Mina The Hollower Review – A Nostalgic Zelda-Like With Deep Customization and Dark Souls Challenges
Mina The Hollower is a Game Boy-inspired Zelda-like packed with secrets, weapons, trinkets, & brutal bosses. Yacht Club Games blends nostalgic exploration with Souls-like difficulty beautifully.
What do you get when you combine the retro look and feel of Zelda: Link’s Awakening, the difficulty and gameplay of Dark Souls, and Jake Kaufman’s legendary soundtrack work? Well, you get one of the best games of 2026!
- Game: Mina The Hollower
- Studio: Yacht Club Games
- Publisher: Yacht Club Games
- Platforms: Steam, Xbox Series X + S, Switch 2, PlayStation 5
- Completion Time: 24+ Hours
- Price: $20
- Genre: Action-Adventure, Top-Down, 2D Platformer, Soulslike
✅ Steam Deck Verified
Hello everyone, and welcome to the Good Game Lobby Review of Mina The Hollower, a new IP by Yacht Club Games, best known for the Shovel Knight series. They raised over $1.2 million on Kickstarter, funded by over 20,000 backers, and sold over 500,000 copies in the first few weeks alone. Let’s jump into why it is one of my top games of the year and how they use nostalgic principles to give a retro classic a new home.
Sparkbound Secrets
Who is Mina and what’s going on in this world?
Mina is an inventor who created Spark technology, which powers the world she lives in. She is also a hollower, which is a guild of characters dedicated to the study of Earth. She is sent a letter by Thorne, who informs her that something terrible has befallen the world–someone is destroying the world's spark generators. This introduction to the world and characters is brief because, before you know it, the ship is attacked by a monstrous octopus, stranding Mina and her deceased crew on the shore. The spark generators are out, you suspect foul play, and you are on your way to meet your friend Lionel Baron to get to the bottom of what is happening and how to get the generators operational.
The characters you meet, the world you explore, and what you learn along the way will make for a truly unforgettable experience.
Mina and Lionel Addressing the Public
Burrow & Battle
Lets get into the gameplay.
When it comes to the gameplay, it may feel familiar to Link’s Awakening. Still, the sheer amount of trinkets, weapons, and upgrades makes it less linear and a truly personal experience. That is why I highly recommend looking out for secret areas and exploring every corner of the space you are in. When you’ve played many games in this space, some secrets almost feel second nature, as I was easily finding them. Yacht Club clearly knew that would happen, so they went out of their way to add in places you can easily miss without focusing on your surroundings. It reminds me a bit of TUNIC, with areas that are hidden by the viewing angle.
Trinkets
The fact that you can burrow is something you should keep in mind at all times. You use this to burrow under items to pick them up, avoid enemy attacks, and find hidden areas. It’s the definitive mechanic that makes Mina stand out above the others.
At the start, you are given a choice between a pair of daggers called Whisper and Vesper, a mace on a whip called Nightstar (my favorite), and a hammer called Blaststrike Maul. In total, the game has 5 weapons, but these are the starters. Make sure to pick what’s best for you because it will be some time before you can acquire more.
You have these trinkets, which you will find hidden in chests or after solving puzzles. They will increase the damage of your weapons, abilities like attacking as you come up from underground, or even increase your health. These trinkets are plentiful, but you need to upgrade slots to carry more than one. At times, you can combine certain trinkets that play well off of each other. Taking damage increases attack power and can also send out projectiles. This is where your own personal style can shine.
You also have a secondary attack, like flying daggers or axes. These will also have buffs from the aforementioned trinkets. How you combine and adjust depending on the enemies or area you explore will play into the difficulty of progressing smoothly.
Mina the Hollower is an open-world game. Meaning you can go pretty much anywhere in the world, but you don’t have a map to guide you. This is something I’ve seen others complain about, but oddly enough, I never even thought about it until way late in the game when I was lost. I didn’t attempt to use a map, but it didn’t really exist when I did. You do have an option late game to upgrade the map, and even then, I passed on it.
Defeating enemies and finding chests are jam-packed with bones. These bones are used to upgrade your attack and defense. I recommend you do this as soon as you can. These bones are your main currency, so shop owners in the towns and secretly hidden around the Tenebrous Isles will trade with you.
The world is set up like a Souls-like, not just in the difficult bosses and losing your bones; instead of a bonfire, you have an underground base of operations for exchanging weapons, upgrading your stats, and selecting new trinkets. The trinkets can only be changed out in your hideout. The customization and upgrades, even for your hideout, grow as you meet up with older guild members, who were some of my favorite NPCs.
As I mentioned, you will lose all your currency if you don’t collect it after a death. You are given a chance with crystals that will stay where you last died. The thing is, some of these bosses were an absolute nightmare. The movement is very much like that of Link’s Awakening, so you may feel you are about to hit downward, but you hit leftward, and then you may spam and miss multiple hits. Patience is always key in a soulslike, and I recommend keeping your cool. Also, don’t be stubborn. Check your trinkets, adjust them based on the boss’s movements. This is the fastest way to take down a boss and makes the process much more streamlined for me. Except for the ending of the game that nearly destroyed me, haha
For example, I had two deaths to my name for HOURS of the game until I met one boss that kicked my ass over and over. By the time I beat them, it was 60 deaths. (I am not good at video games haha)
It was this boss:
I hate this boss with all my heart and soul
Pixel Wizardry
Like Game Boy, but Hi-def.
What a visual treat! Yacht Club Games are the masters of this domain. Countless game releases–in this retro style–make it look easy to create a top-down Zelda-like game, but the attention to detail is unmatched. Game Informer has an interview with the Yacht Club team and Alec’s journey from intern to game director of Mina. He shares how the visuals are based on the Game Boy framework. For example, the art assets for Mina all conform to the Game Boy Color’s palette restrictions. What does that mean? Well, they have limited the sprites to only 4 colors per 8x8 tile.
You also have to keep in mind it’s sprite art without 3D elements. This is how they kept that classic 8-bit look and feel. They have studied the best tricks to create 3D looks with 2D designs.
This shows in areas where you climb towers and have to rotate around long paths, navigating enemies and blocked areas. Each biome has its own unique world-building that looks and feels unique. The Bayou was one of my favorites for the platforming tricks and new NPCs you meet along the way. It also has some of my favorite music in the game.
Here are a few GIFs I pulled from the original Kickstarter campaign.
Character portraits are also highlighted in the game in pixel art, but seeing the original illustrated designs and how they used minimal pixel design to recreate them is some wizardry.
Cartridge Symphony
Game Boy look and SOUND.
Mina’s soundtrack is a nostalgic romp around the Game Boy handheld. It felt like it was ripped right from the cartridges, and it makes sense, because it uses the Game Boy sound chip combined with the Konami Sound Cartridge. You can read more about it on Jake Kaufman’s Bandcamp page for the game soundtrack.
Jake has worked on previous titles for Yacht Club Games, from the Shovel Knight series: King of Cards, Dig, Pocket Dungeon, and more. If you are familiar with any of the Shovel Knight games, you will enjoy this one. Those sound profiles are crunchy, the bass is loud, and some of the highs almost screech, giving the complete package of vintage songs.
It looks like a high-definition-style Game Boy game; the music matches it perfectly. All the percussion on the Game Boy cartridges has a synth touch that doesn’t exactly sound like a drum that I appreciate. Hearing the complexity of the songs arranged in a way they may not have been able to work on the original hardware speaks to how well Jake utilizes every aspect of the soundtrack. It’s no wonder Yuzo Koshiro was asked to make two tracks for the soundtrack. You know the guy behind soundtracks like the recent release Shinobi: Art of Vengeance, the Streets of Rage series, Shenmue, and the first soundtrack for a blue hedgehog named Sonic.
One more thing I want to highlight is that Jake dedicated 9 songs to close family members he lost during Mina’s development. Imagine this was at the beginning of COVID, and it’s been 6+ years. He poured himself into this game.
“I feel unending gratitude and love for my teammates at Yacht Club Games, who stood by me through my most challenging times, believing in me even when I doubted myself. Working with them gives me purpose, and they are a constant source of inspiration.” - Jake
They all sound amazing, and I highly recommend picking up the soundtrack on Bandcamp. Check out my personal favorite, Hollower’s Guild.
🎼 Jake Kaufman — Mina the Hollower Original Soundtrack | Bandcamp
A Must-Play Game
Mina the Hollower is stuffed with ways to play and worldbuilding. My review won’t go into all the details, but I hope I've given you enough to try it out. Mina is a must-play game for me. Combining retro style of gameplay, music, and graphics with quality-of-life improvements makes for a truly unforgettable experience.
When I hear a game inspired by Zelda, my ears perk up, but when they mention Link’s Awakening specifically, it’s a guarantee I will play it. For any devs or studios listening, this is your duty to reach out to me right away with your Zelda-likes.
It was why I was so drawn to the development of Colorgrave’s Veritus and was blown away by Pipistrello and the Cursed Yo-Yo. Though those games came close, Mina feels like the natural successor. It’s so close to the original game, with a fresh take on the genre, with more in-depth lore and character world-building. Dark Souls-like difficulty in the gameplay added another level I wasn’t sure I would enjoy, but considering Silksong was my game of the year last year, I seem to enjoy being punished.
I wanted to have a well-rounded review with a few critiques, but the difficulty in fights was more of a skill issue. Not having a map was a bummer, but an issue, to be honest. I loved this game.
Mina the Hollower has burrowed into my heart, and with New Game+ and a host of other secrets I keep seeing on social media, it feels like one I will visit time and again. If the history of Yacht Club Games’ many, many spinoffs from Shovel Knight is any indication, I can only imagine we will be treated to more Mina games. They have cemented themselves as the ultimate indie game studio for revamped retro-styled games.
It took me roughly 24 hours to complete the main game and roll credits. I still have a few trinkets to discover, and more bones to collect. I mentioned that I have seen a few secrets on socials, and it feels like I missed so much. If you don’t mind spoilers, then search for some on YouTube; they are great.
I can only hope for a sequel.
I played on the Nintendo Switch 2, which looked great, and it’s also out now on Xbox, PlayStation, Switch 1 and 2, Steam, macOS, and Linux!
Thanks to the folks at Guillotine, especially Jake Kulkowski, who was deep in employee onboarding on release day and managed to hook me up with a key!
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Sey rates Mina the Hollower as a favorite!
“Mina the Hollower is stuffed to the brim with ways to play and worldbuilding. My review won’t go into all the details, but I hope I have at least given you enough to try it out. Mina is a must-play game for me. Combining the retro style of gameplay, music, and graphics with all the quality-of-life improvements from games of today makes for a truly unforgettable experience.”