As gaming continues to climb the never-ending ladder to better graphics, there are still a few defenders of the old guard who continue to shatter expectations. Video Games did start somewhere, and that somewhere just happened to be with a few pixels and running to the right.
In June 2014, Yacht Club Games launched Shovel Knight, a title that instantly transformed Indie Games and what they could accomplish for the better, bringing a title that wove an epic journey together with pixel graphics and better gameplay. 12 years later, Yacht Club Games has returned with another retro-inspired title, Mina the Hollower. Mina the Hollower is proof that retro style is strong, can shatter expectations and produce a masterpiece. An experience that is too good to miss.
The journey starts with a homecoming. As Mina the Hollower, you’re returning to the Tenebrous Isle after being away for years. It turns out Mina has pushed the society of Tenebrous into an industrial revolution of sorts by building Spark Generators that protect civilization from evil. In your travels, these Generators have gone on the fritz, and as the local Spark Generator expert, you must fix all six of them.
“Mina the Hollower is proof that retro style is strong, can shatter expectations and produce a masterpiece.”
You’re commissioned by Baron Lionel, the head honcho of Ossex (the centre city of Tenebrous Isle), to repair the generators. As evil is closing in on Ossex rapidly, you’re left as the last hope to drive evil back from the capital. First things first, though, your adventure starts with a choice of three weapons and a tutorial. You have a choice right off the bat between a Nightstar whip (an easy choice for Castlevania fans), double daggers, and a thundering maul that punches the earth with a powerful slam. This choice wasn’t difficult for me (I went with the whip), and it’s far from permanent. You can change weapons later, and Mina the Hollower is an efficient operator no matter what the weapon is.
Controlling Mina is a delight, and Mina the Hollower’s biomes are a playground to traipse over. Mina can jump effortlessly through the air and slam under the surface of the ground to move faster. This technique is called Hollowing, and it becomes readily apparent that you will use this a lot. After a small period, Mina ejects herself with extra force out of the ground, and this allows you to jump further after holding the jump button.
Each animation is deliberate, buttery smooth and oozes with pixelated character down to the fluttering of Mina’s red cape in midair (and her blinking while standing idle). These small design quirks make Yacht Club Games’ decision to put quality first and let Mina the Hollower bake a little longer before release an excellent one. Mina just feels great to play.
It’s remarkable how closely Mina the Hollower and The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening share in aesthetic. Since my first leap as Mina, it was hard not to immediately see Link flipping through the air with the Roc’s Feather, and the animation here also drips with style. Unlike Link, however, Mina uses Hollowing to burrow underground and find all sorts of secrets and Bones under the surface. Bones are the Soul-like currency in Mina the Hollower, and it becomes the life source of everything you do. Unlike Link, Mina can level up and become stronger through her travels.
Mina the Hollower’s centre city is bustling with action, information, and characters from all walks of life. If you’re unlucky, an old man will disguise themselves and try to pick your pockets. Anything seems allowed in Ossex now with the impending evil circling the city, and city folk appear anxious. Each citizen is characterized by what they look like and has an attitude to match. A Possum is seen gardening (with a cute hat too), a Raccoon hangs out by the trash, and a larger-than-life shopkeeper will literally reach its arm through the wall to get you to buy his wares and drag you to checkout. Ossex is a real, lived-in city, down to the children kicking a can on the street, and it feels like one.
There are checkpoints scattered throughout the landscape, and Mina can dive underground to the Underlab through them. This acts like Mina’s equip screen, and it lets you outfit her with weapons and trinkets for the road ahead. Trinkets are equipment boons in Mina The Hollower, like Pictos in Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, and give you notable improvements like resistance to spike damage.
“Controlling Mina is a delight, and Mina the Hollower’s biomes are a playground to traipse over.”
The Trinket needs to be equipped to stay in effect; however, you can upgrade how many you can hold at once. Proper Trinket builds can unleash nasty effects, turning Mina into a weapon of mass destruction. The Underlab is also where you respawn when you die, and where you replenish your potions (and it also respawns enemies when you rest here, too).
Ossex is loaded with information and shops to prepare you for your quest. By reading a newspaper from one of the many stands that litter the Ossex streets, you can read about where your next likely location should be. It should also be noted that these are basic guidelines; you can go literally wherever you want, and it feels great not to be tied back by planned upgrades. It feels equally great to have direction, too.
From the very beginning of Mina the Hollower, you can set off in any direction and tackle the main quest of restoring the Spark Generators in any order you like, just like Mega Man X’s Maverick stage select screen. While Yacht Club Games do give you a nudge, it’s up to the player to choose their adventure.
Instead of a stage select screen, Mina the Hollower is set with completely interconnected levels, like Lordran in Dark Souls. Each level bleeds into the next, and due to the stellar set design, I always knew where I was even without a map handy. Mina the Hollower features some of the best graphics in pixel gaming, and it’s easy to notice.
Each biome is slathered with lush visuals, easy-to-read platforms and well-designed enemies that are trying to end you, traps that are trying to end you, and pitfalls that will send you back to an Underlab. When you’re sent there, you lose a Spark, and if you die without a Spark, you lose all of your Bones and have to recoup your losses. Mina the Hollower (just like Shovel Knight) is unforgiving, and it will test the player’s wits and mettle at every turn.
What Yacht Club Games brought to the party is the legendary pixel music from composer Jake Kaufman. In one scene, I was running against the wind to an upbeat adventurous track, and in the next, a nightmare enemy with a top hat and tentacles chased me through many screens with relentless bloodlust to a heart-racing tempo that grabs your face and yells focus.
“Mina the Hollower is at its absolute best when you are locked into a particularly hard segment, and the Kaufman score slams a rigorous tempo to match.”
Mina the Hollower will test the player again until you reach another Underlab. Just like the feeling of finding a bonfire or a site of grace (and the hope that follows) in a FromSoftware title, finding an Underlab feels like the boost you need to keep going, and it’s already impossible to put the controller down.
In one of Mina the Hollower’s major dungeons, I was faced with headless statues that required intervention. I had to find each one of the heads and return it to the body. The catch is that it appears the missing heads are cursed, because when you pick them up, other statues scream in horror and send a floating blood-seeking medusa head at you. I swear, everything in Mina the Hollower is designed to kill you, and it’s infectious when you triumph over the smart CPU.
Mina the Hollower is at its absolute best when you are locked into a particularly hard segment, and the Kaufman score slams a rigorous tempo to match. While carrying a statue’s head and running from the cursed floating Medusa head, I had to frantically throw the statue’s head to safety over four pitfalls, whip the Nightstar at an arrow to change its direction, burrow under an obstacle and launch myself across a chasm to get to the statue’s head while avoiding large zombies with detachable pants, only if you hit them enough times. This game rules!
After solving the puzzles a dungeon tosses at you, you must survive a boss fight at the end of the line with particularly nasty evils so you can repair the Spark Generator. These fights are spectacles and require you to use everything in your arsenal to come out victorious.
In these boss fights, this one was against the Duchess, it becomes even more readily apparent that Mina the Hollower is just a joy to play. This chaotic rush and feeling of success over the insurmountable are exactly what make Mina the Hollower one of the best releases of the year. Mina the Hollower is an absolute triumph. Yacht Club Games’ insistence on honing gameplay and refining what makes Mina the Hollower unique shows that the developers made a game they want to play. Tenebrous Isle is absolutely flooded with detailed visuals, secrets, side quests, and so much else that I feel like I barely scratched the surface in this review.
Yacht Club Games upped the ante in development by giving players enough information to find their way on their own, making Mina the Hollower a true adventure that needs nothing else but a player and a pair of sticks, and maybe a weekend. With its excellent design, attention to detail and direction toward being a great game, Mina the Hollower is a can’t-miss experience and proof that Yacht Club Games is not just “the people who made Shovel Knight.”
