PC Gamer - UK (2022-04)

Mina The Hollower

PREVIEW

Yacht Club Games’ crowdfunded release

openly evokes a very certain type of

gaming experience. Mina the Hollower

wears its action adventure influences on

its sleeve, with the team happily pointing

to Castlevania, 2D Zelda titles, and the

Game Boy Color’s crisp 8-bit visuals

as sources of inspiration.

Playing the early demo, Mina the

Hollower absolutely evokes a sense

of those titles. Tonally, it leans into

the eerie and gothic, and as has become

expected of Yacht Club, the visuals are

sharp, boil with energy and personality,

and move magnificently. And, certainly,

the stylistic legacy of Castlevania can be

felt throughout the demo. The faux-

isometric presentation and general

systems, meanwhile, take a clear lead

from Zelda and its ilk.

What all this means is traversing

various landscapes, dungeons, and eerie

gothic structures searching for keys,

fighting monsters and sentient globules,

and unpicking a story of a prosperous

island that hides dark secrets – a

narrative that hardly gets started in the

available demo.

DIGGING DEEPER

So far, so familiar. There is, though, a

slightly more complex game lurking

beneath this work of apparent simplicity. It

also sports a few flourishes that, if not

truly unique, bring a fairly distinct flow to

the experience. Armed with a whip, a

sprightly jump and occasional secondary

melee weapons that brought ranged

attacks in the demo, Mina is a capable

fighting machine. Yet is it her ability to

briefly burrow underground and move

quickly beneath threats or round

obstacles that has let the game’s creators

shape environmental puzzles and combat

dynamics that will hopefully keep Yacht

Club’s adventure captivating throughout.

You’ll also find some streamlined

RPG-like systems around levelling up

weapons, filling and using health potions,

reclaiming gains from previous lives, and

allotting performance boosters to slots to

prioritise certain abilities.

Mina absolutely faces a tough journey.

This is an unforgiving game, and

throughout the demo what could be

mistaken for simple battles on first sight

were complicated by erratic attack

patterns, an abundance of floor holes

to be knocked down, and a

sometimes startling speed.

It’s worth noting that for now the

control inputs feel a little too loose

and billowy to compliment the need for

accuracy in combat and when negotiating

obstacles. This is a game where you’ll have

to be at peace with dying a lot; but in the

demo a lack of input responsiveness

made some run-ins with the grim reaper a

little bit frustrating. And yet the difficulty is

part of the appeal here, because

overcoming and progressing was always

rewarding as I played. Meanwhile, the

boss battle at the taster’s end impressed

a lot, bringing a bit of arcade gaming’s

frenetic flavour to proceedings.

Elsewhere, a lack of guidance in the

very early game made working through

the various upgrade and item systems

somewhat confusing, so we can only hope

that is addressed in the final version.

Thus far Mina the Hollower has proven

delightful if a shade familiar, while

punishing and charming in equal measure.

It might not reinvent its genre, but there’s

plenty of promise in this mouse’s tale.

Will Freeman

W

hen contemporary developers revisit the

design conventions of gaming’s past,

they face an inevitable challenge.

Authentically capturing the feel and look

of older titles can be a tricky thing to balance with

innovation. That’s something the team that brought

us Shovel Knight seems to be working through with

their coming creation, Mina the Hollower.

The Shovel Knight team’s latest

project brings a gothic challenge

MINA THE

HOLLOWER

THIS IS A GAME WHERE YOU’LL

HAVE TO BE AT PEACE WITH

DYING A LOT

RELEASE

TBC

DEVELOPER

Yacht Club Games

PUBLISHER

In-house

LINK

yachtclubgames.com

NEED TO KNOW

PLAYED

IT

Falling to your death down those

holes in the floor becomes a very

familiar sensation.