethyst Gate" having a girl murder her sister via TeleFrag so she can hook up with the sister's husband.

** The [[AdvancedAncientHumans technologically gifted]] Lost Age's preventative measure to warn people about a malfunctioning earthgate that has the capability to TeleFrag them is a single wooden sign with an "X" on it placed in front of said gate, which is easily removed in one case to get someone killed.

* TeleFrag: The case "The Amethyst Gate" focuses on a LoveTriangle between Jonas and two sisters, Havel and Kain, that ends with [[MurderTheHypotenuse Kain removing a warning sign for a broken earthgate and watching Havel disintegrate herself with it]]. Unfortunately, the paradox is Kain getting away with it, not the murder itself, [[GoodIsNotNice so Havel must remain fragged in the True Timeline]].

* TwentyMinutesIntoTheFuture: The Aeon Age occurs in 2099 A.D., a scant 84 years from the Information Age when most of the other Ages are thousands of years apart, yet shows that society has completely changed into being {{Cyberpunk}}.

** [[spoiler:Walter Heisenberg]] shows up as a Fulcrum Story in the Atlantean Age before becoming directly involved in main cases in the Steam Age.

* NoOSHACompliance: The death that occurs in "The Brown Clay Pot" is due to a woman accidentally walking off of a building without any guardrails while reading a letter from her heartbroken boyfriend, who saw her cheating on him with a CharmPerson.

* TwentyMinutesIntoThePast: The Information Age is specifically Milan, Italy (the developers’ hometown) in 2015 A.D.

* YouAllShareMyStory: [[spoiler:"Five Minutes to Midnight" has the player use characters from various unconnected past cases as examples of virtues, such as Deckard and Nina falling in love in the Aeon Age as an display of Love, the Axl Blood concert in the Information Age as a display of Music, and the siblings from "The Iris Poisonous" as a display of Family.]]

* XRayVision: After [[spoiler:assimilating RAGE into their system]], EVE unlocks a subroutine that allows them to construct simulations of the interiors of buildings, allowing the Detective to find clues and characters previously obscured by walls. In the Aeon Age, it's also used to see through the thick smog that separates the three pillars of future society with the slums and sewage that most people actually live in.

* SecretWar: During "The Golden Foot", EVE admits that one of these becoming no longer secret is the reason the Information Age eventually ended. The factions involved (all of which the Detective, by this point, has been introduced to in their ages of origin) were the Crimson Vow, the Atlantean Age-originating society [[TheseAreThingsManWasNotMeantToKnow to keep Atlantis' preserved secrets shrouded in myth after the Eternity Gauntlet ruined everything]]; the Eye of Ra, the Lost Age sect that believed in providence through technology; and New Dawn, the EvilLuddite faction from the Steam Age.

*** The Aeon Age has you track [[Franchise/{{Terminator}} the robotic "Eliminator" that's supposed to destroy all romance but ends up falling in love]], [[Anime/AstroBoy the little robot "Astro Guy" defending the city with energy beams and jet-powered legs]], [[Series/TheMandalorian "Din Djar Djar" the part-time bounty hunter and adoptive father of a being he's named Baby Yogurt]], [[Manga/BattleAngelAlita "Doc Daisuke" the cyborg doctor that finds the head of a young cyborg girl back and builds her a new body]], [[Franchise/MenInBlack "Agent Molly" of the They in Grey organization that wipes the memories of anyone that discovers secret Atlantean Age descendants living in their era]], and [[Franchise/TheMatrix the "Chosen One" that's trained to bend metal with his mind and fly in the air]].

* AnachronicOrder: As a time traveler, [[spoiler:Walter Heisenberg]]'s Fulcrum Story in the Atlantean Age jumps around from tick to tick rather than progressing from tick one through to tick ten like everybody else.

** Many of the Fulcrum Stories focus on characters based on other works of media.
** The case "The Blue Electric Sheep" is centered around preventing the death of a futuristic detective in old-fashioned apparel named [[Franchise/BladeRunner Deckard]] Scott.

* XRayVision: After [[spoiler:assimilating RAGE into their system]], EVE unlocks a subroutine that allows them to construct simulations of the interiors of buildings, allowing the Detective to find clues and characters previously obscured by walls.

* ItWillNeverCatchOn: The case "The Green Energy Idea" revolves around a female scientist named Timothea Craft who RAGE manipulates into a theft after she's a victim of ProducePelting. Said pelting is caused by making a presentation about swapping from coal to more renewable energy sources, with EVE noting that her work does eventually become vital for the transition to the Information Age.

** The case "The Blue Mask" has the manor of [[Franchise/SherlockHolmes Lady Adler]] broken into by [[Literature/ArseneLupin the notorious thief Arsene Volpin II, real identity novelist Maurice Lenoir]]. Some later cases involve his descendants, starting with the wackier [[Franchise/LupinIII Volpin III]].

* WorldOfFunnyAnimals: The various settings all feature a mix of human and anthropomorphic animal characters, such as one criminal in the Lost Age being a rat [[MeaningfulName named Aten Black Tail]] that EVE notes is identifiable from other rats by his black tail.
** ...yet despite this, EVE refers to all non-robot characters outside of the Atlantean Age [[OurHumansAreDifferent as being humans]]. This is particularly jarring when a case focuses on two avians, and EVE becomes confused that they're acting more like birds than humans.

* SecretWar: During "The Golden Foot", EVE admits that one of these becoming no longer secret is the reason the Information Age eventually ended. The factions involved were the Crimson Vow, the Atlantean Age-originating society [[TheseAreThingsManWasNotMeantToKnow to keep Atlantis' preserved secrets shrouded in myth after the Eternity Gauntlet ruined everything]]; the Eye of Ra, the Lost Age sect that believed in providence through technology; and New Dawn, the EvilLuddite faction from the Steam Age.

* SecretWar: During "The Golden Foot", EVE admits that one of these becoming no longer secret is the reason the Information Age eventually ended. The factions involved were the Crimson Vow, the Atlantean Age-originating society to keep Atlantis' secrets shrouded in myth; the Eye of Ra, the Lost Age sect that believed in providence through technology; and New Dawn, the EvilLuddite faction from the Steam Age.

** The case "The Bronze Eternity Gauntlet" focuses on a squid gaining access to the titular gauntlet and [[Film/AvengersInfinityWar empowering it with the Sacred Stones of Space, Power, Soul, and Mind to bring about Atlantis' fall too early]]. EVE wonders during the investigation if the culprit is purple, and said culprit does turn out to have a beard patterned like Thanos' chin. EVE also mentions that the reason the historical fall of Atlantis fell into legend as "the Eternity Saga" instead of being recorded as history is partly because [[TheseAreThingsManWasNotMeantToKnow the knowledge that such magic is real is dangerous]], and partly because its [[Film/AvengersEndgame endgame]] was lacklustre. [[spoiler:The Eternity Gauntlet goes on to have a recurring role throughout the story.]]

* EvilTwin: The case "The Golden Heart" involves Bartholomew Gifford, the assistant to a roboticist creating [[WesternAnimation/TheIronGiant an iron giant]], and Nathan Gifford, his younger brother that's part of the EvilLuddite "New Dawn" faction and wants to sabotage the machine.

* WorldOfFunnyAnimals: The various settings all feature a mix of human and anthropomorphic animal characters, such as one criminal in the Lost Age being a rat [[MeaningfulName named Aten Black Tail]] that's identifiable from other rats by his black tail.

* AnachronicOrder: As a time traveller, [[spoiler:Walter Heisenberg]]'s Fulcrum Story in the Atlantean Age jumps around from tick to tick rather than progressing from tick one through to tick ten like everybody else.

** The case "The Blue Mask" has the manor of [[Franchise/SherlockHolmes Lady Adler]] broken into by [[Literature/ArseneLupin the notorious thief Arsene Volpin II, real identity novelist Maurice Lenoir]].

*** The Steam Age has you track [[VideoGame/LeagueOfLegends a rabblerouser named "Blue Hex"]], [[Franchise/CthulhuMythos the secretly non-human writer "Howard Hatecraft" as he looks for inspiration for a story]], [[Franchise/{{Pinocchio}} "Mister Giuseppe" as he builds a robot son]], [[Film/TheIncredibleShrinkingWoman a suburban housewife named "Mrs. Saltpot" that starts shrinking due to a spoon-shaped pendant]], [[VideoGame/{{Bloodborne}} "Young Gherman" as he hunts down a mysterious beast that turns out to be a stray cat]], [[Literature/AroundTheWorldInEightyDays "Jean Passport" that's practicing a dance he learned while on an eighty-day excursion with his boss]], and [[Franchise/PiratesOfTheCaribbean the pirate "Jack Colibri" sailing into town on a sinking raft, flirting with a lady, and then escaping from the lady's enraged suitor]].

** ...yet despite this, EVE refers to all non-robot characters outside of the Atlantean Age [[OurHumansAreDifferent as being humans]]. This is particularly jarring when a case focuses on two avians, and EVE becomes confused that they're acting more like birds than humans.

*** The Steam Age has you track [[VideoGame/LeagueOfLegends a rabblerouser named "Blue Hex"]], [[Franchise/CthulhuMythos the writer "Howard Hatecraft" as he looks for inspiration for a story]], [[Franchise/{{Pinocchio}} "Mister Giuseppe" as he takes care of his robot son]], [[VideoGame/{{Bloodborne}} "Young Gherman" as he hunts down a mysterious beast that turns out to be a stray cat]], [[Literature/AroundTheWorldInEightyDays "Jean Passport" that's practicing a dance he learned while on an eighty-day excursion with his boss]], and [[Franchise/PiratesOfTheCaribbean the pirate "Jack Colibri" sailing into town on a sinking raft, flirting with a lady, and then escaping from the lady's enraged suitor]].