For all the ways video games have advanced over the past few decades, there’s still plenty to like about retro games. While that sentiment can sometimes lead to an abundance of nostalgia, some old-school ideas do still hold up in the modern day. Developer Yacht Club Games’ Shovel Knight is one of the best examples of how you can make a retro-influenced game that still feels fresh, and the studio’s followup seems poised to prove that point once again.
Mina the Hollower was announced in 2022, but it’s no surprise if you’ve forgotten that by now. While Yacht Club showed off an already-impressive gameplay trailer along with the game’s reveal, it’s been quiet about the project ever since. That changed during this year’s Summer Game Fest, where the studio announced that Mina the Hollower will be launching on Halloween of this year, and that it has a brand-new demo.
Only available on Steam, the demo runs through roughly the first half-hour of Mina the Hollower, and it’s hard to imagine how it could make a better first impression. Styled like a lost Game Boy Color game, Mina the Hollower shows off Yacht Club’s mastery of lo-fi pixel art. Everything from the hulking Kraken that attacks Mina’s ship in the game’s opening moments to tiny details like the spectacles she puts on while studying a map is gorgeously rendered, without a single wasted pixel.
As with Shovel Knight, Mina the Hollower’s gameplay is also modeled after the same era as its graphics, but with modern polish that makes it something more than just an imitation. In the demo we played, Mina arrives at the city of Ossex, where the spark generators she built to power the city are failing and the city has been invaded by monsters. After a good deal of Mina platforming and fighting her way to the mayor’s house, the demo concluded with a fantastic boss fight.
Mina the Hollower plays a bit like a 2D Legend of Zelda game but with plenty of its own twists. At the start, we choose from three weapons — a fast dagger, a slow but powerful hammer, and a mid-ranged flail that feels an awful lot like Castlevania’s whip, just one of many nods to that particular series. Combat is simple to start, with just one button to attack and another to fling secondary weapons you find along the way (one of which is another Castlevania homage in the form of an axe you throw in an arc through the air).
On top of that, you have Mina’s signature move, digging through the ground. She can use that ability to reach hidden passages and tunnel under obstacles, but it started to don on me how fun the game’s combat could become when I discovered its potential as a dodge. Digging under enemies lets you pop up behind them to get around shields, but perfectly timed, it can also avoid attacks. That becomes extremely useful in a miniboss fight late in the demo, and essential against the real boss at the end.
Popping up out of the ground also launches Mina into the air, even further than her standard jump. Even in the early part of the game shown in the demo, that’s already used to great effect to reach hidden areas and complete tricky platforming puzzles. Conveying vertical space in a top-down 2D game is difficult, but it works remarkably well in Mina the Hollower. The way that vertical space makes combat against flying enemies more interesting and allows some clever platforming is already impressive in the opening 30 minutes, and both look like they get way more intense in the trailer released alongside the game’s release date reveal. Mina the Hollower may have fallen off your radar in the years since its announcement, but its demo is a great reminder of why it’s one of the most exciting games to keep an eye out for later this year.
