Majin and the Forsaken Kingdom is a 2010 video game developed by Game Republic and published by Namco Bandai Games.
It tells the story of the once prosperous Kingdom of Q'umarkaj as it faces being slowly devoured by an entity known only as "the Darkness", a seemingly unstoppable army of its monstrous minions waging war on every living thing. For over a century, its evil has spread unchallenged. Corrupting everything they touch, they have driven most of civilization to the outskirts of the kingdom and show no signs of relenting.
Faced with the Darkness destroying his forest home and his animal friends, a young thief enters the long abandoned heart of the Kingdom with the intention of ending the threat once and for all. To this end, he seeks out the Majin, legendary guardian of the Kingdom's founder, whom it's rumored is the only creature capable of actually harming the Darkness. However, unable to kill the Majin outright, the forces of the Darkness instead imprisoned him and stripped him of his power, spreading it throughout the ruins of the kingdom in the form of magical fruit.
And so the Thief and the Majin, or rather Tepeu and Teotl, set out on a quest to restore its power and defeat the darkness.
The game is a mix of action platforming and puzzles that require creative use of the Majin's huge strength. It also throws in some stealth elements in areas the Majin is too big to follow you into, though it's rarely necessary to rely on stealth.
Majin and the Forsaken Kingdom contains examples of the following tropes:
- And Your Reward Is Clothes:
- New outfit pieces for both Tepeu and the Majin can be found in various places, though they usually actually offer some upgrade.
- Finding all the Memory Shards in the game gives you the First King's clothes set, its special ability being that it reduces damage from mooks with swords and shields. YMMV on its usefulness, since while these things don't really do too much damage at all, the last level is filled with them.
- Attack Its Weak Point:
- Caprakan needs to have stones thrown into the glowing point on his back several times to be distracted in his first stage. In the second stage of the fight, he is finished by the Majin using his wind ability onto his leg.
- The Brute enemies and Two-Face enemies can only be dispatched by attacking them in their face mask.
- Boss-Arena Idiocy: Many bosses. The first boss, Caprakan, has a large cage hung in the centre of ceiling for some reason. This is the only way to knock him from the ceiling onto the floor where he can be attacked. For bonus points, he is smashed to death with that exact cage at the end of the fight.
- Bottomless Magazines: Downplayed: Tepeu is never going to run out of stones. It doesn’t matter whether you're out in the desert or inside a castle.
- A Boy and His X: A major element of the game is interaction between the Majin and Tepeu. Over the course of the game, their relationship goes from mere alliance of convenience to true friendship, as Tepeu comes to trust and rely on the Majin more and more often, while realising that he also needs help and support from him. Remarkably, all this is done without a single Dialogue Tree.
- Bridge Logic: At the Hawme'a Falls, there is an upright plank of wood besides the ravine. Not only is its height just right, but it will fall exactly into place after getting knocked down by the Majin's wind. Subverted in that it is not a true bridge but only there for a side path.
- Color-Coded for Your Convenience: Each of the Majin's powers corresponds to a colour: yellow for lightning, blue for wind and orange for fire. Feeding it fruits with these colours will permanently increase the power of these abilities. Conversely, enemies that block elemental powers with their shield have a stone of corresponding colour included.
- Combat Tentacles: One enemy type has them. If it catches Tepeu with them, he will get covered in them and needs to struggle to break free, in a process apparently known as becoming "haunted by darkness".
- Convenient Item Placement: The tear gas bombs will always be present when there are the ranged enemies to be taken out.
- Cores-and-Turrets Boss: Heart of Darkness, which can only be damaged by hits to the mask in the center of its face, and which will protect it with magic from its four hands. Tepeu needs to keep crystallizing the hands in order to attack unimpeded.
- The Corruption: The Darkness, which turns people into living tar monsters that can't be killed permanently. It also appears to warp their personalities in such a way that they serve the darkness without losing a twisted form of their own personality. Tepeu grows a tar coating from his feet up as he takes damage, though the Majin can cleanse him anytime they're not in combat.
- Crate Expectations: Some crates are present and are typically used for the jumping puzzles.
- Dark Is Evil: Played straight here. All enemies are the rather stereotypical creatures of darkness that are irredeemably evil and need to be destroyed. There are also deposits of Darkness, which can be purified by majin.
- Elite Mooks:
- The Dark Warrior Sergeants, which are stronger and tougher than regular Warriors at their level and will summon more to them.
- There are also the Two-Face creatures, which are immune to magic and have to be hit in one specific spot.
- The hounds are elite patrolling mooks due to them being able to sniff Tepeu out if he's trying to sneak and being quite tough in a fight themselves.
- Enemy Summoner: Mild version with Dark Scouts: they will scream and alert all other enemies in the area to your presence. The Dark Warrior Sergeants will summon new Warriors indefinitely, however.
- Feed It a Bomb: The Admiral Tlalac boss, which can have bombs thrown into it.
- Final-Exam Boss: Each boss requires the correct use of at least one of Tepeu and Majin's combined abilities to take down.
- Finishing Move: You are allowed to do some on the regular enemies. All boss fights also end in Tepeu performing one.
- Friendly Fireproof: Averted with the Dark soldiers. They will take damage from the ranged enemies' explosives as well as you, and the dark Majin's magic will affect them too during the final battle.
- Gentle Giant: The Majin is really a sweet guy; he only fights because he wants to protect his friends and would rather not fight if he could avoid it.
- Giant Mook: Brute enemies, which are the same size as the Majin itself and can only be hurt by attacks on their face-mask and magic.
- Happy Dance: Both you and the Majin dance after defeating a group of enemies with a combo attack, or occasionally after solving puzzles.
- Heavily Armored Mook: Versions of regular and shielded Dark Warrior that are completely encased in armor and therefore much tougher to defeat. Fortunately, all of them are equally vulnerable to the stealth kills.
- Hoist by His Own Petard: Enemies can be stunned by the traps they set if you set them off by throwing rocks at them.
- Holler Button: Used to tell the Majin to stay or follow. (He can get stuck if you tell him to follow while too far away, though.)
- Hyperactive Metabolism: Special fruits heal majin & increase his stats.
- Improvised Weapon:
- The environmental kill variant - the Majin can drop sections of walls onto the enemies below or roll boulders towards them. The battle with the first boss ends with him getting smashed by his own cage (although it merely incapacitates him for a Finishing Move.)
- Technically, Tepeu's Sealing Spike is this in and of itself: It was just used to impale the Majin's arm and keep him stuck for hundreds of years. Justified since it absorbed the Majin's power Tepeu decided that it'd be better than anything else he could find.
- Inexplicable Treasure Chests: In every area, even forests. Some are obviously placed, others fall under Sidetrack Bonus.
- In-Universe Game Clock: There is a collectable (Memory Shards) that can only be obtained when it's night time. Fortunately, they are easy to spot and usually can be reached with ease as well.
- Kung Fu-Proof Mook: The Two-Face enemies, which will attack you with magic and are immune to Purification, but its weak face is susceptible to all other forms of attack. Some advanced Warriors will also possess shields with colored stones that protect them from one of the Majin's elemental attacks.
- Life Drain: The ghosts will attack the Majin by getting close, then sucking onto him and not letting go until Tepeu shakes them off. It is possible for several of them to do that at once.
- Mana Drain: The final boss fight has some orbs that will drain the Majin's power unless they're destroyed.
- Mayincatec: "Teotl" and "Toci" are Aztec words while "Tepeu" is Mayan.
- Mook Maker:
- Golden gladiator Dark Soldiers will summon more copies of their defeated allies until you defeat them.
- The final level of the game introduces Dark Fountains, which will quickly respawn all enemies in their area until they're purified.
- No Name Given: The protagonist starts with no name, the Majin names him Tepeu soon after they meet. Subverted with the Majin, who introduces himself as Teotl but is always referred to as "the Majin".
- One-Hit Kill: The stealth kills on unaware Warrior enemies, and performing finish attacks on enemies with Purification. Also, during the Admiral boss fight, getting swallowed by him will instantly kill Tepeu.
- Patrolling Mook: If you're allowed to sneak in a given segment, some enemies will be doing patrols while others will stay somewhere and be exposed for a stealth kill. There are also the hound-like creatures, whose main purpose is to sniff Tepeu out and force confrontation.
- Personal Space Invader: The monkey-like Dark Scouts, which will try to jump onto the Majin's back, attack him there and prevent him from using his powers unless Tepeu knocks them off him.
- Raised by Wolves: Tepeu grew up in the forest raised by "the animals". Rats and parrots comprise most of what you actually converse with though. Tepeu seems very well dressed and normal for using this trope, but then he's also a thief.
- Rare Candy: Green, red, purification, wind, electric and fire fruits, which will increase the Majin's stamina, strength and elemental powers, respectively. Achievements are granted for maxing those stats out.
- Reptiles Are Abhorrent: A minor example — Tepeu can speak to animals, but the lizards apparently have nothing to say... though they do usually appear on walls that you need to climb.
- Royals Who Actually Do Something: Most notably dual-sword-wielding Action Girl Toci. Also King Xolotl (once he is no longer possessed) is willing to sacrifice himself to protect the kingdom, and the original Tepeu seems to have been very active as well.
- RPG Elements: You gain experience for fighting and pulling off combos, but otherwise it's all action/platforming.
- Scenery Porn: Despite the darkness overflowing and corrupting the people and many other things, the rest of the kingdom is a beautiful picture of untouched nature.
- Sequential Boss: All bosses usually have two stages.
- Shield-Bearing Mook: Certain Dark Warriors have shields, and can only be damaged in melee when they lower them to attack. Later on, some will also get special stones in them that block one of the Majin's magical abilities. There's even a Headlong Rush achievement for trying to attack them 100 times when their shield is still raised.
- Speaks Fluent Animal: Tepeu can speak to animals, which comprise most of the games NPCs.
- Taken for Granite: Tepeu's crystallisation ability, which is used twice in boss fights to immobilise bosses by solidifying their limbs or their environment. Encasing enemies in ice also makes most susceptible to a One-Hit Kill.
- Trick Shot Puzzle: There are a number of puzzles using catapults to launch rocks or even Tepeu himself.
- Weak Turret Gun: One enemy type is effectively an eyeball on a stalk that fires lasers. While it odes considerable damage, dispatching it is no trouble.
