From indie legends Yacht Club Games, here we have the action-adventure game Mina the Hollower. It launched on 29th May 2026 on PC and all consoles, with instant rave reviews and much other excellence.
It’s a fantastic game and it’s available on all consoles and PC. It’s styled like a Game Boy Colour type romp, clearly influenced by Nintendo’s Legend of Zelda series, but delivers a modernised gameplay experience with much joy.
GBA Style Adventuring in Mina the Hollower
Yeah, so this is like an overhauled version of Nintendo’s Link’s Awakening (1993) on the Game Boy. Specifically, the GBA version Link’s Awakening DX (1998) that brought colour to the previously black and white world.
Yacht Club Games is already a legend for its take on ’90s NES games. The studio is in Los Angeles and made its name with the legendary Shovel Knight (2014) and various spin-offs.
In fact, Mina the Hollower is its first non-Shovel Knight universe based outing.
This time out, players take control of the mouse Mina. She’s a genius inventor and a Hollower who travels to the island of Tenebrous via boat to investigate why one of her inventions (Spark Generators) are broken. Hollowers are members of a fabled guild dedicated to studying and science.
Once she arrives on Tenebrous, Mina finds all hell has broken loose. It’s up to her to head out and restore equilibrium to the land etc. A fine set up for some fine action-adventuring action. Behold!
Yacht Club Games is famous for its phenomenal attention to detail. Its commitment to the retro aesthetic of the ’90s era of gaming goes as far as using original technology to create soundtracks.
You can see all that love and attention paying off in Mina the Hollower. Every element has been fine-tuned to deliver an authentic retro gaming styled experience… right down to the notorious ’90s era level of often absurd difficulty.
The core action involves Zelda style dungeon exploring, with some badass bosses to take on. Some of these are mind-numbingly difficult (unfortunately).
This would be very off-putting for us, but the studio has been a dear and done the right thing.
Unlike other more obnoxious indie devs (*ahem* Team Cherry with Silksong), Yacht Club Games offers extensive accessibility options. Lovingly so. You can make the game as easy, or hard, as you please. As in, gamers get to choose how they’d like to play (please pay attention, Team Cherry) and it’s not about tedious “git gud” elitism.
That helps a great deal, then, but whilst the studio is famed for its attention to detail, its first action-adventure game isn’t perfect. There’s a great deal of backtracking a lot of the time.
Meaning, the area design isn’t as tight as it could be. Thinking of the first dungeon in Nintendo’s A Link to the Past (1992) and it’s a masterpiece of game design. It flows perfectly and then dumps players out the front after you’ve completed it. Zero backtracking.
Mina the Hollower isn’t quite as polished, but this is a small indie team we’re on about and it doesn’t have the same budget as Nintendo to mess around with.
What it can focus on is the budget-friendly retro details. Alongside the pixel art that’s so livingly created, the soundtrack by Jake Kaufman and Yuzo Koshiro has all the bleeps and bloops you could need.
The good news is, after six years of hard work, the game sold 300,000 copies in three days. Yacht Club Games has previously said the game was make-or-break for the studio should it sell “only” 100,00 copies.
That highlights how precarious the video game market is right now.
And this is one of the more successful indie devs, 12 years into its success story with the Shovel Knight franchise. Game design is expensive and the market on edge, but the £16 ($20) asking price has helped shift a lot of copies. 300,000 meaning Yacht Club Games should be safe and sound for now.
Which is great, as it keeps doing fantastic work like this. Mina the Hollower isn’t quite a 5/5 from us, but it’s damn close and offers around 20+ hours of excellent entertainment for all types of gamers. Not to be sniffed at. 🐭
