Mina the Hollower Review

Mina the Hollower is the latest release from Yacht Club Games, the creators behind the Shovel Knight series. The game, which has taken six years to develop, is set to release on the 29th of May, 2026. I have been anxiously awaiting this game for a long time; after playing the demo, I was extra excited —  I couldn’t wait to play through the full story of our mouse heroine, Mina.

As soon as you begin the game, you are treated to a great-looking cinematic with an awesome pixelated retro look, all accompanied by some kickass, adrenaline-pumping music. It's obvious that Yacht Club Games put a lot of effort into Mina the Hollower, and if this intro doesn't get you excited for this game, I'm not sure what will.

Since I grew up playing games that came with a manual to tell you a bit about the story and show you the controls to play, I was thrilled to see that there is a retro-style booklet right in the main menu. The manual shows the weapons you can equip and other gameplay mechanics you can use if you need a refresher. 

The main menu also allows you to customise the game to tweak the difficulty, like having Mina take less damage or to make your attacks stronger. These options aren’t only to make the game easier; you can make it harder if you want more of a challenge, or you can add weird modifiers like Floatier Jumps, or make Mina’s sprite huge. These settings can be changed at any point in time, so if you get stuck, you can change the options to make it easier and then set them back to default.

Mina’s story begins on Tenebrous Isle. Our mouse is an inventor who is responsible for building the Spark Generators that transformed the town of Ossex into a bustling and industrious place. However, this didn’t last forever; Mina was called back to the isle because those Generators were being mysteriously destroyed, allowing an evil, otherworldly force to consume the city and the areas surrounding it. 

As soon as you get to take control of Mina, you are met with super crisp and responsive controls that work great for Mina’s signature move, hollowing. Essentially, this allows you to burrow, diving into the dirt to avoid enemies, find hidden items, and reach the underground lab to equip trinkets and other items you have picked up. This hollowing will also let you move around the world, sneaking through small enclosures, and solve puzzles to access new areas that you aren’t able to reach normally.

Mina has four different weapons that she can select from to use, like a Nightstar, which is a whip that can strike in four directions and lets you stay a safe distance away from the enemy; Whisper and Vesper, a pair of fast-hitting daggers that require you to get up close to your foe; the Blaststrike Maul, a heavy hammer that can deal massive damage, but you have to time your hits; and the Battery Bluster, an electric firearm that, when charged, can shoot bolts that ricochet around the room to hit multiple enemies at once. 

Besides the primary weapon, Mina can also carry one secondary weapon, like an axe, umbrella, or daggers, to supplement her loadout. If you find another armament, the first one that you had will be dropped when you pick up another. So you’ll need to decide which one is the most useful to you in the area that you are exploring. If you opt to stick with the original, you can pick it up again quickly to swap back. 

As you explore and defeat enemies, you collect Bones. These are used to power up your Attack, Defence, and your Sidearms Level. To do this, each requires 200 Bones, but as they get stronger, each level requires more of these to strengthen each stat. So it is worth the time to search for hidden Bones, hands, and skulls that are worth a lot more.

Playing Mina the Hollower reminded me a lot of playing The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening and the atmosphere of something like Bloodborne or Castlevania. The game is full of puzzles, enemies to fight, and huge monsters that you need to challenge to dispatch on your quest to restore all the different Spark Generators that are under attack. 

Don’t let the cute look of our mouse protagonist fool you into thinking that Mina the Hollower is a simple game; sure, you can change a lot of modifiers, but you need to be observant when you are exploring to find all the different areas you can access that are hidden. It is incredibly satisfying to find the secret passage to get out of an area that you have been stuck in for the last half an hour!

I don’t want to spoil anything in Mina the Hollower, but I will tell you that this game does so much right; it was totally worth the six-year wait. It’s challenging and addictive, and the aesthetic and soundtrack for the game are superb. This game feels like a classic that was made for the original Nintendo but powered up, giving everything a shot of adrenaline. It’s exciting and incredibly compelling, featuring fun characters and areas to visit with great puzzles to solve. Mina the Hollower is something special, making it a must-play title that everyone needs to check out for themselves. It is so good!