With Mina the Hollower, Yacht Club Games has cemented itself as one of the premiere independent studios in the industry today. Its breakout hit, Shovel Knight, was a retro-throwback platformer that merged classic 8-bit-style action with some modern touches. Mina the Hollower looked similarly old-school, with a look and feel that obviously pays tribute to the Zelda Game Boy spin-offs. But this time, the fusion of newer souls-like design sensibilities makes it more than a freshened-up homage. It resembles those Zelda games, but it’s so densely packed with secrets and intertwining cause-and-effect outcomes that at times it feels more like Elden Ring than Link’s Awakening.
The comparisons to Link’s Awakening, and Game Boy Color games Oracle of Seasons and Oracle of Ages, are visually obvious. Mina has a similar color palette, the sprite artwork is familiar, and it uses an overhead camera. But whereas those games were relatively simple iterations on the template set by the classic Legend of Zelda and Link to the Past, Mina the Hollower is much darker, much denser, and much more difficult. The challenge level can be brutal and unforgiving, and there are elements of gothic horror, body horror, and gruesome violence–at least, as expressed through cute pixelated animals.
The story starts when Mina gets a letter from Baron Lionel, the leader of Tenebrous Isle, who requests her help with the island’s power generators. Mina is a Hollower, which in this world essentially means a sort of structural engineer and earth scientist. Mina is the best of them, having invented the spark technology that powers the generators, which in turn makes all of the modern technological wonders of Tenebrous possible. But the generators have been breaking down, so Mina is asked to come see to the problem.
After her boat to Tenebrous is attacked by a monster, Mina chooses her weapon. You’re presented with just three at the start, and already, this feels like a statement of intent. Link’s trusty sword has always seen him through, and Mina’s twin daggers, Whisper and Vesper, offer a very similar play-feel. But this time you could also select the Nightstar, a whip-like morningstar with longer reach, or the Blaststrike Maul, a massive bludgeoning hammer. The message, which becomes even clearer as you play, is that this is a game that wants you to take combat seriously. And you’ll need to.
Once you make landfall and enter the city of Ossex, you start to gain a better idea of what’s going on. The generators have been sabotaged by an eco-terrorist named Thorne. Lionel tasks Mina with going to repair the six main generators surrounding the city, and you’re vaguely pointed in a handful of directions to pursue. Immediately as you head out, though, you realize that this world does not spoonfeed its structure to you. It’s not immediately clear where to go. The city itself is massive and bustling, loaded with named characters who all drop meaningful bits of information, though the game doesn’t log these for you. What you do with that information is up to you–whether you commit it to memory, write it down, or chase a lead immediately. Like the open world of Elden Ring, the freedom initially feels overwhelming. A city newspaper points you in the direction of a dungeon, but the fact is that you can do them in almost any order.
The dungeons themselves are unique–not only as compared to a game in this template, but in relation to each other. Rather than enter into a bespoke dungeon area, they are built into the structure of the world itself. You might weave your way through crypts or caves or swamps while exploring, but there is no clear delineation between the open world and a dungeon. It’s all part of the same cohesive, connected reality. There are often shortcuts and secret passageways connecting pieces of the world together, making it feel even more part of a whole.
Even so, the parts of the world have their own distinct personalities that each feel inventive and fresh. My first quest was to Queensbury Crypt to the east, a creepy graveyard full of tombs and statues, complete with a macabre meta-puzzle that led to a boss battle with an implied tragic story at its core. Next I headed to Nox’s Bayou, a poisonous swamp that tested my ability to make tricky leaps across waterways. Then I went to Septemburg, a personal favorite, a harvest-themed farm town being terrorized by a spooky monster that the local youth call the Carving Man. The Carving Man ends up stalking you, introducing a surprising survival-horror element akin to Resident Evil’s Mr. X or Nemesis. Every dungeon is just packed with these kinds of surprising touches that make them feel distinct.
Unlike a traditional Zelda game, though, you aren’t obtaining new items in each dungeon that help you solve puzzles. At first I missed this element, but I found that Mina the Hollower didn’t need it. Items in Zelda games help to facilitate new types of puzzle or platforming challenges, but Mina manages to maintain such a constant pace of fresh reinvention without items. The world and dungeon design itself kept the same pacing by themselves. Progress isn’t gated behind keys, but rather, behind skill. If you can reach from one end of a room to the other, you can proceed.
That is made all the more impressive by how absolutely dense the world is. Every screen is packed with interconnected secrets and things to uncover, many of which you may not even realize are there the first time you trod past them. I’ve completed the game and I still don’t feel like I’ve even scratched the surface. Playing alongside others on staff, we would frequently find ourselves surprising each other with small details we found and character interactions we uncovered. There are moments that I triggered that other players didn’t, and vice-versa, and we still have no clear idea why. The world is so complex and intertwining that I suspect players will be experimenting and discovering new things for some time.
Combat is similarly nuanced. In addition to the three starter weapons, you have access to more that can be found or bought. Each one can be upgraded, and all of them have their own intricacies. I preferred the twin daggers because it felt most familiar to me with its quick short-ranged strikes, but I also had to adjust to its rhythm of two quick stabs in succession. The Nightstar has reach and flexibility, but it also means you have to commit to an attack. A gun-like weapon gives you long range but with very limited ammo. You won’t need to master all of them, but they each feel precise enough to accommodate someone’s playstyle.
In addition to your main weapon, you’ll find Sidearms, which deplete a mana pool upon use. Those could be a heavy axe that you can toss a la Castlevania, an umbrella that blocks enemy attacks and then can be thrown, a boomerang-like throwing disc, a pet beast that follows you around on a leash, and more. There are tons of Sidearms, and it’s always exciting to find a new one and see how it mixes up gameplay and adds to your combat options.
Combat is one area, and the only one, where Mina the Hollower’s ambition mildly exceeds its grasp. This game admirably iterates on the form and function of classic Game Boy Zelda games, but those were never built for complex combat. Mina succeeds in giving this structure style a much higher skill ceiling, but it isn’t flawless. With a flattened 2D perspective, it’s not always clear when enemies are in the air, requiring a jump-attack to make contact. Many enemies charge directly at you, which makes the lack of a dodge or backstep command stand out. Instead, you can jump, or jump into a burrow and dig underground. Both of those do in a pinch–and you’ll need to master their timing to withstand the combat challenges–but it does feel like combat is just slightly straining against the limitations of its homage.
On that note, Mina the Hollower is brutally difficult at times. Boss battles can be especially tricky, but even a handful of regular enemies can take you down if you’re not careful. Mina is just a vulnerable little mouse, after all. Your safe spot is the Underlab, an underground base you burrow into where you can heal and swap equipment. Sometimes Underlabs are spread very thin, and you’ll be desperate to find the next one because you’re on the verge of death. Runbacks between Underlabs and bosses can be unforgiving and require several tries. You can crack a vial to restore your health, but you need to defeat enemies to extend the amount it will restore, and you have a limited number of uses. Dying means losing your spark, after which you have one chance (by default) to regain it before you lose all your currency.
The difficulty is certainly an intentional choice, and slight reservations about the combat’s limitations aside, it does feel great to have your skills tested and slowly feel yourself improving. Like any other game in the souls-like genre, you do actually need to get good.
Unlike a souls-like game, though, you actually can make the game easier on yourself. Mina the Hollower has loads of optional modifiers–reducing damage, adding more Underlab save points, adjusting the world speed, and so on. It’s generous enough to let you turn on as many or as few as you’d like, tweaking the game difficulty to your liking. You can even make it harder if you’re looking for additional challenge after mastering the mechanics. And even more are added after game completion, giving you a massive array of different things to try that will either add limitations or even more freedom.
Bones (which are their money) accrue by defeating enemies and exploring. After you’ve gathered enough, you can buy stacking upgrades to strength, defense, or Sidearm mana, or you can convert your pool into Bonestone, which is kept safe in your Underlab and therefore can’t be lost when you die. Bones can also be used to buy a variety of permanent upgrades for Mina, or weapons, upgrades, various items, or Trinkets.
Trinkets are one of the most important aspects to customizing Mina to your playstyle. These have strong effects like extending your burrow time, letting you carry extra health vials, or even giving you a one-time emergency revive. None of these are strictly necessary for completion like items in a Zelda game, but many of them are extremely useful, and combining them as you find new ones is part of the joy of learning and earning your own safe path through this dangerous world.
And again, this world feels dangerous and unstable. Even in areas where you’d ordinarily feel safe, like wandering through the streets of the central city, you may be surprised to find yourself violently grabbed by a giant shopkeeper who pulls you into his store and orders you to buy his wares. I once wandered into a boss fight in the city without even realizing it, thinking I was in a safe space, and had to fight my way out by the skin of my teeth or risk losing my precious bones. Everything about the world accentuates the feeling that it is treacherous and unpredictable.
As impressed as I was throughout, Mina the Hollower finishes especially strong with a pair of final dungeons that are somehow even more bursting with creativity. Whereas every dungeon up to that point had its own distinct flavor and personality, the last few hours packed multiple ideas and puzzle types into single dungeons, making them a feast of creative level design that honestly, at some points, felt like Yacht Club was just showing off.
Each time you finish a dungeon, you play an extended platforming sequence with a neat effect that reminded me of Mode 7 on the Super NES. The generator towers themselves are cylindrical, and you can fully run around them while climbing upward, all while avoiding a trail of electrical current coming after you. It’s an exciting way to cap off the dungeon after fighting a memorable boss, and like the environments themselves, each one has its own distinct flavor that matches the dungeon’s themes.
Upon restoring each generator, you find a letter–most of them from Thorne, the eco-terrorist who is always one step ahead of you in sabotaging the generators. Thorne describes his reasoning and implores you to rethink helping Lionel. For a generation raised by eco-tainment like Fern Gully and Captain Planet (RIP Ted Turner), it was clear from the start where all of this was going. However, the execution found room for surprising turns. This is a fable about environmentalism, but it’s not clean or preachy. Fixing the generators has positive effects on the world, but Thorne’s destruction of them does too. It seems like this world is stuck in a devil’s bargain where they’ve become too reliant on technology to stop now without incurring heavy costs, but they can’t safely continue either. Any path leads to pain. It certainly resonates.
I am awed by what Yacht Club Games has created here. Mina the Hollower is so ambitious and dense and sprawling that it is hard to believe that it is contained in such a modest presentation. It surpasses the boundaries of mere homage or retro throwback to become something new, fresh, inventive, and exciting. Shovel Knight was a well-deserved successful debut for Yacht Club. Mina the Hollower may be its masterpiece.
