Mina the Hollower is a modern fusion of Game Boy Color games like Link's Awakening, platform action adventures like Castlevania titles, and modern "Soulslike" ideas all gelled together with Yacht Club's signature retro-inspired, modern-infused design principles. It's difficult and quite expansive, often to its detriment. It is YCG's Zelda as Shovel Knight is their Mario.

You can read my full review for my thoughts on the game.

Warning

Spoilers below!

Stats

Started Playing: 5/19/26
Beat: N/A
Total Playtime: 17~ hours

Legacy

It was the highest rated game of 2026 at the time of its release—more than Silk Song, James Bond, Forza, etc. It sold 500K copies in its first first or so. I am the only genuine negative full review I have seen.
This will definitely be YCG second pillar IP. While Shovel Knight 3D is next, there will surely be a Mina 2. And I am not sure how that makes me feel.

Overall

I am very lost on where to go after the ribbon cutting ceremony. I think Lionel said to shop around town and then meet him for dinner to the south? I keep dying when pushing out. That classic “souls” / “vania” of dying far from a checkpoint and losing everything. It was not a very good second session. My frustration mounted.
- Yet, in a way, it reminds me of playing Link’s Awakening on my grandmother’s Gameboy. I had no clue where to go. I’d wander screen to screen lost.
- A groove has been found. Grind bones. Loop back. Just take each screen as a lesson. Push. Pull. Explore. Die. Learn by repetition.
Yep. A groove has been found. Great time. Totally a Zelda.
Not on a Game Boy, but pretends. Extremely dense environments and pixel art. Compacted. Crammed. No space.
I am 15~ hours in. Two worlds still to go and the space one seems like a Metroid-esque backtrack quest. Zelda does that too sometimes. It is far too long for my tastes. Or the game isn’t jiving with me. Like, I love TLOUPII. That’s a long game. Ragnarök is too long. Same thing-ish.
I would very much like to quit and think I just might
- Jacob Gellar called it irritating and I have to agree. Density and irritating are the words for this one. The more I played, the more I disliked it. What a shame

Graphics/Performance

4K120 all at under 1GB. Kinda amazing
Adheres to GBC color palette /rules, same way they did with SK and NES.
Always pursued GB games on the big screen. This is that through and through. Not mere impersonation, but an understanding of the design within constraint of handheld.
There is a density of art and assets that 2D provides/allows. 3D generally is never this dense.

Gameplay

Weapons
- Whip
- Hammer
  - I do not like it charging and forcing perspective. I feel like I am never facing the right way to hit an enemy.
  - Being forced to use it makes me learn it’s rules, not bend to my style.
  - I now only want the hammer.
  - It’s King Dedede’s rocket hammer.
- Daggers
  - Fast, but pushes you back slightly.
- Shield
- Gun?
You can buy them or find them. Therefore, I have only found the daggers, but now the hammer is my beloved and I probably won’t change.
- I pawned the whip and daggers. Hammer only.
I chose the hammer first. I know I’ll get the rest later, but this was slightly annoying. Gonna to have to learn the flow.
You can burrow underground. This builds speed and jump distance. Standing still is a one tile jump. Burrowing is two tiles.
Very smart little forcing scenarios to teach you the rules, limitations, and possibilities. Like putting a rail in front of a two tile jump to teach that the burrow can propel you that far.
Bones / Bone Up (level up) is similar to souls, etc. Collect them, if you die, you have a chance to recover them. Die again and they are gone for good. The amount required to level up increases each time,
- I love the spark system where you get multiple chances to recover the bones. Not as harsh as the “souls” games. I wonder if you had all the sparks and had to insert them in the towers. Then it’d get harder and harder as you go, but your skill goes up.
No detailed map. Full in-game navigation, in-world hints (newspaper). Immersive, subtle but accessible.
- I have a hard time finding the “dungeons.” A map would help. But is this getting lost helping me memorize the world better and faster?
Airborne enemies just are not fun to fight.
- I retract this comment. While difficult to tell depth, its still a problem of patterns and rhythm.
- Semi retract the retraction. It is not fun to get ganged up. The ghost train boss was not fun to fight in the air.
Trinkets are modifiers that give cool mods. You can’t hotswap them. Have to do that in the little restoration rooms.
Little checkpoint/restoration rooms remind me of the Pocket in Below. Bonestone/gem are there. Weapons and trinkets. It’s a safe haven in the world. But saving isn’t tied to it. Each screen saves when you enter. Each screen is kinda like that dunkey shooter. One screen challenges, puzzles, etc.
It does save every time you enter a new screen, which really helps the pick up and play nature
This game is dense. And it feels like YCG is okay if you miss things, nods, environments, etc. The question is, am I/are you?
- This density makes it feel like something is everywhere. Am I missing something important? Where should I go? I kinda feel a strange analysis paralysis/overthinking. I get tired after 1~ to 90min of play. Cramming so much in my head. Dense. Dense. Dense.
- Mina is a tungsten cube. I am a can of Coca-Cola.
  - https://youtu.be/rqIzjhh2Yt0?si=wLFzoEBAKa2mXZNQ&t=3m06s
- I read that if you stand in the dark too long the clown jump scares you. Missed that. Friend mentioned another boss in the snow level. Where? Felt like I explored the whole area. I don’t know how many times I can write dense in these notes. I feel like I am missing so much.
Each world has some new hiccup or movement tech to adapt too. The Bayou let’s you swim for a sec. The leaf place has piles of leaves that can’t break except by fire. The ice place makes you slow shuffle? As the game goes on, I do not like this.
- Turns platforming and navigation itself into a puzzle.
I hit the point where I turned on easy modifiers to beat the beach boss. If I have to run around this entire map to do Astral, I quit.
These Spark Generator climbs are like a terrible pseudo-3D hidden minigame in a bad Sonic game, but Mina forces you to complete them be trial and error with no loss of life and currency. Just bang your head against the walls until you make it to the top.
Final level fetch quest is a big no from me dawg in this map.

Music/Sound Design

Jake Kaufman returns. I can get behind this. Always.
It’s that classic sound that I’ve known all my life.
Nothing is standing out to me. It’s good. Great even. But I am not being drawn in or identifying with any particular track.

World

Tenebrous Island
- Queensbury Crypt
  - Tombs and gloom. Goopy zombies, crows, etc. surprisingly short?
- Outer Space? Total Super Mario Land 2 kind of move
- Septemberland?
- Bayou
- A beach/mine
Has 6 locations/levels?
Getting to the locations/levels that house the spark generators is far more dense. They are like the “dungeons” and the Isle/overworld is where the density and richness are found.
I am getting lost often. Finding the levels is on the verge of annoying. Density problem
- No longer on the verge—it is annoying. A proverbial wall is always in the way and the density compacts it.
Ice place
- Why on earth would they make it all ice tiles and make the movement crawl to a halt. Kills the joy of movement in the game
  - I found a trinket that let’s me walk normal on ice. It was not in the ice place.
I feel like I am stumbling through the world. I just end up in levels and places. Sure, I learn screens and general order. But I never feel like I know where I am. It took me forever to find the Bayou. I even stumbled across a sewer there. Now I have no clue where that sewer is. I think no map is a bad call.

Story

An island with generators that Mina designed is under siege/attack. She must return, fix the generators, and stop bad dudes.
Clearly the Lion is the real bad guy.
So Thorne wrote Mina a letter explaining the damage the generators cause. I’m not really a fan if this leads to no boss battle. Curious if it will be a player choice.