REVIEW: ‘Mina The Hollower’ Is Dark, Deep, And Another Yacht Club Success

Read our Mina The Hollower exclusive interview with Yacht Club Games here.

For the past eight years, Yacht Club Games has been the developer of all things Shovel Knight. Now, in 2026, they are releasing their newest in a completely different genre than anything they’ve done before with Mina the Hollower. The champions of indie 2D platforming have branched out to 2D action-adventure with lots of twists and inspirations from niche historic games.

Gone is the cheerful silliness, replaced by a darker, more Halloween-y aesthetic rich with deep anecdotes from our current day and age. Most importantly, Mina proves that Yacht Club Games has done it yet again, with another immensely fun universe ripe for exploration. 

Mina the Hollower begins as a journey of one friend helping another. Mina, of the Hollower’s Guild, a group of engineers known to build society-changing machines. Her friend, the Baron Lionel, has asked for her help as someone is attacking the sources of Tenebrous Isle’s energy. Yet as Mina and her ship approach the isle, they are attacked by a giant sea monster that kills nearly everyone aboard.

Yacht Club Games’ newest universe is built on tantalizing uneasiness.

Something is not right with Tenebrous Isle. Not just the sea monster, but the entire land is in havoc outside of the main city. And Mina’s former colleague, Thorne, is the one behind the towers, bringing  “peace and prosperity” to Lionel’s people. So, Mina goes on a journey throughout the isle to fix all the light towers, stop her former ally, and bring peace back to the isle. 

Mina‘s story starts off dark right from the jump, and gives you little time to wallow in Mina’s immediate suffering. Everything seems off, no matter where you go. That uneasiness is really the throughline of the entire game. Starting off on that foot, making you not trust anything going on, is a great intro to Yacht Club’s newest universe. 

Through lighting, stylish pixel art, and great character design, you are quickly taught not to trust anything or anyone. The commoners of Tenebrous Isle are off-putting in their verbiage. Mina’s main foe comes off as one who’d never betray the Hollowers. Even Lionel, Mina’s main confidant on the island, is regularly acting like he’s hiding something, or seeming like he’s giving much less information than he actually knows. 

Mina the Hollower shines a light on our current day and age.

What’s even more different than any Shovel Knight game is that there is no happy ending here. Every area ends in some sort of misery. Whatever’s haunting a location may, upon further discovery, not truly be villainous. Just horrible circumstances, and something ethereal, have led to them becoming monstrous, terrorizing figures.

Even from the start, nobody seems to like Hollowers. If the Hollowers have brought net good to these people, then you’d think they’d be heroes of the land. Yet this is the first time that Mina the Hollower really shines a light on our current day and age. Specifically, how modernization tends to be shoved onto us regardless of its net positive impact on society, and may end up harming more people in the areas where it occurs. 

Corruption, loss of work, drainage of resources, and more are regular findings Mina stumbles across while trying to fix the towers. But again, the Hollowers, as her mission suggests, is a net good. So those complaining about the effects of the energy towers must be mistaken. Or alternative issues are afoot that are the main cause of the people’s woes. 

Everything is from Mina’s perspective. So we learn things as she does. We trust who Mina trusts, even those who may seem oddly suspicious. Yet there are narrative tools that help give a glimpse at the true feelings of this island. One great piece of storytelling is through letters Mina receives after fixing each tower. They’re from Lionel or Thorne. Each tries to sway Mina to their side, whether by telling her she’s doing well or trying to convince her to stop before it’s too late.

Another is through the newspapers, with a new one unlocking after certain major events. Reading the newspaper tends to paint Mina as a good person, until you read past the headlines. They like to paint some of Mina’s minor actions in a bad light. Like, some side quest completions may have a darker intonation that, if a lay reader were to see just a glimpse of it, could lead them to perceive Mina as the aggressor. Like helping a person who loved a spirit be buried with her. You close the tomb on him. But if someone just walks by and sees Mina closing a tomb on a living person—that doesn’t look too great. 

Through these media, Yacht Club teaches you to scrutinize everything—even when Mina seems to be a little too trusting. But again, she has that built-in history with the island, and especially with Lionel. Yet there is another positive to the way the story is told: the non-linearity of Mina‘s level design.

Mina the Hollower proudly wears its Zelda II influence.

There are six main areas Mina must explore throughout her journeys. While there is a pretty clear “correct” order to complete them, Mina the Hollower’s greatness comes from being able to work on any area in any order. It’s really about challenging yourself and accepting that maybe you need to be more powerful before pushing through. Sometimes exploration, or a level, or even a new trinket can change an area’s difficulty from overly difficult to a nice challenge—even too trivial at times if you overlevel something. 

Additionally, Mina‘s progression is pretty non-linear and uses niche mechanics to its advantage. Five weapons are unlockable and upgradeable twice from discoveries and purchases at the forge. About forty trinkets can be unlocked and mixed and matched. Up to five can be equipped at a time, modifying just about everything. Many sidearms, each with interesting uses. Then there’s leveling, which uses a blast-from-the-past leveling system akin to the one in Zelda II: The Adventures of Link. 

While that Zelda game had many flaws, its leveling system was wholly unique. Yacht Club Games has adapted and improved it immensely to make Mina the Hollower feel modern and more welcoming. The leveling system could be seen as the precursor to modern action RPG and action-adventure leveling systems. Killing enemies rewards experience (in Mina the Hollower’s case, bones). Earning a set amount will immediately allow you to choose one of three stats to improve from health, attack, and magic. Dying would reset your experience to zero.

In Mina the Hollower, leveling improves attack, defense, and sidearm damage. Then, there’s a fourth option. Convert all bones for that level into bonestone shards. These are similar to the bone currency used to buy everything in the game and required for leveling, but the key difference is that they persist through death. This is a really nice change that has zero downside. It’s just a way to let you keep more currency in cases where you’ve grinded to a level and are nervous about getting back.

There is one downside to this, though. If you’ve leveled up attack, defense, and sidearm to five, for example, the bonestone shard option will stay at the bone value needed for level four if you haven’t selected that option yet. In other words, you’re basically forced to choose the bonestone shard conversion option to raise the overall level expectation to the currency value needed for level five upgrades. But considering how bonestone shards are a persistent currency, that negative isn’t all that bad. 

Additional mechanics help make Mina the Hollower a much friendlier action-adventure game than one would expect. Namely, the Sparks. Sparks are like a counter that protects you from losing your bones when you die. It’s a limited currency that increases throughout the playthrough. Every death costs you one spark. The best part of this isn’t how it prevents currency loss; it’s that the sparks are recoverable. It encourages you to at least travel back to where you die with the knowledge of how to get there, and fight for one (or more) back from whoever or wherever led to your death. 

Yet, Mina’s maneuverability is entirely different from that of other 2D action-adventure games. Instead of dodge rolls, Mina can dig underground. It’s a simple burrow that is massively versatile. Burrowing is how you get through holes in the ground, dodge some attacks, and traverse larger gaps in the floor. Plus, it’s a nice speed boost.

Burrowing is an absolute blast of a mechanic.

Burrowing is an absolute blast and adds a nice level of challenge to the combat. You basically need to throw all you know about dodge rolls away to master burrowing. Jumping is just as key as burrowing to avoid attacks, and knowing when to use either requires testing fights to learn patterns. 

Combat and exploration are also highly customizable. In Mina the Hollower, each area and its associated dungeons are completed just by skill alone. Anything is surmountable once you learn more and more of Mina’s capabilities through trial and error, or by taking what you’ve learned from past areas and applying it to new ones. Weapons, trinkets, and sidearms add an extra layer to all this.

There are five weapons you can equip: a whip, a mace that turns into a gun, a shield that reflects damage, knives, and a big hammer. Each weapon is upgradeable, which adds unique abilities to each. Experimenting with each could prove useful in certain challenging fights, or, when combined with other trinkets and sidearms, will help uncover even more secrets. One weapon that you may like at the beginning of Mina the Hollower can just as quickly be replaced by a different weapon later on with the right upgrades.

Sidearms are an additional tool at your disposal with their own resources and vary by area. These can range from a bicycle that’s fast, to an orb that summons angry ghosts, to a fishing rod used for the great fishing side quest. With the explorability and numerous secrets scattered around Tenebrous Isles, many times one sidearm from one area may be key to finding the last secret in another. You just need to be sure not to die, as they are lost on death at first. 

Trinkets are even more varied. They change up just about every mechanic in Mina the Hollower. They can be basic stat boosts. They can change burrowing to last forever or cause an explosion upon exiting. They can also change how you heal with the plasma vials. By far one of the best ones, though, was one that gives you an extra life before losing a spark. That, paired with the trinket that lets you heal faster and without accumulating plasma, makes more challenging areas much more manageable at times. 

The sheer amount of game in Mina the Hollower can be daunting, but it’s so worth it.

Now, reading how trinkets work may clue you in that Mina the Hollower‘s healing system is quite similar to Bloodborne. Plasma vials are Mina’s limited healing resource. Only, you really get the most out of them by damaging foes. Taking any damage will reduce the stored plasma. All this creates a good balance between being aggressive and using everything at your disposal to build up plasma when in danger. 

The sheer amount of game in Mina the Hollower can be daunting. There’s lots to discover, and it requires paying close attention to identify every nook and cranny that could lead to another side quest, trinket, upgrade, or fun moment. It is all much more digestible with upgrading Mina’s base. As part of expanding the Hollower’s Guild in Ossex, Mina is able to upgrade the base with many features. These features carry over to every base entry point. which serves as the “bonfire”. 

The base can be improved to include a map that shows how many collectibles are left in an area, as well as a way to save sidearms. It’s quite good to focus on upgrading the base with items you think you’re struggling to maintain to save you lots of headaches. 

Mina the Hollower feels very feature-complete.

But what makes exploring and discovering every possible new thing so much fun is the wonderfully dark pixel art and chiptune music. What quickly became an absolute treat when finding a new dungeon was a new splash screen, like an intro to a chapter, showing Mina and what she’s about to face. Safe to say, each splash screen quickly filled up the print screen folder during the playthrough.

However, there are some issues in Mina the Hollower. Nothing is missable, yet backtracking for one missed item can be annoying. With a simple fast-travel system that only takes you to one of five train stations, it’d be nice to have a way to make this irrelevant after beating the game, particularly for those who want to 100% Mina. Additionally, the unlockable map for the base doesn’t reveal too much, either. So you really need to remember just about every route or shortcut to backtrack as well. 

Even then, Mina the Hollower feels very feature-complete. Particularly with its new game plus and modifiers systems. The former is like any New Game Plus, where you restart the game with what you’ve unlocked to face more challenging foes. The modifier system is impressive to say the least, with hundreds of options to really make the game whatever you want it to be after beating the final boss.

Mina the Hollower is simply a blast to play.

You can customize how (or if) you level, what level you start off at, all the way to the basic colors of the game. The starting modifiers also make the game quite approachable, even if some do disable achievements. Yet having such an impactful way to make Mina the Hollower as challenging or easy as you want is shocking to see in a game at launch. Or even at all. 

Yacht Club Games’ take on action-adventure with their expertise in pixel art and storytelling, with odd premises, is stellarly done. Clever boss and level designs, rife with secrets to discover, will keep you digging through every nook and cranny.

Great leveling, trinket, and modifier systems make the launch much grander than anyone may expect, with a massive amount of replayability. Most importantly, Mina the Hollower is simply a blast to play and is another success by Yacht Club Games that will make anyone who plays it ask for more of this darker world they’ve created. 

Mina the Hollower is available May 29th on Xbox Series X|S, PlayStation 5, Nintendo Switch, Nintendo Switch 2, and PC.