A squeak to the past.
There must be something in the water that Yacht Club Games floats on because the team who’s best known for creating one of the most iconic indie video games, Shovel Knight, has somehow managed to capture that spark one more time. Mina The Hollower is the studio’s next attempt at disguising a modern game underneath a retro facade. Where Shovel Knight is a platformer akin to Super Mario and Mega Man, Mina’s adventure takes a familiar top-down approach similar to games like The Legend of Zelda. Make no bones about it though, Mina is more than perfectly placed pixels and tugging at the nostalgia nodes in your brain. Just like the blue burrower before, this Game Boy Color era inspired adventure has more depth than you’d expect and Yacht Club’s wizardry is on full display. Not weighed down or too referential of the past, Mina’s whip is a link to the present.
Mina The Hollower begins with a letter from the Marshal of Ossex asking for Mina to return to Tenebrous Isle to help Baron Lionel fix the spark generators she had built in the past. With the power from the generators waning, the island has been overrun with creatures seeking to control the island and Mina’s expertise are essential to stopping the corruption from continuing to overflow. This exposition is quickly interrupted by a sea monster attacking the ship Mina is on and thus, the adventure begins.
From the moment you take control of Mina, the game’s introduction is purposefully crafted to breadcrumb players into understanding the mechanics with little text bubble distraction needed. Although, certain mechanics that call for more of an explanation like using Plasma Vials to heal and the importance of hollowing into an Underlab are explained in kind. After finding yourself in front of a chest and choosing between one of three starting weapons, Mina The Hollower thrusts you into a boss encounter setting the stage for the challenges that await. Once on solid ground, the road to the center of Ossex is a trail designed to teach the player the fundamentals of combat and exploration mostly by showing and not telling. Much of Mina felt this way for me, especially given its complete openness once you reach Ossex for the first time.
Free to choose your path once you have the main quest of repairing the spark generators, Mina The Hollower allows you to pursue the biomes of Tenebrous Isle as you please. At the start, I found myself mostly barreling through the Eastern Hearth towards Queensbury Crypt but before committing to that route I had sniffed out hidden passages, piles of bones, and the occasional bone losing bout. As the adventure rolled on, each area was infested with different platforming challenges, puzzles to ponder, and enemies to overcome– all ranging in varying degrees of difficulty but still possible to tackle them in the order I desired. This freedom often nudged me into even deeper exploration, further examination of each screen, and built up familiarity of the world around Mina. All of which made runbacks become less cumbersome and searching for secrets or points of progress more fluid and interesting.
Choice is a key element to Mina that extends beyond what order you tackle the generators. How you choose to level up Mina, what main weapon feels right, which sidearm a particular situation calls for, and the array of trinkets you choose to adorn. All of these options allowed me to tweak Mina to my particular tastes and what benefited my playstyle. Collecting Bones to level up or spend in the various shops are a major component to the loop and progression of Mina. Defeating enemies often rewards you with some, but all throughout Tenebrous Isle you’ll have chests to break open, characters to interact with, or puzzles to solve in order to gain them. Each time you reach a threshold of a specific amount you have the choice to level up one of three stats, convert them into Bonestone, or roll the dice and continue collecting. This risk is constantly on your mind as each time you perish you lose one of your sparks to whatever fell Mina. Was your last spec of health lost to an enemy? You now have quell that same foe if you wish to gain your Bones back. Fall to your demise in a pit? Conquer that platforming faux pas if you desire your precious Bones. Being defeated without having any of your sparks left will cause you to lose Bones– not Bonestone– permanently which is a familiar system reminiscent of other souls-like games and worked well as the carrot on the stick in Mina.
While Mina’s main weapon will be deployed most often, sidearms and trinkets are essential tools to leveling the playing field. Sidearms can range from additional attacks such as an axe that can be tossed in an arch and has some minor splash damage around it, to items like the umbrella that allow for defensive placements, gliding, and attacking. The plethora of options with sidearms added more depth and strategy to the combat on a screen-to-screen basis. While trinkets were essentially equippable buffs, I found myself most often leaning on trinkets like the Plasma Funnel which would allow Mina to heal twice as fast and not lose a Plasma Vial if she was hit while healing and the Shock Flint that would fire a shock ball out of a weapon strike when at full health. Both of these additional sets of tools were a joy to discover and experiment with throughout each area of Tenebrous Isle. All five of the main weapons were varied enough offering different up close and ranged weapon choices. The Nightstar, a whip with a spiked ball on the end, was my usual go-to main weapon because I enjoyed having the range and being able to control the zone easier. However, the Blaststrike Maul, a hulking hammer, was another fun main weapon to mix in as it traded range for power with a devastating swing that you could charge for higher damage as well as a roll ability to help defensively. In my next playthrough I plan to use the Guardian Casket and Battery Buster primarily because these two weapons seemed to be the most unique and nuanced and I could see myself having a blast trying to master them. I was just too attached to the Nightstar to leave it in the Underlab for too long when dabbling with the other armaments.
The final dollop of true choice and gameplay freedom resting on the top of this banana boat of an adventure were the modifiers. Completely optional to use but one of the most comprehensive and deep levels of customization I think I’ve ever seen be a standard. An absurd amount of options to make the game harder, easier, or just ramp up the silliness. A feast for those looking to conquer the challenges, a pillow for those looking to breeze through, or an extra safeguard for those who need assistance. This is accessibility and customization cranked to the max and I only barely dabbled in the seemingly never-ending list. I hope this is a bottomless feature that benefits all types of players and gets championed by those who engage with it.
Mina The Hollower is one of the rare exceptions where I need to stop writing. I could just keep scribbling about the moments that made this experience so memorable. I could stare glossy eyed into the night thinking about how the reflections of clouds in the puddles provided more visual depth. I could drone on about how the boss in Septemburg was one of my biggest skill checks for me while also being one of my favorite parts of the game. I could lament how I maybe struggled too long in an area that I probably should’ve abandoned and returned to once I leveled up more but the determination met with the ringing of exuberance that rocketed out of my mouth when I defeated the boss is an irreplaceable feeling. Mina The Hollower is a banquet sized charcuterie board of wonderful moments. Encounters with characters like Klumpy Dee who always seemed to squeeze a smirk out of me, is just the tip of this world that boasts a cavalcade of charm and levity that gushed throughout the adventure. Although this may not be Yacht Club’s Breath of the Wild moment, it sure is the best Zelda-like I’ve ever played.
Mina The Hollower is complete mastery of paying homage, learning from the games that inspired it, and creating something with its own identity while still having that familiar warmth from games like Zelda, Castlevania, and even Dark Souls. Mina is pixelated perfection from its gameplay and visuals to its ear rattling soundtrack. A true treasure trove of a game with attention to detail bursting out of every crack in the wall, every snap of the whip, and every hop out of the ground. The craftsmanship on display has me clamoring for a new playthrough already.
The final piece that really solidifies Mina as one of the best games I’ve played, is how it feels to control her. Dancing around an enemy encounter and hollowing underneath to dodge an attack and pop up to strike them with the tip of the Nightstar never became boring. Not once. This electricity that sparked in every encounter, every platforming segment, remained as strong a jolt as ever throughout my 20 plus hours on Tenebrous Isle. If anything, that zap only grew stronger the longer I honed my mastery of the tools in Mina’s arsenal– and my patience, too. Mastering hollowing allowed me to constantly enter a flow state between tricky jumps and finicky foes almost as often as Mina was in and out of the ground. A true testament to the precise gameplay at the core, consistently breaking my brain with how cleverly intricate this modern classic functions while disguised as a Game Boy Color game.
Mina The Hollower is not just a love letter to the games it was inspired by, it’s an evolution, a reevaluation from the bones up. There are few people making games like this team does, and I suspect Mina will be hollowing her way into many hearts this year and beyond. Mina deserves every flower, every single petal. A triumph of game design, a defiant diversion from the Shovel Knight universe that will undoubtedly have Mina standing back-to-back with the famed blue knight and green tunic, too. Mina The Hollower is a modern classic built on the bones of other classics— both from an era of the past and Yacht Club’s own legacy. A magnanimous level of depth in every aspect, showering out an impossible amount of palpable joy throughout. The only thing Mina is missing is a Worm Light so I can hollow underneath the bed covers and hope no one sees me still awake. Yacht Club has somehow, again, awakened my past and linked it to my present.
We reviewed Mina The Hollower on Steam with a code provided by the developer. Mina The Hollower releases on May 29th, 2026 for Nintendo Switch, Nintendo Switch 2, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, Steam, Windows, Linux, and Mac.
For all things Mina The Hollower and indie gaming related, be sure to keep it locked to Pass The Controller. For a deeper dive on all things gaming and nerd culture, listen to the Pass The Controller Podcast with new episodes weekly on your favorite podcast platform. Want to continue the conversation with us and our community? Join our official Discord server.
Pass The Controller 