Initially designed in creator Alec Faulkner’s free time, Mina the Hollower started all the way back during the development cycle of Yacht Club Games’ Shovel Knight. It wasn’t meant to become as sprawling or polished, per se, but after Yacht Club’s management got a look at their employee’s passion project, resources were committed. Mina the Hollower‘s development was announced years ago, and there were those of us who have been desperately anticipating the game’s release. It was impossible not to fall in love with the style and charm exhibited by the brief teaser released back in 2022.
High above the seaside below, a brave mouse settles on the edge of a massive tower to look out across the vast landscape of Tenebrous Island. She’s just whipped, sliced, and hammered her way through an endless horde of enemies, crossed vast chasms, and climbed this tower to repair the Spark Generator that sits at its peak; she’s exhausted and settles in beneath a blanket of stars for a brief respite. This is Mina, a Hollower, and it is her journey to bring light back to the island. And that journey is tough.
When I say that Mina the Hollower is tough, I don’t only mean hard-as-nails Malenia, Blade of Miquella-level boss-fight tough (though the bossfights are, indeed, tough); I mean things as simple as traversal are skill-testingly hard. There’s a point, in one of the game’s earliest dungeons, where Mina needs to make it across a simple pond of deep water by way of a series of periodically-sinking lily pads. Each lily pad sinks at its own interval, and is just far enough apart to necessitate Mina burrowing on each to get the little extra bit of jump-length that comes from jumping out of the ground. No more than three jumps, but this particular jump puzzle took me twelve tries.
This level of toughness, installed mid-dungeon on the player’s way from one screen to the next, means that there are rarely screens of the game that feel forgetable; there are always interesting barricades, enemy placements, and pitfalls. Add to this that Mina the Hollower is chock-full of minute hidden passages or small walls beneath which Mina can burrow, and the world begins to feel jam-packed with handcrafted detail.
Even as the player finds themselves endlessly tested – to climb a series of ropes, say, while being fired upon by laser turrets – they feel distinctly sunk into a living, complex world. There might be a hidden treasure on any of these screens, no matter how frantically you struggle your way through them; even as you dodge and weave (or curse those moving lily pads), your eyes have to be open to the possibility of something unseen.
Outside of the dungeon conflicts, small challenges make themselves known. In the above-mentioned swamp, you might spy a ladder in a shop that seems distinctly useful to access various hard-to-reach but tantalizing items throughout the area; elsewhere, there’s a small frog in a pot that needs to get back to his jug-blowing band. In a village, two potential lovers remain painfully apart unless you go about uniting them – not that the game tells you any of this; Mina the Hollower wants you to find your own magic.
This is all distinctly high praise for a game that styles itself after Game Boy Color games like Zelda: Oracle of Seasons/Ages, games that were full of their own secrets but adhered to a tamer, less-packed aesthetic. For all its graphic simplicity, even the seemingly disposable NPC character designs are filled with lively charm. Mina the Hollower‘s world is uniquely its own, no matter its forebears, and some of that aesthetic commitment seeps into gameplay design and puzzles. Climbing each of the game’s dungeon-ending towers showcases that dungeon’s unique flora and fauna, making the experience feel fresh each time.
From its opening cutscene, Mina the Hollower feels like a new classic, something beyond the Zelda bones upon which it’s built. This is a game that charms with every pixel, tests players and rewards them equally. There are no faulty portions of the game (however challenging they may be), and the game as a whole sets a new standard for retro-inspired games to come. It feels genuinely fresh in both its aesthetics and its commitment to gameplay, and above all, it respects the player’s engagement.
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