Mina the Hollower

Isn't it a bit odd how some games can feel nostalgic without actually being old? Mina the Hollower looks like something you might have played on an overclocked Game Boy Color back in 1999, yet at the same time it offers a modern feel, design, and quality-of-life features that definitely belong more in the 2020s. For the impatient among you: I can say straight away that this is a serious contender for the title of this year's most charming and polished indie adventure!

The setup, for those of you who've missed it, is a bit different. You play as the ingenious mouse Mina, a so-called "hollower", armed with a whip and the ability to burrow underground to make her way through the world. The digging itself might sound like a gimmick, but the fact is it's the backbone of the entire game. You'll be using it constantly to avoid attacks, get past obstacles, find hidden passages, or simply move faster through the expansive game world. It quickly becomes as second nature as platforming in Super Mario or dodging in Dark Souls. Above all, it also gives Mina the Hollower its own unique hook in this crowded genre of platforming action-adventures with RPG elements. It's just not enough anymore to have some cool sprites, nice chiptunes, and a nod to Zelda to make people's jaws drop. Today, something more is required, and fortunately, Mina the Hollower possesses precisely the qualities that make it stand out from the crowd!

This is a darker game than its somewhat rudimentary Game Boy aesthetic might suggest. Sure, it features the developers' distinctive charm and humour from Shovel Knight, but the story also takes some unexpected turns and manages to convey a great deal with very little. Above all, I love the dense atmosphere, which can best be described as the developers taking every possible cliché from classic Gothic horror films, repackaging them into a game, and against all odds managing to create something entirely unique from it. In gaming terms, it's as if the base is laid with the dreamlike and surreal gameplay of The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening, the filling is Castlevania's look and feel, and the topping is the unforgiving and uncompromising difficulty of Dark Souls. The world is vast and vibrant, constantly encouraging you to try new things, and as you quickly gain access to a whole arsenal of skills, the game world becomes genuinely exciting to explore. You want to lose yourself in it, memorise its shortcuts, and constantly search for the next secret.

It certainly helps that the controls are flawless, as they respond instantly to every button press, and the combat has a fluidity and precision that makes even the simplest enemies feel satisfying to dispatch. In addition to the whip, there are several alternatives such as knives (more focused on close combat) and the hammer (slower but more powerful), and the weapons can also be upgraded in interesting ways to turn Mina into a swirling tornado of destruction. The game contains some old-school DNA in that it expects you to observe the world, learn enemy patterns, and experiment with all the tools at your disposal. Thankfully, there isn't much hand-holding here, but it never becomes confusing either, as the razor-sharp game design constantly pushes you in the right direction. In combat, you quickly find an almost hypnotic rhythm where you constantly switch between attacks and evasive manoeuvres, and the bosses are also brilliant throughout, not just visually, but in terms of gameplay mechanics too. Yacht Club Games has crafted boss fights that are challenging without becoming frustrating, and even though I died many times, I could never blame anyone but myself.

I wrote earlier that Mina the Hollower feels like an overclocked Game Boy Color game, and that's really no exaggeration. The pixel art is utterly consistent and distinctive, it's almost provocative how much detail and personality the developers have managed to cram into this limited visual style. The animations are top-notch throughout, the environments are teeming with little quirks, and whilst the enemy design may be derivative, it's still cosy and charming. The game conveys a dark and fateful atmosphere and makes it look effortless, something that's easier said than done. The graphics blend seamlessly with the fantastic soundtrack, composed by veteran Jake Kaufman (who, fittingly, began his professional career with a Game Boy Color game), and speaking of game music veterans, the living legend, Yuzo Koshiro, also contributes a few guest tracks. Together, they have created a soundscape that is at once melancholic, menacing, and strangely cosy and inviting.

What really makes Mina the Hollower work isn't something you can pinpoint though, it's more a sense that this is a true labour of love, an adventure meticulously handcrafted by developers who truly understand and love this kind of game. Every little animation, every secret, and every sound effect feels both carefully placed, and at the same time, as natural as if they'd always been there.

Yacht Club Games could have made things easier for themselves. They could have churned out yet another Shovel Knight game, and instead, they chose to do something new, something different, and perhaps a little darker. Mina the Hollower therefore never feels like a cheap attempt to ride the simple wave of nostalgia. It isn't just another game in an ocean full of new-old indie titles with tacked-on retro graphics. This feels like a game that truly understands why so many of us fell in love with that era in the first place. It wasn't just thanks to impressive pixel art or infectious beep-boop music, but also for the sense of adventure and exploration. The feeling that there was a fantastic WORLD crammed onto a tiny cassette, a world full of limitations, certainly, but one that also felt like something greater than just a collection of pixels on a screen. And that feeling... Mina the Hollower captures that feeling perfectly.

Mina runs through the night as if the moon itself had lent her its heart. This isn't just another game in the crowd, it's a game that smells of dew on a summer morning, like rain against old stone. It captures the feel of a childhood cartoon series, a time when the world still hid treasures and mystery behind every shadow.