by Brandon Perkins
It was right around the point when I ascended my first Spark Generator that I realized, “This game is kind of awesome.”
Mina the Hollower is a game I’ve been anticipating ever since it was first premiered over four years ago. Even when Yacht Club Games went dark for a couple of years, I didn’t give up hope. These were the guys behind Shovel Knight, after all, and that was basically the perfect game–a generation-defining title, I’d even say.
So when Mina finally resurfaced last year, I was ready to call dibs on the review. When they again went dark, I was still ready to play whatever they made. When they announced a spring release date, I was first in line to request specifics (and a review code).
Now, I finally have it in my possession. I’ve played it. More than once.
We have a masterpiece here.
What Is It?
Mina the Hollower is the newest title (and presumably franchise) from pioneering indie developers Yacht Club Games. First becoming famous for their now-classic game Shovel Knight, they are considered to be among the Mt. Rushmore of indie developers. That game was basically immaculate, a retro revival title of the purest sort that was both goofy and incredibly fun (and even surprising). Really, if I could identify Yacht Club’s one major feature, it’s that they always find ways to add little treats to their games and pour all their love into them, even though they didn’t have to.
And boy, does that describe Mina to a tee.
The little mouse adventurer, Mina, isn’t just a fighter; she’s a scientist, an inventor, an engineer. 10 years ago, she and her colleagues on the Island of Tenebrous constructed a series of generators that harnessed the chaotic element known as Spark. In turn, this allowed them to construct increasingly elaborate machines and power the island with electricity. For a while, all was well. Then, some years later, Mina receives a letter from her patron, Baron Lionel (ruler of Ossex, Tenebrou’s capital city), with dire news: the Spark Generators are failing, and the island and its inhabitants are warping and deforming because of it.
Then your ship gets attacked by a sea monster, and that’s just the start of your problems. As soon as Mina manages to get to Ossex proper (after traversing a town in flames infested with demons and goblins), she discovers that things are a lot more complicated than she was led to believe: Lionel’s former right-hand man, Thorne, has apparently turned turncoat and is now actively trying to destroy the Spark Generators and return Tenebrous Isle to darkness.
In other words: Shenanigans are afoot. Time to grab that Morningstar Whip, set your eyes on those towers, and get to adventuring!
Why Should I Care?
Yacht Club Games specializes in retro-like games that show how sophisticated those old graphics and game design can be, and it’s the graphics that will immediately strike the player. Where Shovel Knight used the bright sprites of the 16-bit era, Mina uses the graphical interface of handhelds like the Game Boy Color. One would think this is a downgrade at first, but in just a few minutes, one can see just how ‘limiting’ this actually was: in short, the game and its spooky world are gorgeous. Every area that you encounter, every NPC, every enemy, every epic boss fight is instantly recognizable and unmistakable. No one area looks the same, and no enemy looks like another. Some of them look genuinely unsettling.
Of course, graphics are only one part of the equation. The other part is gameplay, and Mina‘s gameplay is superb. It plays like a combination of old-school Zelda, the aggressive combat of Bloodborne, and the Gothic Horror aesthetic of Castlevania, and yet it is all of those things and none of them. From the start, Mina is given three weapons (out of five) to choose from: the whip-like Nightstar, the enormous Blackstrike Maul warhammer, and a pair of daggers called Whisper and Vesper. Each weapon is not only unique in how they are used, but essentially acts as a character class: the Nightstar has reach but takes time to retract, the Blackstrike Maul has a powerful attack but is slow and requires close-quarters combat, and Whisper/Vesper are incredibly fast but relatively weak compared to the other two. All require different strategies and have their own upgrades. A further two weapons are also available but require a little work to get, and your arsenal is further increased by the number of sidearms that Mina can find, from lamps that summon friendly ghosts to daggers that act like boomerangs. There’s also the trinkets: power-ups and equipables that offer everything from health upgrades to additional projectiles to basic attacks.
Of course, with all of these weapons, you would expect there to be plenty of combat, and there is. Mina is forced to duel with several kinds of monsters, from spear-throwing goblins to skeletal birds and spectral wizards. All of them have their own way of attacking, and all of them require their own unique strategy to defeat, much like a Soulslike. Also like a Soulslike (specifically Bloodborne) this is a game that encourages aggression for the sake of health recovery: Mina comes equipped with a set number of health items that she can use to recover health, and just like with Bloodborne every attack increases the amount of health that can be recovered. The similarities don’t end there: every area has a Hollower’s Den that acts as both a checkpoint and a bonfire that replenishes health and power-ups, and every time Mina is defeated, she loses all of her bones (which she must then retrieve, and if she dies again, you forfeit the bones).
But Mina isn’t just an expert in weaponry; she’s also a master of traversal. As her name and title suggest, the mouse lady is quite the burrower, and it’s this burrowing ability that defines a great deal of the experience. With a single command, Mina will jump up and dig down into the surface below her (if it’s diggable), only to move through the earth and pop out on the other side, Bugs Bunny-style. This burrowing ability has several uses: it allows her to burrow under surface-level barriers, to enter small mouse-hole-sized tunnels to find new areas and secrets, and it will even get her basic jump an additional boost in order to cross large pits. On occasion, it will even give her the ability to pick up objects to attack enemies or solve puzzles. Most importantly, it gives Mina access to items like bones (this universe’s currency) buried in the ground. She’ll, in turn, use those bones to buy items and upgrades, as well as acts of charity (all of which pay off later).
What Makes It Worth My Time And Money?
You know what? I have no complaints.
No, genuinely. For the first time in a long time, I legitimately have nothing to criticize here. Yacht Club has spent those years of development ironing out every possible crease, and it shows. Every jump feels good, every attack feels powerful, every oddball NPC you meet is memorable. Is the game hard? Oh yeah, it’s hard. Shovel Knight hard, in fact. You will fall down a lot of pits, miss a bunch of platforms, die over and over again to enormous bosses that attack you with no mercy, and lose hundreds of bones in the process. But none of it feels unfair, not one second of it, and the moment you finally manage to beat that boss that’s been dog-walking you for the last hour is quite possibly the sweetest feeling you will feel.
And the world that you’ll traverse. There really is no order you have to go by to do any of these; it’s completely open-ended and can be done in any way you choose, with only your sense of adventure to guide you. From Ossex itself, filled with townspeople and shops, to the perpetual autumn of Septemburg and the giant corpse of a sea serpent at Bone Beach, there’s battle and secrets to be found around every corner. I could probably fill hundreds of paragraphs about what I’ve managed to find… but this review is long enough as it is.
One more thing: Just like with Shovel Knight, this game comes with an enormous list of modifiers that change the game in fun and wacky ways. Want to be able to just walk over platforms? You can do that. Want to make the floor lava? You can do that too. Some make the game easier, others make it harder. Some of them are so wacky that I’m not going to spoil them here.
Yacht Club has exceeded all my expectations. You can add Mina the Hollower to this generation and this year’s list of modern classics.
But that still leaves me with one question… Exactly whose bones have I been digging up this whole time?
