Characters / Haven (2020)

Tropes that apply to the characters of Haven (2020).

Kay and Yu

A young couple who fled the oppressive Apiary to start a new life on the distant planet Source.

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In general

• Action Girl: Both of them can put up a fight, so either one of them may qualify depending on which character option you play with.
• Animal Motifs: Birds. Their spacecraft and home base is referred to as the Nest, they can achieve flight with their anti-gravity boots once they're sufficiently upgraded, and their story arc centers around them exercising freedom from the rigid, oppressive systems in place back home.
• Badass Bookworm: They're both well-educated in their respective fields and proficient in combat thanks to their flow-powered gauntlets. Yu is a more literal example, as she spends much of her spare time reading through the collection of books she keeps in the Nest.
• Barbie Doll Anatomy: Averted in-game: while nude, both protagonists' nether regions hidden via Censor Steam or camera angles. Played straight in the closing credits cinematic, which depicts the nude couple from the front without any nipples or genitals.
• Battle Couple: The two of them fight together, and their best attacks are combos where they work together to blast the enemy.
• Breaking the Fourth Wall: Both of them provide commentary over the main menu credits, explaining the roles of all the developers as their names are shown and thanking the translation teams in their respective languages. Furthermore, the game's official artbook is full of written comments from the two of them.
• Bureaucratically Arranged Marriage: Both of them were set up with "mates" by the Matchmaker, per the Apiary's tradition.
  • Kay's mate is a fellow biologist. He didn't even glance at her profile before they ran away, but Yu convinces him to at least take a look.
  • Yu's mate is Lord Ozias, a prominent Council member, and being matched with someone like him was what motivated her to flee with Kay.
• Conspicuous Gloves: They both wear a fingerless glove on the hand opposite their flow gauntlet.
• Coordinated Clothes: Both wear white tops, black bottoms, a single fingerless glove, and a piece of red cloth (Kay's belt, Yu's hair ribbon).
• Deadpan Snarker: Depending on dialogue the player chooses for them, they can lay down quite a few sarcastic remarks.
• Death of Personality: Should they be captured by the Apiary in the Second Thoughts ending, they both end up recalibrated to accept their mates.
• Determinator: Whichever of the two has more Confidence at the end of the game becomes committed to severing the interplanetary flow bridge, even though at a glance it looks like a suicide mission. Their partner, by contrast, is less convinced about this being a good idea, and can even try to talk them out of it.
• Eating the Eye Candy: Yu enjoys watching Kay work out (doing push-ups in particular). And according to their exploration banter, both also like to peek at their significant other's butt while exploring the world.
• Establishing Character Moment: The opening scene establishes that Kay is the cook of the two, Yu is the engineer, and that the two of them are in a deeply committed relationship.
• Facial Markings: Their white face markings are a naturally-occuring trait they have in common with every other Apiarian. Notably, theirs are the least intricate out of all the characters we get to see.
• Falling-in-Love Montage: The images shown in the game's loading screens, dubbed the "First Times". They depict various firsts for the couple prior to them arriving on Source, including their first kiss and sexual experience.
• Fastball Special: They're able to throw each other while gliding. At first, they'll do this to catch a creature that steals Kay's pants. Later on, they can use the same trick to catch Droploots and obtain the flow seeds they're carrying.
• Fertile Feet: Following the "Don't Look Back" ending, Yu and Kay upgrade their Hover Boots to produce trails of flowers a la Terraria.
• Flight of Romance: They'll hold hands while gliding in a straight line. Doing this long enough unlocks the "Love Birds" achievement.
• "Freaky Friday" Flip: The couple experience this while under the influence of Hygrocybe rubescens. This either leads to Kay breaking down from an existential crisis, Yu discovering she's on her period due to a bout of abdominal pain Kay experiences on her behalf, or the two of them sexually experimenting with their swapped bodies.
• Free-Fall Romance: The closing credits cinematic depicts a nude Yu and Kay embracing while falling. The accompanying OST track is even titled "Free Fall".
• Game-Favored Gender: Downplayed. When played as a heterosexual couple, Kay will always be male and Yu will always be female. There's no option to invert this. However, their stats are always the same, whether each protagonist is male or female.
• Gay Option: They can be played as a same-sex couple as of the Couple Update, either as two men or as two women.
• Gender-Blender Name: They both have gender-neutral names.
• Hair-Contrast Duo: Inverted with Kay being a black-haired idealist and Yu being a white-haired realist.
• Hover Skates: Their anti-gravity boots allow them to quickly glide long distances and, once upgraded, fly by riding aerial flow threads.
• Idle Animation: Their idle activity, if they've already kissed, has them sit down on the ground.
• Insecure Love Interest: One level-up conversation has them both admit that they feel inadequate in the eyes of the other.
  Kay: Who am I supposed to make jealous by bragging about how great you are when it's just me and you?
  Yu: You can always tell me. I won't get offended.
  Kay: No, I can't. I'm too afraid that you'll realize I don't deserve you.
  Yu: Do you really think that?
  Kay: Should I?
  Yu: Of course not! Are you crazy? You're the best person I know. I'm the one who doesn't deserve you.
  Kay: You're also the best person I know.
  ...
  Kay: You know what? I think the world doesn't deserve us.
• Interrupted Intimacy:
  • The game starts with Kay about to take Yu on a table in the Nest. Then the lights go out and they're instead forced to go outside and gather flow to recharge the ship's batteries.
  • At one point the couple find an abandoned, flooded greenhouse. The perfect temperature inside gets them both in the mood for some bathing and lovemaking, but a rusted Babulardo lurking in the water confronts them before they get too far into it.
• Intimate Healing: Remaining idle for long enough while exploring prompts the two to partake in a "healing hug" (which, outside of specific situations, is actually a kiss), restoring the health of the more damaged one to the level of the other.
• I've Come Too Far: As the couple are about to sever the interplanetary flow bridge in the game's climax, the less confident one, afraid of the risks involved, will try to convince the other to not go through with it. They'll respond by saying that the two of them have gotten too far at this point and their efforts would be all for nothing if they quit.
• Labcoat of Science and Medicine: Their white tops are designed to evoke the appearance of lab coats.
• Lap Pillow: They can do this several times, usually with Kay being the one to offer his lap.
• Level-Up at Intimacy 5: Increasing the protagonists' relationship level - whether through cooked meals, winning battles, or simply through their many filler conversations - boosts their maximum health, attack strength, and shield effectiveness.
• Limited Wardrobe: They each only have one set of clothing they wear inside the Nest and one they wear outside, though they have two extra outfits to choose from as a game completion bonus and the First Times gallery shows them wearing many different sets of clothes.
• Make an Example of Them: Erena warns Yu and Kay that as a result of the two of them becoming a symbol of civil dissent, the Council has decided to sentence them to death. She begs for them to return home so that they can potentially work things out.
• Make-Out Kids: They'll kiss each other whenever left idle in free roam, though it does serve the gameplay purpose of equalizing their health.
• Masculine Girl, Feminine Boy: There are clear elements of it in Yu and Kay's dynamic. Yu is a Wrench Wench, with a quite pragmatic and straight-forward worldview, and she tend to be the more hard-nosed of the two. Kay, meanwhile, is a scientist (more specifically a biologist, and, fittingly, he is quite the Animal Lover), and has more of an optimistic and intellectual outlook on things, and he tends to be the more emotionally vulnerable of the pair.
• Masculine–Feminine Gay Couple: If they're played as a same-sex couple, naturally, given their aforementioned dynamic.
• Naked Apron: Both of them have an image in the First Times gallery that shows them wearing one.
• Outlaw Couple: They fancy themselves as "criminal lovers" since the Apiary deems their relationship illegal. Kay comments about how this makes them "a lot sexier", and they both fantasize about being immortalized in songs and erotic novels that people might write about them.
• Overcome with Desire: One of the level-up scenes has the duo roleplay an Apiary uprising scenario, with Yu spearheading the rebel forces. When the uprising takes a turn for the worse, Kay inserts himself into the scenario to save Yu at the last moment and leads her through some tunnels to where the Nest is docked. Once inside, they pay no mind to the commotion of the failing rebellion and start tearing each other's clothes off. Kay's description of this scene turns Yu on so much that they end up doing it for real.
• Pre-Climax Climax: Sex is brought up by the couple as one of the many things they would try to do on their last day alive.
• Purely Aesthetic Gender: Their gender has no effect on the gameplay or story aside from a few differing lines of dialogue.
• Runaway Fiancé: They're both trying to avoid being married to their Matchmaker-imposed mates. In Yu's case, it's a particularly serious matter, as Lord Ozias is quite possessive.
• Scars Are Forever: Whichever of the two that ends up shielding the other from an explosion of rust in the finale will permanently have fragments of rust crystals sticking out from their body. Kay is fairly idealistic about it in either case; if he's the one with scars, he notes how the spikes give Yu more places to grab on to in the bedroom, and if Yu is the scarred one, he asserts that they don't make her as ugly as she thinks and that it's a cool new look for her.
• Second-Act Breakup: They go through one after Kay goes off on Yu for having hidden the fact that her assigned mate is the maniacal Lord Ozias, whose obsessiveness and influence in the Council would ensure the Apiary's search for them will never cease. He wakes up the next morning to find himself alone in the Nest, and eventually decides to head out and find Yu in order to patch things up with her.
• Sex Is Good: Kay and Yu are a young couple who are very much in love, and the game is open about the fact they have a very satisfying sex life.
• Shower of Love: Interacting with the Nest's shower enough times leads to them taking part in one of these.
• Skinny Dipping: They can do this if they visit Nekawa, the secret VIP beach, at nighttime.
• Sleep Cute: On the default title screen and in one of the First Times artworks.
• The Smart Guy: Both of them are highly intelligent, with Kay's knowledge being in biology and less immediately relevant science and Yu specializing in practical engineering concerns.
• Super-Deformed: The loading screen graphic used whenever they retrieve a spare part for the Nest depicts them this way.
• Taking the Bullet: If shielding in combat, they can take the brunt of any attacks targeted at the other. Depending on their levels of confidence, as determined by dialogue choices throughout the game, one of them will shield the other from a rust explosion in the game's finale.
• Talking in Bed: Most of their conversations that occur after having them sleep in the Nest will naturally take place on the bed. They also have a few post-coitus exchanges which take place on the same bed.
• Technical Pacifist: While they never kill any of Source's creatures, their method of neutralizing the ones corrupted by rust involves punching and flow blasting them into submission so that they can safely move in to absorb the rust from their bodies.
• Tomboy and Girly Girl: In the female same-sex option, their dynamic is close to this, with Kay as the sensitive, nature-loving girly girl and Yu as the mechanically-inclined and pragmatic tomboy. Interestingly, due to female Kay playing the same role as male Kay and having a broadly similar appearance (taller than Yu, reasonably muscular, short hair, somewhat more masculine clothes), their character design actually suggests the opposite dynamic.
• Trademark Favorite Food: They're both fond of creamberries, the rarest food item on Source.
• Tricked-Out Gloves: The gauntlets they wear while out exploring allow them to channel flow into blast attacks and shields during combat.
• Twirl of Love: They perform a zero-gravity variant in the opening cinematic, followed by a kiss for emphasis.
• Umbrella of Togetherness: One loading screen shows the two sharing an umbrella, with Yu holding it a little too low for Kay's comfort.
• Underwear Swimsuit: Their swimwear and underwear are one and the same, as seen whenever they visit Nekawa.

Kay

Voiced by: Christopher Lew Kum Hoi (male), Lexie Ann Kendrick (female)

A biologist from Truth who previously worked for ExaNova, the Apiary's most prominent research organization.

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• Ambiguously Brown: Noticeably darker-skinned than the other onscreen characters, but his ethnicity in the context of the game's universe is never specified.
• Animal Lover: True to his role as a biologist, he shows great admiration for the various creatures that inhabit Source, as well as their relationships with the local flora.
• Babies Ever After: Ends up raising a son with his mate in the Second Thoughts ending.
• Beneath the Mask: Despite how much he tries to maintain an upbeat, positive persona in front of Yu, he ultimately admits that it's a facade and he's just as scared of their uncertain future as she is.
• Berserk Button: He's especially not fond of creatures who prey on the offspring of others.
• Boyish Short Hair: Inverted. His female variant maintains the same short haircut, but the fact that none of her interests and talents change means that she's actually very traditionally feminine.
• Child of Two Worlds: He's spent most of his life on Truth but was born on Source.
• Comedic Underwear Exposure: Subjected to this when a creature runs away with his pants after he and Yu do the deed while out camping.
• Dramatically Missing the Point: When he and Yu first arrive in the swamp region of Source, he takes to fawning over a Dorago watching over a group of eggs, not realizing that they're not its own, but rather those of the Katefulai that brought the couple there. Yu has to point out to him that the eggs are too large to belong to the Dorago, and that it's already eaten one of the eggs, before he notices this.
• Expospeak Gag: When he and Yu first discover helicaps, a mushroom species with healing properties, on Source, he makes some extremely detailed observations on their appearance.
• The Gadfly: He gets a kick out of annoying Yu in a variety of ways, such as by reading the embarassing parts of her old diary out loud.
• Go Through Me: Announces his intention to protect Yu from Lord Ozias this way.
• The Idealist: He's the optimist of the two, always trying to find the bright side of every situation. He also entertains the idea of helping other people back in the Apiary who love each other in defiance of the Matchmaker's judgement, despite the risks.
• Love at First Sight: While it took about a month of acquaintance for Yu to start having feelings for Kay, he claims he fell for Yu the very first time they met.
• Manly Tears: While not shown outright in the story, supplementary artwork reveals that he's not above breaking down crying.
• The McCoy: Kay is outwardly more idealistic and optimistic than Yu; where Yu is focused on long-term survival and often wary about potential threats, Kay is generally more prone to live in the moment and often pushes her to try and relax more, and he frequently indulges in being amazed at the sights him and Yu encounters.
• The Night Owl: Occasionally will stay up late to conduct research on rust.
• Parental Abandonment: He never knew his parents and is convinced they willingly abandoned him, the medal on his necklace being the only thing he has that's associated with them. When said medal turns out to be a key for the entrance to a flow power plant on Source, he realizes that they were most likely among the planet's settlers who were unable to evacuate when the plant went critical.
• Periphery Demographic: In-universe, he's a huge fan of Muffin and Cupcake, a children's cartoon about two pastry chefs with magical powers. He's naturally ecstatic to find figurines of the main characters in one of the abandoned homes on Source.
• Real Men Cook: He's the superior cook of the duo and prepares nearly all of their meals.
• Real Men Wear Pink: Enjoys cooking and takes a liking to children's shows and stuffed animals.
• Through Her Stomach: He first won over Yu's heart with the help of a batch of homemade cookies. The meals he cooks play a key role in increasing their relationship level, which in turn increases their effectiveness in combat.
• Tragic Keepsake: His necklace, being the only thing he has from his parents, retroactively becomes one after he realizes the truth about what happened to them.

Yu

Voiced by: Janine Harouni (female), Ryan Highley (male)

A skillful mechanic from Top and the daughter of ExaNova's current president.

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• Accidental Proposal: Some time before they became a proper couple, she went out stargazing with Kay in order to get away from her mother after a nasty argument. Kay mistook her saying "come on, let's go" after they'd spent a while outside for a proposal to run away from the Apiary with her, while in reality she just wanted to go back indoors because it was getting cold.
• Always Save The Boy: She asserts that if she could push a hypothetical button to abolish the Matchmaker and solve the Apiary's problems but would run the risk of losing Kay in the process, she would be absolutely confident in destroying the button.
• Ambidextrous Sprite: Her character sprite is drawn with her facing to the right, but in most scenes she's on the right side of the screen facing left. This means that, most noticeably, her combat gauntlet, shoulder cloth, and rust scars will almost constantly be mirrored.
• Beauty Is Never Tarnished: Averted. She's portrayed with the same amount of visible damage as Kay whenever the two of them take a beating. Special mention goes to the finale, should she protect Kay from the rust explosion, which sees her permanently burned and disfigured by rust fragments.
• Big Eater: She's constantly hungry and almost always up for seconds. The only dish that's too much even for her is the one made entirely from the extremely fatty bobanuts.
• Big Ol' Eyebrows: Has a modestly thick set of brows, but only as a woman.
• Blemished Beauty: Should she be the one to get covered in rust scars in the finale, she becomes a lot less confident in her appearance. Kay, however, reassures that the fragments of rust are a nice new look for her.
• Can't Hold Her Liquor: A few of the loading artworks paint her as something of a lightweight.
• Catapult Nightmare: She wakes up from a nightmare with a jolt during her first night in the Nest after it takes a tumble.
• Child Prodigy: An offhand remark of hers reveals she's been honing her mechanic skills since before she hit puberty.
• Cry into Chest: Sort of does this with Kay once they reconcile after their Second-Act Breakup, but she holds back her tears for the most part. A more straight example with her shows up in one of the loading screens.
• Does Not Like Spam: She hates appledews, the first food found in the game. This is because at the start of the game, they've been stuck with only appledews for quite a while.
• Erotic Dream: One bedtime scene has her waking up from a wet dream about herself.
• Eskimos Aren't Real: She thinks shooting stars are a myth. When Kay tells her they're a real thing, she assumes they're literal stars that fly across the sky, and doesn't learn that they're actually just meteors until she and Kay spot one later on.
• Flirting Under Fire: Can invoke this when she and Kay are role-playing as Apiary resistance fighters who meet during an assault gone wrong.
  Yu: Hey, pretty boy...
  Kay: No time to chat!
• Friendless Background: Her lack of friends growing up is brought up in a few scenes, such as during the first pick-a-bobble match, where she mentions having to play the card game by herself.
• Hates Being Alone: Alone, in this case, being "separated from Kay", as demonstrated when the two are split up by a divided islet and they have to take the long way around to meet up.
• Hiccup Hijinks: She tends to catch a case of the hiccups whenever she's stressed.
• Hidden Depths: She knows how to play the guitar and has experience sewing despite her masculine streak.
• Important Hair Accessory: Her ribbon is a more permanent substitute to the many hair ties she used to dispose of, indicating that she learned a lesson in sentimentality when she first started wearing it. It's shown discarded next to the wreckage of the Nest during the Second Thoughts ending.
• Lethal Chef: At best, she can prepare skewered vegetables; at worst, she's this. Apparently she inherited it from her mothers.
• Long Hair Is Feminine: Inverted. Her hair nearly reaches her knees, but she's the more masculine half of the couple.
• Long-Haired Pretty Boy: Her male variant has the same hair length and is just as good looking.
• Moving Angst: She had to move to a new home during her teenage years, causing her to resent having to leave her friends behind. It turns out that her family simply moved to a different sector on her home planet, and she could have just taken a short trip in the Nest to visit her friends at any time. Still, she was too busy moping about the change of scenery to consider it.
• Never Be Hurt Again: She refuses to go back to the Apiary. When Kay asks what she'll do if anyone from the Apiary finds them, she says (depending on player choice) either that she'll kill them or kill herself. In the Second Thoughts ending, she ultimately fails to go through with either one.
• No Periods, Period: Potentially subverted by the scene which has her and Kay endure a "Freaky Friday" Flip, depending on dialogue choice. Kay, while inhabiting her body, suddenly starts feeling abdominal pain which she deduces to be a side effect of a period she didn't know about, adding that due to the days being shorter on Source it's been difficult for her to keep track of her menstrual cycle.
• Putting the Pee in Pool: She may exclaim "Ahh, that's better!" when going for an impromptu swim outdoors; when Kay ask her what's better, she sheepishly dismisses the statement.
• The Spock: Compared to the idealistic Kay, Yu has a much more pragmatic outlook on things, and tends to worry about the couple's long-term survival and generally be more careful when approaching new situations. Some of her dialogue choices also show that she has already considered the idea that the use of violence and even outright lethal force might be a necessary and even acceptable method to defend their freedom if push comes to shove, something which notably unnerves Kay a bit when she brings it up.
• Survival Mantra: Subtle example: while she's trying to get back to Kay following their separation, the data entry in the radar for each new islet she visits will simply read "FIND KAY".
• Tomboyish Ponytail: Wears one in several of the First Times artworks, and as part of her Streetwear outfit.
• Unkempt Beauty: Kay says that Yu, without makeup, is more beautiful than the mate chosen for him, with makeup. Yu claims she actually is wearing makeup, but trolls him by leaving him guessing on whether she is or isn't. Her male counterpart will instead imply that his hair takes maintenance to keep looking good.
• Uptown Girl: She was raised on the upper-class planet of Top by the vice president of the MegaCorp ExaNova, while Kay grew up without a family on Truth, a planet implied to be far less affluent by comparison.
• Wrench Wench: She initially salvaged and repaired the Nest as a teenager, and is skilled enough to fashion replacement parts for it out of components from drone and spaceship wrecks she and Kay find throughout Source.
• You Are Worth Hell: When reuniting with Kay after their falling out, she affirms that instead of trying to go back to the Apiary, she'll stay on Source with him, no matter what they'll have to go against.
  Yu: I don't know if they'll keep sending in drones. I don't know if we can live here. I don't know if we'll end up at the bottom of a crevasse one morning, or torn to shreds by a beast that was too big for us to handle, or put to death by the Apiary. But I know that I never want to be away from you again. And if staying here is the only way, then I want to stay here.

Kay's mate

The mate assigned to Kay by the Matchmaker.

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• The Generic Girl: The unremarkable nature of her Matchmaker profile is lampshaded by Yu.
  Yu: "Interests: reading, music, having a drink with my friends." Whoa... Do you think you could handle such a strong personality?
• The Ghost: Never makes an appearance in person, only being brought up in the scene where Kay and Yu look at her profile. Her images from said profile are, for some reason, only shown on-screen in the demo, and the only nod given to her now unseen character design is with her and Kay's son in the Second Thoughts ending, who has blue eyes.
• No Name Given: Her name isn't mentioned in the one scene where she's relevant, though the artbook mentions that she's named Aquen.
• Pair the Smart Ones: Likely one of the Matchmaker's reasons for designating her and Kay as mates, since both of them are biologists.

Erena

Voiced by: Jane Perry

The president of ExaNova and one of Yu's mothers.

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• Appeal to Tradition: She's firm in her belief in the Matchmaker to create the most ideal relationships between people in the Apiary — thus avoiding a resurgence of the Mark — because it's a system that's served that purpose well enough for a long time.
• Corrupt Corporate Executive: Though she was only ExaNova's vice president at the time, she's complicit in the destruction of Source, the deaths of many of its colonists, and the subsequent cover-up — all because ExaNova wanted to harvest a little extra flow from the planet.
• Lethal Chef: Her and her partner's inability to cook is the reason Yu preferred eating cafeteria food growing up.
• My Beloved Smother: Yu's anecdotes and old diary entries about her suggest she was quite the overbearing parent, to the point of making her contemplate running away from home.
• My Greatest Failure: She seems to be haunted by the death toll of Source's destruction, if her implicit desire to make amends with Kay for having a hand in his parents' deaths is any indication.
• One-Shot Character: Her sole appearance is when Kay and Yu contact her via the vid-chat.
• Small Role, Big Impact: She's cited as the sole reason that the protagonists met each other in the first place.

Ozias

Voiced by: Harrison Collett

A prominent member of the Apiary's Council with a marked interest in apprehending Kay and Yu.

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• Affably Evil: He never so much as raises his voice, but it's clear that he feels entitled to have Yu all to himself, Kay be damned.
• Big Bad: He's the biggest threat to Kay and Yu's new way of life.
• The Caligula: Has a reputation for being a demented, power-abusive maniac.
• Commonality Connection: Is attracted to Yu due to their shared stubbornness and upbringing as lonely rich kids.
• Entitled to Have You: He believes that he and Yu are destined to be just because he's attracted to her, regardless of how much Yu despises him.
• Good Colors, Evil Colors: Concept art reveals that his gauntlet and boots glow red, in contrast to the protagonists' blue.
• Meaningful Name: "Ozias" is a Greek form of the Hebrew name "Uzziah", meaning "my power is God". His name can also evoke "Ozymandias", the Greek name of Ramses II.
• Noodle Incident: He mentions his first meeting with Yu did not go very smoothly. However, what actually happened during this meeting is not spelled out.
• One-Shot Character: Like Erena, he only makes a speaking appearance in one scene, though he also appears briefly in the Second Thoughts ending.
• Prince Charming Wannabe: He's fully convinced he and Yu are a perfect match, despite their only in-person meeting having a less than civil conclusion, and is willing to do whatever it takes to have her for himself.
• Pragmatic Villainy: He disagrees with the Council's decision to sentence Kay and Yu to death because he's more concerned about claiming the latter of the two as his mate than setting an example by killing them.
• The Unfought: He's either prevented from reaching Source altogether after the destruction of the interplanetary flow bridge, or manages to defeat and capture the protagonists without much resistance.