12 Years Later, Yacht Club Games Does It Again

It’s hard to believe Shovel Knight was released nearly 12 years ago. As one of the best indie darlings and 2D platformers ever made, many expected – myself included – developer Yacht Club Games would pump out an indie hit every other year; instead, we got a wealth of amazing Shovel Knight expansions, deluxe editions, and a couple of decent spinoff games.

This made the announcement of a new IP titled Mina the Hollower back in 2022 so exciting. Instead of a platformer, it was an action-adventure game reminiscent of Game Boy Color-era Zelda titles yet mixed with the promise of the creativity and humor that Yacht Club is known for.

Whether or not they could fulfill that promise and reach the heights of Shovel Knight came into question with a lengthy leadup to release and a delay that highlighted the obvious fact that Yacht Club had only one successful IP to its name.

I shouldn’t have doubted them.

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Mina the Hollower features gorgeous 8-bit inspired art.

Adventure’s Calling

Let’s back up a little bit, though. Mina the Hollower puts you in control of Mina, a little mouse woman and a kind of inventor or scientist who created Spark Generators. These generators power the Tenebrous Isle, which is an island packed full of pixelated gothic horrors that wouldn’t be out of place in a Castlevania title. After the Spark Generators begin to malfunction, Mina travels there to fix them herself at the request of her old friend Lionel, the mayor of Ossex.

Perhaps my favorite call-to-adventure is when the game reveals there’s a set amount of distinct areas with an item or an important act that must be found or completed there. After the introductory sequence that sees Mina shipwrecked, Mina the Hollower does just that with a little fountain in the middle of Ossex that shows the location of six Spark Generators she must visit.

Though you can tackle them in pretty much any order, the recommended Queensbury Crypt was my first stop. Slaying the little goblin dudes and zombies here allowed me to get a feel for both Mina the Hollower’s surprisingly deep combat and enthralling exploration.

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The fountain in Ossex works as a hub to the rest of Tenebrous Isle.

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You’ll have a choice of three distinct weapons at the start of the adventure.

Whack-a-Zombie

Mina can equip a handful of different weapons, upgrading them to unlock extra moves as she explores. I chose the Nightstar mace at the beginning, which gave Mina a bit of range as it kind of worked like a whip. Combat itself is simple: I could attack in four directions around Mina and dodge enemies and their projectiles by jumping, walking out of the way, or burrowing – a mechanic unique to the game.

Mina, with little restriction, can burrow underground and avoid almost all enemy attacks, popping out after a set amount of time to resume the fight. This also allows her to pick up items to throw, jump further across perilous gaps, and dig her way into secret rooms full of hidden treasure.

Burrowing takes a minute to get used to, as it isn’t without its drawbacks. You see, Mina has to jump in the air and leave herself exposed to burrow underground. As such, simply walking out of the way of a charging werewolf or jumping over the Morningstar of an aggressive soldier is often the way to go, making for a simple – but fun – kit to go up against the healthy enemy variety.

While I wouldn’t call Mina the Hollower a Metroidvania, it draws more inspiration from Castlevania than just its setting: Mina can find and equip a handful of different Sidearms, from simple rocks to a disc that allows her to teleport to where it lands, that do deepen the combat by giving you more options.

In short, there was more than enough depth here to keep the combat from growing stale in the roughly 20 hours I spent playing, though I plan to seek out every last item before tackling the robust New Game + system that introduces new challenges rather than flat enemy stat increases.

A slightly overwhelming amount of equippable Trinkets also allow you to modify how Mina plays; personally, I equipped Trinkets like the Proto Spark that gave Mina an extra life along with the Primed Vial Pouch that gave me more healing items. Other Trinkets summon little familiars that help Mina out in various ways, while others still manipulate the way she interacts with the environment by giving her spin jumps and air dashes.

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Combat takes many forms depending on the equipment you use.

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The balance of the bosses can vary wildly.

Scenic Secrets

All of which you’ll need to make use of to explore every inch of the wonderfully rendered Tenebrous Isle. The true star of the show here isn’t the combat but the exploration of this pixilated world that I can only describe as having a ‘vibrant gothic’ aesthetic that remains a treat for the eyes, whether you’re exploring the grimdark cemeteries leading up to Queensbury Crypt or dodging a massive, skeletal crocodile in horror-inspired swamps.

When I say every inch, I mean it. Yacht Club packed Mina the Hollower so full of secrets it feels almost impossible to find them all. Some are straightforward: platforming puzzles lead to new Trinkets and treasure chests, and breakable walls offer shortcuts back to save points lest you die and lose all your Bones – which is the currency used to buy stuff and level up.

Other methods of exploration might have you stealing a ladder from a pink gorilla’s shop and carrying it through several enemy-filled screens to reach the shipwreck from the game’s opening moments, allowing you to loot the two weapons you didn’t choose at the start. Later, you might need to equip different Trinkets and Sidearms to reach a chest across a long, narrow chasm. You may never figure out how to sneak your way into a music hall, and – I won’t spoil how – many might not realize there’s a fast travel system hiding right under their mousey noses.

Mina the Hollower never holds your hand but rewards the patient and the curious over and over again. Not just with new weapons and more Bones but also with endearing, memorable characters. The incredibly creepy Klumpy the Clown will randomly jumpscare you and offer a bad joke in the most remote places, for example, and I’ll personally never forget the poor leaf person I murdered while leaping off ledges – you’ll know what I mean when that happens.

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Exploration is where Mina shines the brightest, with some fantastic secrets to seek out.

Pint-Sized Problems

This leads me to one of my only two criticisms of Mina the Hollower: aside from her visual design, Mina herself isn’t that interesting a protagonist. Unlike Shovel Knight before her, she plays the story straight, showing infrequent moments of personality when she reacts to other characters. And even then, I got a better sense of those characters that she was bouncing off of rather than Mina herself. I can tell you she’s earnest in her work, and that’s about it.

The other criticism I have is that the difficulty gave me a sore neck from all its ups and downs. A couple of laser-beam wielding soldiers and a bat or two early in the game posed more of a threat than some of the later bosses, for instance. In fact, the Queensbury Crypt I found much, much harder than the last few areas, as I collected many Trinkets, health upgrades, vials for healing, and so on that eliminated most of the challenge.

You see, Mina the Hollower borrows from Soulslikes in the sense that Mina drops all her Bones upon death; however, after the first five-or-so hours, there was little risk of losing those Bones permanently, as I had several charges of an ability that prevented that from happening, completely negating the mechanic.

When combined with frequent save points and shortcuts back to where I died, this made the latter half of the game feel too easy, despite every so often a handful of basic enemies and some environmental mechanic like lightning strikes giving me whiplash with how much trouble they caused.

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There are a massive amount of Trinkets that will alter how Mina controls and your various abilities.

That said, the chip-tune music is so good I didn’t mind this wonky balance so much. Gator Gallop from the Nox’s Swamp area of the game is up there with Strike the Earth from Shovel Knight and Stickerbrush Symphony from Donkey Kong Country 2. I didn’t mind breezing through most combat encounters as long as I got to listen to it and the other amazing tracks. I still can’t get it out of my head.

Really, Mina the Hollower is simply so packed full of endearing charm and modernized, retro-themed fun that I can’t imagine another title passing it for my personal Game of the Year in 2026. I really shouldn’t have doubted Yacht Club Games would deliver another instant, indie-darling classic, but I won’t make that mistake again.