How does a studio follow a game like Shovel Knight, a loving homage to the platformer genre’s roots on the NES, that became one of the most beloved indie hits of the last decade? By giving the same treatment to Nintendo’s handheld colossus, the Game Boy Color, of course. Mina the Hollower, Yacht Club Games’ second major release, is finally here, and even after a longer-than-expected development cycle, the end product was definitely worth the wait.
I didn’t own a gaming handheld until very late in the Game Boy Color’s life cycle, having been a home console devotee after receiving the NES as a gift in 1987. I quickly came to love the games I played, though, with incredible respect for what developers could manage with just two buttons and the tiny amount of screen real estate. Mina is a wonderful tribute to that era, with an incredible amount of depth, detail, and pure gameplay pinned upon those same limited means, but with the modern flair that they seem to do better than any other studio.
You Can Go Home Again
You are Mina, a mouse-like creature known as a Hollower, who can burrow underground to plumb the earth for its secrets and traverse areas others cannot. She has returned to her homeland of Ossex to repair the Spark Generators, a technology she herself helped create. But the land is full of monsters, and there are hints of dastardly doings that challenge Mina’s understanding of her world. The mystery unravels as you progress through Ossex, fixing the generators and putting things right… or are you?
The narrative itself isn’t especially original, but it’s well told, the dialogue is engaging, and there is a delightful mix of NPCs and other characters waiting to meet and accost you across the breadth of your adventure. Some are down on their luck, some will be in awe of you, and some are openly hostile, but you’ll want to meet them all to discover what they might know and reveal about the world.
Down to Action
Mina the Hollower is a dream to play, with rock-solid controls giving a sublime feel to everything you do in the world. This is a very good thing, because with the average playthrough in the 20-30 hour range, you’ll be at it for a while, and the majority of that time is filled with some pretty difficult stuff. I’m not talking Souls-like combat (though a few bosses do feel a bit Soulsy), but the old-school difficulty that was so much a part of the platformers of that era. There’s knockback, touch damage from enemies, pitch-dark rooms to navigate, snow and ice levels where you’re sliding all over, and many other navigational and enemy-related challenges to face.
For the attacking bit, you start with your choice of one of the game’s four main weapons, ranging from quick and close to slow and heavy. You also have a sidearm, one of 15 or so weapons or tools that can complement your main attack. There’s also a huge set of Trinkets you can find or purchase that give passive benefits like better defense, damage reduction on spikes, and so much more.
Jumping and burrowing are the main ways you explore the world, so you’ll be doing a lot of both. Burrowing allows you to leap higher than a regular jump, and plays heavily into combat through escape and evasion tactics (and even some offensive capability if you have the right Trinkets equipped). The timing of when you resurface and the length of your enhanced jumps takes a bit to master, but very soon you’ll be a pro at leaping across gaps and popping up behind an enemy for a quick hit-and-run attack.
Bones are the game’s currency for buying items and upgrading your three stats (attack, defense, and sidearm power), and they’re found all around the world or acquired from vanquishing your enemies. There is a great variety in the designs of the baddies you’ll face, from the accursed flying birds to the spear-throwing minions and crawling slime monsters. The boss encounters are all fantastic, and I never felt cheated while fighting them. Rather, I was reminded of my first playthrough of Celeste, where I knew every death was my fault, the correct pattern or sequence of burrow-and-attack just beyond my grasp, waiting for the light bulb moment to unlock the way forward.
Everything works seamlessly together, and you never feel like you’re fighting the game just to play it. Nothing is janky; you don’t have to worry about falling off a platform that you should have landed on squarely or missing an enemy that you feel like you connected with. There’s a fantastic level of polish here, which is incredibly important for a game this dense and demanding.
A Great Big World
Yes, I used the word demanding, and I mean it. There is an insane amount of stuff to see and do in Mina’s world, which requires you to be eagle-eyed with nimble fingers to experience it all. Navigation and exploration are the main features in the game; you’ll still do a lot of fighting, but I usually found that aspect much less challenging than just getting around the incredibly diverse set of levels Yacht Club has assembled here.
The world consists of 7 main areas, with several interstitial sections connecting and surrounding them. I don’t have a full count, but I’d estimate each one of those areas has around 100 different screens on average, from vast multi-screen biomes down to the tiniest rooms, which might hold just a single treasure chest. Scattered throughout each area are hollows where you can save, switch out your weapons and trinkets, refill your health, and grab your stash of bones to level up those stats. I can’t tell you how much of a relief it was to spot a hollow after a tough stretch of platforming sections and mini-bosses.
The sheer density and visual design of the levels, while brilliant, actually lead to one of the very few problems I have with the game. There’s so much happening on each screen, with moving platforms, enemies flying all about, and attacks coming from all sides, that it can be very easy to miss things. Occasionally, a critical tunnel or destructible wall is buried in a corner and similar in color to the surrounding landscape. That tunnel could be the golden path you need to progress through the level, so it can be easy to get lost as you wander these sizeable areas. The game does a good job telegraphing the order in which you should tackle the main areas, but I would have liked a bit more signposting within the levels.
That said, the game world is also Mina the Hollower‘s greatest accomplishment, especially for completionists and trophy hunters. You rarely feel like you are seeing or doing the same thing twice as you move from place to place; each level feels unique and carries distinct challenges. There are secrets galore, from simple treasure chests to hidden NPCs and entire boss fights you might never see on a single playthrough; the replay factor here is simply off the charts. Throw in the various combinations of weapons, sidearms, and trinkets you can employ, and you potentially have hundreds of hours you can sink into the game.
As if all that wasn’t enough, the game has an entire menu of modifiers offering hundreds of combinations of gameplay tweaks that make the game “easier, harder, or stranger.” This is easily the most customizable game I’ve ever played, from your combat to how much damage you give and take; Yacht Club truly wants you to have it your way.
Definitely Not Hollow
I must take a moment to call out the in-game manual; it is without a doubt the closest feeling I’ve had in the digital age to the glory of holding that paper booklet in your hands back in the 80s. Everything about it is sublime, from the font to the pictures of the items; it gives you everything you need to prepare for the game, and I highly recommend you read it cover to cover before you jump in.
The graphics and sound are spot-on as well, perfectly attuned to their inspirations, with the area intro views of the spark generator area ranking as my favorite touch. I was constantly amazed by how much the artists could convey with the characters just by moving a few pixels, and the animations are incredibly smooth, lending to the perfect feeling of gameplay. Yacht Club deserves a standing ovation for the amount of detail they’ve put into the levels, too; you can see individual books on shelves, pictures and lamps on the walls, and a thousand other little graphical touches just waiting to be discovered. It’s just a wonderfully absurd level of care and craftsmanship for the art of games, and it all just feels right.
Mina the Hollower is the whole Game Boy Color experience, perfected, modernized, and elevated. I can’t wait to see what Yacht Club has up their sleeves next… Super Nintendo, anyone?
Thank you to Yacht Club Games and our PR partners for providing review access to Mina the Hollower. You can find Seasoned Gaming’s review policy here.
