Mina the Hollower review: Yacht Club digs its way to a masterpiece

Mina the Hollower looks like a Game Boy Color cartridge that has been quietly lifting weights. Behind the cheerful pixel art of a small mouse with a whip sits one of the sharpest top-down action adventures in years, a game that is hard, mysterious, frequently funny and built almost entirely around the simple act of digging into the dirt.

That it exists at all is a small story of its own. Yacht Club Games made its name with Shovel Knight in 2014, and Mina began not as a studio project but as a side experiment by one of its staff, Alec Faulkner, who built it in his spare time to sharpen his programming and design skills. Nobody intended it to ship. The studio's leads saw something in it, and in 2022 Yacht Club took it to Kickstarter, where more than 21,000 backers pledged over $1.2 million.

The scope kept growing after that. A 2023 release came and went, and Yacht Club acknowledged that the delays were down to the game getting bigger. It finally launched on May 29, 2026, on PC, PlayStation 5, Xbox, Nintendo Switch and Switch 2. The extra years show on screen.

A sweet face on a sinister island

Mina is a gifted inventor and a member of the Hollowers, a guild devoted to underground technology and energy experiments. She travels to a gloomy, isolated island because the Spark Generators she designed to power the island have gone dark, and somebody needs to find out why.

The errand turns sour fast. From the first conversations, the island teaches you that nobody can be trusted: the townsfolk are evasive, the architecture is hostile, and the creatures that wander the moors look like they crawled out of a Victorian horror anthology. It is a deliberately dark tone for a game that, at a glance, seems cute.

That contrast is one of the game's best tricks. The bright, rounded sprites and Mina's springy animations make the dread land harder, and the writing balances tension with a dry, sarcastic humor that keeps the gloom from becoming oppressive. The plot itself will not rearrange anyone's understanding of storytelling, but the characters have real personality, the dialogue is snappy, and the mystery is strong enough to pull you through to the end.

Burrow first, ask questions later

Structurally, Mina the Hollower is a classic top-down adventure in the mold of early Zelda: a whip for a main weapon, a rotating cast of secondary tools, and a world of locked doors and suspicious walls. What sets it apart is the burrow.

Press the button and Mina dives underground for a short stretch. While buried she moves quickly, slips past certain obstacles and cannot be hurt. When she surfaces she springs out with a jump higher than her normal one, which is enough to reach ledges and gaps that would otherwise be out of range.

On paper it is a small move. In practice it touches every part of the game. In combat it is a dodge, a repositioning tool and an opening for a counterattack. In exploration it is how you find hidden passages and unexpected shortcuts. In puzzles it is often the answer you did not think to try. Bosses are designed around it too, and learning when to vanish beneath a slam or burst up behind a guard is what turns a hopeless fight into a winnable one. It is fitting that the studio behind a knight who fights with a shovel would understand the potential of digging this well, and the move never stops feeling fresh across the campaign.

The rest of the combat lives up to it. Fights are quick and precise, and they demand attention. Plenty of retro-styled indies lean on nostalgia to cover for stiff controls; Mina modernizes dozens of small details while keeping its classic identity intact, and the steady trickle of new tools and abilities gives a constant sense of growing stronger.

No map, no hand-holding

The game is far more open than its look suggests. Your overall goal is clear within minutes, but it works as a compass rather than a route, and there is no map at all. Where you go, and in what order, is up to you.

That freedom pays off because the island is packed. Secrets and collectibles are hidden in nearly every corner, and dozens of concealed passages and secret areas reward anyone who pokes at a wall that looks slightly wrong. The pacing of discovery is excellent: there is almost always a new piece of equipment, a fresh shortcut or an unexplained door pulling you onward. This is the kind of game a community will still be picking apart months after release.

It is also genuinely difficult. Enemies hit hard, especially early on, when Mina's health bar is short enough that two or three blows can end her. Bosses demand observation, timing and real command of the burrowing mechanic. The game does not stop for long tutorials or explanations; like the classics it draws from, it expects you to learn by doing.

That approach risks frustration, and there will be moments when you are simply stuck. Yacht Club's answer is a generous set of modifiers that let you tune almost everything: take less damage, earn more experience, become invulnerable, stop losing resources on death, add extra checkpoints, and more besides, including a few stranger options best discovered on your own. The menu feels like a throwback to old cheat codes, and it is an excellent accessibility tool that lets the default difficulty stay sharp for the people who want it.

Pixel art with HDR

Yacht Club had already proved it was among the best pixel artists in the industry with Shovel Knight, and here it is more ambitious still. One telling detail: the game supports HDR, which sounds absurd for something this deliberately simple, until you see the glow of a Spark Generator against a midnight moor.

Simple, in this case, does not mean cheap. The look is clearly inspired by the Game Boy Color, but with a level of detail and fluidity the handheld could never have run. Environments are thick with atmosphere, mixing dark fantasy with the specific charm of old portable hardware. Mina's animation is fluid and full of character, while enemies and bosses are drawn as large, grotesque sprites that reinforce the island's unsettling identity.

The soundtrack is just as strong. It blends inspired chiptune writing with modern arrangements, so it sounds nostalgic without sounding stuck in the past, and several tracks stand out, particularly during the tensest stretches of the campaign. Sound effects and combat feedback are crisp, and the ambient audio does a lot of quiet work in making the island feel alive and wrong.

The verdict

Mina the Hollower is one of the rare games that justifies years of waiting and a mountain of expectation. Yacht Club did not simply repeat the Shovel Knight formula with a new coat of paint. It picked a different central mechanic, built an entire adventure around it and gave that adventure an enormous amount of charm.

It is not a hollow tribute to Game Boy Color classics either. It understands exactly what made those games work and builds something with its own personality on top. The combat is excellent, the exploration is deeply rewarding, and both shine brighter because of the burrow. Its presentation sits among the most polished in the whole retro handheld style.

The one caveat is patience. Mina the Hollower will not take you by the hand, and the learning curve can be steep in the opening hours. Anyone willing to meet it on its own terms will find one of the best top-down adventures in years, a game that does everything it sets out to do with real excellence.

Platforms: PCPlayStationXboxSwitch