After more than a decade of developing DLC and various spinoffs for their seminal 2D modern classic Shovel Knight, Yacht Club Games has finally released their next adventure: Mina the Hollower. Though we are now burrowing through the ground instead of simply digging this time, this title takes the form of a top-down action-adventure game with hints of RPG mechanics and a sprinkling of horror.
Big Ol’ Pile of Them Bones
The titular Mina is a mousey lady who, years prior to this story, built a sextet of towers on Tenebrous Isle known as the Spark Generators. These towers provided the resources needed for the isle to prosper, particularly in its central city of Ossex. However, the generators have begun malfunctioning, and Mina returns to the isle to try to repair them and bring tranquility to the isle once more. Unfortunately, a great evil threatens the isle, as she is attacked upon landing on the isle, and comes to find out that many dangerous monsters stand in her path.
As the name of the game would suggest, she is a part of what is known as the Hollower’s Guild. Hollowing is an in-universe discipline dedicated to studying and navigating the earth below. To be a bit reductive, it is by and large digging and burrowing, particularly as it applies to gameplay.
To get this out of the way early, the storyline of Mina the Hollower is easily its weakest aspect. The main plot goes in a very predictable direction as you try to deal with the various threats along the journey between the generators, with some at times clumsy-feeling writing, and the actual ending left me relatively ambivalent. The cast of primary characters are rather scant in number and fairly one-note as characters, with very little of intrigue. Mina herself talks, and while she has an air of mystique and plays like a badass, she’s rather lacking in charisma or personality in her dialogue. I felt like she could have just as easily been a silent protagonist whom the player might be able to project on or use their imagination with, and very little would have been lost in the process.
That’s not to say all the dialogue is poor. There are some rather charming NPCs you can find and talk to along your journey. The world of Tenebrous Isle is full of ghouls and other spooky entities, but it maintains a nice balance of seriousness and silliness to offer enough amusement when talking to the various denizens of the isle. Doing so livened things up somewhat, given the game’s need to explore around and speak to those you come across to figure out what to do next in order to keep from getting lost. There’s also thankfully an in-game manual (how’s that for a throwback?) with some supplementary resources for helping figure some stuff out.
The Fable of Palacevania
The influences of classics like Legend of Zelda and Castlevania are pretty evident from the outset in Mina the Hollower. It’s an 8-bit action-adventure with the three-quarters overhead camera view like most 2D Zeldas (and their innumerable imitators and successors), and the main character’s key art depicts her wielding a whip-like morningstar weapon as she fights off the undead (among many other enemy types).
Now, in the decade-plus since the release of Shovel Knight, the landscape of retro-inspired indie games has both changed and become more saturated. Many, many developers have taken the mantle from Yacht Club Games in order to create all manner of fun and inventive games in the 8-bit style, such that any novelty to a retro-inspired title has by and large faded. Games that use the style nowadays really need to step up to stand out from a crowded pack. I’m pleased to say that even with the new genre and gameplay style, Yacht Club Games haven’t lost their spark one bit. While it wears its influences on its sleeve, it’s hardly uninspired and does just about everything it sets out to do very well.
Mina the Hollower is a tremendously fun action game from beginning to end. Her core mechanic of burrowing underground to navigate around both obstacles and enemies gives combat and exploration enough of a unique flair to be both engaging and distinct despite its relative simplicity. Although Mina is generally depicted with a whip-like weapon, she has a variety of different ones for you to use, as well as a wide variety of secondary sidearms at her disposal. I had my preferences for both and stuck to the whip for much of my playthrough, but the options were fun to tinker with and offer plenty of ways to play. Attacks have a proper weight to them; they are a touch committal, but never too stiff, meaning combat had a bit of a learning curve that became highly satisfying to really get the groove down for. While there’s lots of action and burrowing, Mina can also jump, which makes for both surprisingly engaging platforming and adds an extra dimension to combat.
Along the way, you can collect bones, which operate as both experience and money and can be traded for items, resources, or empowered stats, and I did find the decisions between what to spend bones on pretty meaningful for much of my playthrough. Any time Mina runs out of health, she leaves behind a spark orb and returns to the last underground lab she burrowed (i.e. checkpoint). Dying without a spark orb will cause you to lose all your bones. Although Yacht Club Games used a similar mechanic in Shovel Knight, I will still admit that I am not a fan of this sort of “corpse run” mechanic. At least unlike Soulsborne games or games like Hollow Knight: Silksong, you only lose the bones if you die on the path to get your spark orb and you’ve run out of spark orbs (as you can get more than one), which gives you ample opportunity to spend your bones before running out completely and gives you enough room to diverge from whatever path you went on to lose your spark at first. This provides enough of a sense of stakes while avoiding at least some of the problematic frustrations I have with this mechanic.
One area Mina the Hollower rightfully borrowed from some of its contemporaries is its system of healing. She carries a limited amount of flasks around which are filled by hitting enemies, and you can have her drink them to recover her HP based on how many hits you’ve landed. This encourages aggression as a means to set up recovery rather than passivity. It takes a bit of time to actually heal though, so you will have to be timely with them to prevent getting hit and having them be interrupted. Frankly, I think more action games should use systems like this, as it keeps healing from being too abusable and really makes you work for it and use consideration for when you decide to pop your potions.
The World is Thy Oyster
Mina the Hollower is an adventure game that grants you quite a bit of freedom of choice. Though you must eventually restore all six spark generators, the order in which you do them is basically up to you. While the game does have some roadblocks here and there, it doesn’t have special context-sensitive items that gatekeep progress when you don’t have them, so you have basically all the abilities you’ll need to beat the game from the outset. Some areas are more complex and tricky than others (I did one area as my second, which I suspect was meant to be the fifth), but that element of choice made engaging with the game quite fun. Because of a lack of a map, I had to pay attention to signs and NPCs, and I got lost more than once. I didn’t especially mind this though, given there was always the sense that the next discovery was just around the corner.
Each of the game’s areas offers varied experiences, and none of them felt quite like any of the others. One area involves dealing with some shifting sands and floating hooks to grab on, while another involves being chased for quite some time. The final of the six I beat (which felt like it was supposed to be the last) really pulled out all the stops with its platforming tricks and visual aesthetic. There was one area I had a large amount of trouble with due to its use of ice physics and difficult enemies, though even the ways in which that area kind of stank were at least interesting due to the game’s overall design. And the bosses are consistently pretty fun. I genuinely felt like I was playing a game that captured that classic feel of an 8-bit title. It even had a modest amount of the jaggedness you would find in many such games, but said jaggedness comes about organically rather than simply for the sake of nostalgia.
In addition to your choice of weapons, you can also acquire a myriad of equippable trinkets which provide additional bonuses throughout your adventure. Once you get additional trinket slots unlocked, you can equip a pretty wide variety of them to tailor your experience even more. Some of these are noticeably more beneficial than others, but the ability to equip several at once meant I often shuffled some of mine around to suit the situation or just to mess around. And if all this isn’t enough for you, there’s plenty of modifier options you can toggle in the menu if you want to make the game easier, harder, or even just plain weirder!
While the 8-bit graphical style can sometimes be limiting, Yacht Club Games have made it work tremendously well here. Areas are visually detailed and usually pretty easy to read, with only occasional pathways (e.g. spots that can be burrowed under) being a bit harder to notice. And even with the limited coloring, there is some really well-done sprite art here. That said, the pseudo-3D, three-quarters perspective can occasionally feel odd, as hitboxes sometimes align with the pixels as you see them on screen even when they feel like they’re going behind or in front of the target due to the perspective shown. This can lead to attacks sometimes hitting in places you might not expect. It takes some getting used to, but this quirk can actually work to your benefit.
Once again enhancing the experience is the wonderful chiptune score provided by Jake “virt” Kaufman, who worked on Yacht Club Games’ various Shovel Knight outings, as well as the Shantae series and one of the Crypt of the Necrodancer soundtracks. He is also joined by guest composer Yuzo Koshiro, a legend of chiptune music with his work on series like Streets of Rage and Etrian Odyssey. There are almost as many bops here as there are bleeps and bloops, with the Bone Beach area theme being a particular favorite of mine. No complaints from me on the sound design whatsoever here.
Verdict
Yacht Club Games have once again hit it out of the park. While Mina the Hollower’s influences are readily apparent, its gameplay features enough flourishes to stand out from the crowd of nostalgia-driven games that have emerged in the years since their splendid maiden voyage with Shovel Knight. Though the game’s story doesn’t quite live up to everything else in the game, the sense of adventure the experience provides makes up for it, leaving you to handle Tenebrous Isle as you see fit. It manages to capture what made the 8 and 16 bit eras of gaming so captivating, willingly pushing forward with its inventive and distinct ideas for dungeons and areas even with the occasional jaggedness that sometimes accompanies sticking with a particular idea or gimmick. All the while, it doesn’t feel like it depends on nostalgia to succeed, as it still feels fresh, taking the right lessons we’ve learned in the past few decades of game design, to combine the best of old and new into something absolutely worth playing for itself.
MINA THE HOLLOWER IS HIGHLY RECOMMENDED
If you like retro-inspired games, you might also want to check out our review of Mouse: P.I. For Hire.
Many thanks go to Yacht Club Games for a PC review code for Mina the Hollower.
Been playing games since my papa gave me an NES controller in the early 90’s. I play games of almost all genres, but especially focus role-playing, action, and puzzle-platform games. Also an enjoyer of many niche things ranging from speedrunning to obscure music from all over the world.
