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Kya: Dark Lineage is a 3D action Platform Game developed by French studio Eden Games, published by Atari, and released in 2003 for the PlayStation 2. It tells the story of Action Girl Kya, who is teleported to Another Dimension after her brother discovers an Ancient Artifact in the basement of her house. She quickly becomes embroiled in a conflict between the local Nativ and an Evil Overlord named Brazul, who has been kidnapping and transforming the Nativs into loyal servants known as Wolfen. Her brother, by contrast, is quickly captured by Brazul, and used for his research. Armed with a bracelet, a boomerang-like hair clip, and a dose of magical abilities, Kya sets out to restore the Wolfen back to peaceful Nativs, defeat Brazul, and find a way to get back home.


The game provides examples of the following tropes:

  • 100% Completion: To unlock most of the art gallery in the main menu, it requires you to turn all the Wolfen back to Nativs. Sadly, doing so defeats the point of earning any bracelets you missed, since the only thing you can use the abilities on are the Wolfen.
  • Action Girl: Kya, who has a wide range of platforming and melee combat skills.
  • Battle Boomerang: Kya's Boomy can be charged for a sweeping, unblockable attack.
  • Bloodless Carnage: Mixed: When a Wolfen is sent flying, by a kick or punch, it's possible to spot a tooth or two and a smear of blood. If Kya dies, however, it's a different story. Unless she lands in a grinder. No blood, just her getting split into several different pieces.
  • Cliffhanger: The game ends with Kya and Frank attempting to use the medallion to go back to their world, but they end up in a vast desert, whereupon something charges at them, and "The End?" pops up.
  • Concept Art Gallery: Your reward for saving every Nativ that was turned into a Wolfen. Well, besides the stores that carry useful upgrades.
  • Continuing is Painful: Not as much, but whenever you die by any other means than losing all your health (like planting your face into the ground at freefalling speed), you usually lose all the health for that health bar. Also, certain times when you recover from death/reload last checkpoint, not all of your health will be back. Screwing up Brazul's boss battle may count if you run out of health items or don't have enough health.
  • Convection, Schmonvection: Plenty of areas feature lava, particularly the Board race. Touching it simply hurts a bit, no different than if you brushed against a thorn bush. Your first proper boss battle is against a large worm that erupts from the earth, creating an impassable river of lava to box you in, while also spitting huge globs of the stuff at you.
  • Cool Airship: Brazul's Wolfen use several variants, from the hunter's small dirigible to medium-sized flying platforms that use big plants as ballasts to Brazul's large cannon-covered airship seen when he kidnaps the Nativs from their village.
  • Cranium Ride: One of the attacks Kya can get from the bracelets are the ability to ride a Wolfen. Charging into another Wolfen will knock it back, but Wolfen can still knock you off.
  • Death Is a Slap on the Wrist: The player is always permitted to retry from the latest checkpoint (or level entrance) if Kya falls down a Bottomless Pit, gets defeated in combat, or is otherwise killed. The only downside is that since you can increase Kya's max health by getting more health bars, depending on the way you died, you'll either lose a tiny bit of health or a lot. Sometimes even a whole health bar, and dying with multiple health bars won't regenerate them.
  • Failure Is the Only Option: Screwing up during a stealth section? Too far to run away? Yeah, you're better off jumping into that pit of water, or letting the Wolfen kill you.
  • Game-Over Man: Whenever Kya runs out of health in a level, Brazul appears with his generic evil laughter.
  • The Guards Must Be Crazy: Sometimes subverted. You can easily pass a Wolfen whose eye-sight is 180 degrees from your location, but getting spotted is a different story. A Wolfen will call his buddies to beat the smack out of you, or worse. Escaping them can be quite a pain, especially during stealth levels.
  • Half-Human Hybrid: Kya. Her father who hails from Another Dimension is completely whatever the heck he is.
  • Horse of a Different Color: The Yamgut are a cross between raptors and chickens, the royal variant has a bit of cobra mixed in too.
  • Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Aton. Even after his Heel–Face Turn, he only did it to make sure the Nativs would be left alone.
  • Last of His Kind: Brazul mentions how his people were exterminated a long time ago, making him (and by extension — Kya) the very last of his race.
  • Luke, I Am Your Father: Happens pretty darn early. Kya learns that Brazul is her father almost immediately upon arriving in the Nativs' world.
  • The Many Deaths of You: Oh boy. Even though Kya's deaths are bloodless, they are still gruesome. Get chased by a watch-dog? Get nom'd on like a bone. Fell into grinding spikes? Get cut into multiple pieces. Get squished? Get squished.
  • Menu Time Lockout: Checking your map and how many Wolfen are around/left happens through the pause menu. Selecting health items, soccer-bomb-balls and trap-balls are done in real-time by holding down one of the shoulder buttons and pressing either circle or square to switch through the stuff you've bought.
  • The Mind Is a Plaything of the Body: Victims of Brazul's Transformation Ray become slavering beasts that serve him willingly.
  • No-Gear Level: The game regularly mixes in light stealth elements while exploring various Wolfen encampments, but it comes to a head when Kya is imprisoned inside the Wolfen City.
  • Non-Standard Game Over: If Kya is hit with Brazul's Transformation Ray during a boss fight against the Wolfen Aton. No Heroic Willpower or Fighting from the Inside occurs here.
  • Not Quite Flight: Several levels feature air currents and updrafts that Kya can use to maneuver through the air.
  • Not the Fall That Kills You…: Bottomless Pits and lava aside, there are many "freefall" sequences where Kya must follow a path, avoid obstacles, or otherwise land on a designated soft target to avoid being killed outright upon impact.
  • One-Hit Kill: Although a few enemies can perform this on Kya, there's still enemies that can do so. The watch-dogs and the Mummified Wolfens are the few that can. The watch-dogs will treat Kya like a large bone and the Mummies have a insta-kill move they can perform if the player is not careful.
  • Permanently Missable Content: Getting 100% Completion requires, among other things, exorcising all Wolfen back into Nativs. Since the only way to do so is by incapacitating them in combat, and the world features a lot of bottomless pits, more often than not you may find yourself knocking a few off the edge of the map, or otherwise out of your reach. And the game sometimes won't respawn them like it should, and you'll quickly realize that each one that falls is potentially gone forever, locking you out of 100% completion.
  • Plot Coupon That Does Something: The runes that Kya collects also increase her maximum magic power. This allows her to exorcise more Wolfen at a time, as well as opening some of the gates between levels.
  • Power Crystal: Ember crystals refill health and are also used to power technology and machines.
  • Precision-Guided Boomerang: The golden Boomy can be controlled up to a certain range, though the controls can be a bit difficult.
  • Real Song Theme Tune: "Sweet Soca Music" by Sugar Daddy plays during the credits with Kya and co. dancing to it. Also featured in the extras as a music video (and the first unlockable extra).
  • Sequel Hook: The ending is made like one with Kya and her brother waking up in a deserted place with a POV of something seeming to attack them.
  • Shadowland: Brazul's island is fittingly dark and foreboding.
  • So Much for Stealth: As mentioned above, if you screw up your stealth, it's either Fight or Flight. Fighting makes the stealth area easier (since exorcising a Wolfen permanently removes it from the area), but of course it's up to you.
  • Super Drowning Skills: Most areas featuring water let Kya fall immediately right through them and die. Makes sense since certain waters have an unhealthy color and might have different densities, but seriously, how did she not learn how to swim?
  • Throwing the Distraction: Using your Boomy to hit a Wolfen can cause a nice distraction, or better, a fight between that Wolfen and the one it accuses of hitting it.
  • Transformation Ray: Brazul's machine transforms peaceful Nativ into loyal, obedient Wolfen soldiers. He spends much of the game trying to weaponize it, resulting in boss battles against a Wolfen Frank and Aton.
  • World in the Sky: Nativ world is a series of islands suspended in the air.
  • Wrench Wench: In the "Kya's Life" gallery, she and Frank worked together to restore and repair an old car.

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