Key (company) - Impact

Impact

According to Satoshi Todome's work, A History of Adult Games, Key's impact on the visual novel (primarily the adult game variant) world stems from before Key was formed and most of the founding members of Key worked for Tactics under Nexton. Due to an influence by Leaf's visual novel To Heart released in 1997, the developers at Tactics created a simple formula for a game: a comedic first half with a heart-warming romantic middle followed by a tragic separation and finally an emotional reunion formed what is known as a "crying game" or "nakige". The main purpose of such a game is to make the player feel for the characters and make them cry due to emotional scenarios which serves to leave a bigger impact on the player after the game is over. Tactics' second title One: Kagayaku Kisetsu e was created based on this formula.

After One was complete, the development team quit Tactics to form Key where they developed their first title Kanon also based upon on this formula. Kanon was "heavily hyped had gamers impatient until its release. It was only one game released by Key so far, and yet had already sent major shockwaves around the industry. And yet another game, two years later, sent even more shockwaves. Air was equally hyped and well received." The success of One and Kanon on Key's formula to create a "crying game" was later adopted by other visual novel developing companies which were influenced by this formula. Examples of this include: Kana: Little Sister by Digital Object, the Memories Off series by KID, D.C.: Da Capo by Circus, Snow by Studio Mebius (also under Visual Art's), and Wind: A Breath of Heart by Minori.

Ryukishi07 of 07th Expansion wrote in 2004 how he was influenced by Key's works during the planning of Higurashi no Naku Koro ni. Ryukishi07 played Key's games as a reference, among other visual novels, and analyzed them to figure out the reason why they were found to be so popular. He figured that the secret was due to how the stories would start with ordinary, enjoyable days, but then a sudden occurrence would happen leading the player to cry due to the shock value. He used a similar model for the basis of Higurashi but instead of leading the player to cry, Ryukishi07 wanted to scare the player with the addition of horror elements. In this way, Ryukishi07 wished to be in some way associated with Key who he described as a "masterpiece maker".

Key is one of 17 brands under Visual Art's with games included in the Lycèe Trading Card Game published by Broccoli. Characters from Key's first five games through Tomoyo After were included in the first three out of four Visual Art's card sets, and characters from Little Busters! through Rewrite were featured in the fifth through seventh Visual Art's card sets. There are also numerous rare promotional cards with characters from Key titles. Other big-name visual novel companies included in the card game include: AliceSoft, August, Leaf, Navel, and Type-Moon.