Mina The Hollower Review
Is Mina The Hollower better than Shovel Knight? Yacht Club Games seem to think so because In their words “Mina is the biggest and best game we’ve ever made…we squeezed every good idea we had into it”
I wasn’t overly anticipating Mina The Hollower since it’s been over a decade since Shovel Knight released and in that time there has been an over abundance of retro inspired indie games and it’s hard to imagine how different Mina The Hollower could be. After finishing, I agree with Yacht Club. The combination of platforming, combat and its unique burrowing mechanic create an action-adventure that doesn't play like anything else.The learning curve is steep because the game doesn’t hold your hand, which might push away some and turning on the spark generators, which is a recurring mechanic in each biome lack precision found in the rest of the game,
After reaching the end of the adventure, it might not seem that different, but Mina The Hollower is in a different league than most. Only a handful of studios making retro inspired games are operating on the same level as Yacht Club. Mina The Hollower is one of the most dense retro inspired action-adventures with an original movement mechanic that’s overflowing with content, personality that’s immensely rewarding because it doesn’t hold your hand and it pushes you to your limits while remaining fair throughout. Just like their debut Shovel Knight, Mina The Hollower is destined to be revered.
95
MINA THE HOLLOWER REVIEW
Mina the Hollower is an action-adventure love letter to early 90’s genre classics and while the influence has been pulled from many different IP, it’s unmistakably Yacht Club’s version of The Legend of Zelda tinged with Bloodborne elements like the Victorian setting and some iconic fromsoftware gameplay mechanics. After a giant sea monster attacks your ship and forces the ship to crash into the shores of the island of Tenebrous, Mina finds out all of the Spark Generators around the isle have been turned off allowing for curse to thrive and she needs to turn them back on. That’s it!
There is no map, you aren’t told where to go, how to do anything, including the games main ability to burrow, or what anything does including trinkets, sidearms and bones. Mina The Hollower is vague, mysterious and unwelcoming. With so much thrown at you, the learning curve can feel very steep initially, but after about an hour, you realize that this is part of the magic as Yacht Club trusts the intelligence of the player and lets them figure out the world, which is more rewarding.
It might seem foreign, but games like Zelda 1, Zelda 2 and other early adventure titles of the same era were constructed using the same foundations: Steep learning curve and minimal direction. Even more recent games like Dark Souls don’t give the players a map, and is one of the main reasons people love fromsoftware titles as well as those early adventure games. It forces the player to get lost, investigate, explore what intrigues you and through this process you will naturally become immersed in the world.
It’s not inaccessible, it’s just asking you to find what you need because there are a myriad of ways that it’s trying to point you in the right direction. The instruction booklet, which is a forgotten art, can be found in the settings and subtly labels each area of the world in different colors. The orbs in the town square fountains are color coded to their corresponding biome and positioned in the direction you should head to find each one. There are also signs around town to look at, newspapers that you can read and get valuable info or talk to the seemingly near infinite amount of NPC’s that not only make the world feel alive, but often provide extremely useful information. Mina encourages you to dig around, which is fitting as she is a burrower. Even more than that, it rewards you for it and the satisfaction you get from finding the right area or solving a riddle is immense.
In a lot of ways, Mina The Hollower is a choose your own action-adventure as you pick from a handful of weapons at the beginning, decide which order you do the biomes, although there is an unwritten order, and decide how many side quests you want to interact with. Just sticking to the golden path should take you about 20-25 hours, which moves at light-speed due to the impressive amount of variety in the world and a story that intrigues you to find the next piece of the puzzle, which culminates in an ending worth seeing through as it’s satisfying without being saccharine.
Whether it’s Bone Beach, the Queen’s Crypt's or the fall inspired biome of Septemburg, getting to each dungeon is almost a dungeon in itself. You will have to pass through a gauntlet of precision based platforming as well as timing and patience rewarded combat. Each part of the world is extremely unique, not only in visuals, which is the genre standard, but they also feature new enemies and gameplay challenges, which is where Mina rises above the crowd. Combat is demanding, but it’s fair, movement is precise, but can be punishing and the world is open, but dense.
Awaiting you at the end of each dungeon is a giant boss fight that always leaves the same first impression of dread and despair. Each one provides a unique challenge and always leaves you on the edge of your seat. They are always a feast for the eyes and a formidable foe that will push you to your limits, but with enough determination and patience, each boss will fall one by one and leave you feeling triumphant like a gladiator complete with roses raining down on you.
Yacht Club have crammed an impressive amount of content, ideas and passion into Mina the Hollower, which makes the world overflow with personality and leaves you never knowing what’s around the next corner.
CRITICISMS
One of the core gameplay elements of Mina The Hollower that you will do often is turning on each spark generator after conquering each of the games biomes. Mina The Hollower attempts to make these 8 bit images feel three dimensional as you need to ascend to the top of these towers, which felt reminiscent to how Sonic The Hedgehog 2 emulated a three dimensional half pipe.
While these spark generator segments add in a huge splash of variety, in terms of both visuals and gameplay, they’re imprecise to control, which is a stark contrast to the rest of the experience. Typically, these generators will need to be conquered through trial and error as you need to memorize the correct ascent. The devs are aware of this because this is the only place where the game wasn’t punishing, as you don’t take any damage during these segments. You either succeed or you’re forced to start over, which happens numerous time. On the bright side, they didn’t feel repetitive as each generator incorporated biome specific gameplay.
As something that was crafted to recreate the experience of the GameBoy Color, it should come as no surprise that it doesn’t look nearly as good on the big screen as it does on handhelds like Steam Deck or Nintendo Switch 2. When playing on the big screen, the pixels are too big and you aren’t able to notice all the details and intricacies of the world.
There were some inconsistencies in enemies being damaged by the environment, which was hard to predict at times. Enemies would be burned by lava, but could walk through spikes. Enemies could pass through fire, but ice blocks would do damage. Enemies taking damage from all types of environmental and other enemies would have greatly improved the level of strategy as it forces the player to think of all the options available to them.
Finally, Mina The Hollower offers little direction, which will push some people away as the game can feel directionless at times, but if you take the experience as it was designed, which was emulate the classics that allowed you to get lost and find your way, you’ll discover that Yacht Club is offering lots of invisible directions.
FINAL SCORE AND VERDICT
At the start of Mina The Hollower, there was concern that it was just another retro inspired adventure and immediately these assumptions felt correct, as it wasn't instantly captivating. However, after getting over the steep learning curve, Mina the Hollower became impossible to put down as the 20 hours passed in the blink of an eye. When I wasn’t playing, I couldn’t wait to get back and follow the next trail of breadcrumbs.
There are handful of studios who have the ability to combine this level of innovation, polish and modernity a retro inspired adventure and have displayed it over a number of titles. Sabotage Studios, The Game Kitchen, and Tribute Games are just a few of the developers that come to the top of mind and now Yacht Club.
Studios that create games that feel fresh, but also somehow feel like they were created decades ago. Yacht Club Games have done it again with Mina The Hollower as the combination of platforming, combat, densely packed world and unique burrowing mechanic create an action-adventure that doesn't play like anything else. The learning curve was steep, there were some recurring sections that felt imprecise and frustrating, and to truly experience the magic, you need to play on a handheld, but if you have any affinity to the early classics like Castlevania or Zelda, or retro inspired adventures, then Mina is a must.
