Publisher: Yacht Club Games
Developer: Yacht Club Games
Platforms: Playstation 5 (Reviewed), Xbox Series X/S, Nintendo Switch, Nintendo Switch 2, Microsoft Windows, Linux, MacOS
Price: $19.99
Well...I asked for something indie and not a roguelike to swoop in at some point this year to potentially dethrone Saros...I just didn't expect it to happen so quickly!
Developer Yacht Club Games is best known for Shovel Knight and its approximately fifty bajillion DLCs. Having no particular desire to seek out retro aesthetics, I never found myself clambering towards Shovel Knight like seemingly everyone else did back in the day. The years upon years of positive reviews speak for themselves, but I was never even curious.
Then, word got out that they were about to release their first new IP in over a decade: Mina the Hollower. Like with Shovel Knight, the positive reviews kept coming in...but this time I found myself curious. I'm a lot more open-minded these days than I was back in 2014, so I couldn't help but wonder if taking a chance on this game might be worth it...
It was.
Obviously anything can happen before the year is up, and my feelings can flip-flop as they often do in particularly good years. But if Mina the Hollower isn't in the top 2 at least, then that will indicate that 2026 was one-of-a-kind. So, let's dig into it!
She's also a brilliant scientific mind, having designed and created a series of unique generators for an island nation. Those generators made life immeasurably better for the island's denizens for a decade, but they're now beginning to break down.
At the start of the game, Mina is on a ship bound for the island to handle repairs. But between the kraken that attacks the ship and the rebel militia attempting to seize control of the local government, things are clearly more dire there than expected. So, Mina sets out on a journey across the island to repair all six generators and restore the peace.
If that sounds simple, you're mostly right. There's not a lot of moment-to-moment plot to chew on, but it all weaves together nicely into one well-done narrative. I'd ask you to note that I said "well-done" instead of other descriptors like "unpredictable." Keep that in mind.
I also enjoyed Mina herself as a character bigtime. She's a lot like Hornet from Hollow Knight: Silksong, actually. Intelligent, capable, respectful, well-mannered and eloquent (she canonically attended a cotillion school), the kind of lady you'd want to bring home to mom if you were...you know...a mouse.
But she's also got a lot of personality that comes through in her design.
In the more detailed character art you see in first-time level transitions, you get to view that capable side. A confident expression, a weapon at the ready, and a bite taken out of her ear all wordlessly convey that she's definitely the rodent for the job.
But in the pixel art, you get to see things like a somewhat-reserved dance when you don't move for a while. That and wearing lil' grandma spectacles when she reads letters. Cute as hell things like that.
So even if the game's script weren't there to convey aspects of Mina's personality, her visual design in all its forms would be there to pick up the slack.
I realize this is an odd thing to harp on for as long as I have, but when I notice efficient character development like this, I can't help but talk about it.
The other big star of the show here is the island itself. The map flows together organically with the kind of level-to-level shortcut frequency you might expect from a Souls title. What's more, these shortcuts and connecting areas all expertly transition the overall aesthetic from one level to the next. In this way, the world feels natural despite the major areas being night and day in their looks and feels.
The first area you're likely to go to, for instance, is kind of a standard fantasy RPG grassland that leads into a graveyard and then a haunted castle. The next one is a bayou. Then there's a fully autumn-themed Sleepy Hollow-coded area after that. And that's just half of the major areas you'll visit.
Equally varied between the areas are the general level concepts. One place might have shifting wind that affects your movement. Another might have a consistent lightning storm that forces you to check your proximity to lightning rods as you go about your business. Another might have obstacles as simple as little spike traps on the ground.
Two of those examples are from the same major area, and I'm just scratching the surface. Despite how ultimately simple the gameplay loop is in Mina the Hollower, you're doing anything but the same thing everywhere you go!
For combat, Mina the Hollower is NOT a soulslike despite its difficulty and some of the parallels to Bloodborne in its occasional old gothic aesthetic.
At the start of the game, you choose between one of three weapons. There are five weapons total, and each of them plays differently to the others.
My personal choice, the Nightstar (a morningstar/whip combo) has arguably the most straightforward moveset of the bunch. But that simplicity is made up for with better range and the ability to attack somewhat outside of the normal 4-directional structure when fully upgraded.
The dagger set offers the best speed, and eventually it can be given a bit of ranged function.
The hammer is incredibly slow if you want to get the most out of it, but it features dodge functionality (which Mina doesn't otherwise have) while you build up power, which allows you to avoid getting interrupted.
Those are the three weapons you can choose from at the beginning, and I won't mention what the other two are. But I will say that one of them can be upgraded to allow Mina to jump great distances a-la the hat from Super Mario Odyssey.
So while the act of combat mainly boils down to "point the weapon in one of 4 directions and attack until the thing is dead," there's more to it than that might suggest.
The big thing that makes Mina the Hollower unique in this regard is how you avoid damage. Some games feature a dodge. Some feature blocking/parrying. Some feature both. In this one, you have the titular hollowing...that is to say "digging."
By pressing and holding the jump button, Mina will leap into the air, then instantly dive underground when she lands. The effect only lasts for around 2 seconds at most, but in that time, you can cover much greater distances than you would by walking or jumping around. So it's kind of like a dodge.
But remember...this isn't a soulslike. There aren't any iframes while queuing up this action. And while you handily avoid all but a select handful of attacks while underground, you can still get hit during the jump in or out of this state. There's also a slight delay in pulling it off in the first place since you have to wait for your jump to be done. So if you view the act of hollowing like a soulslike dodge roll instead of meeting the mechanic on its own terms, you're going to be sorry.
There are also "sidearms" that regularly mix things up. Think of these more like tools than weapons, despite the name. These can be anything from thrown knives to portals to a dash that helps you regenerate some health to a bicycle with a lance on the front (and a lil' bell).
Like with most things, Mina the Hollower doesn't really tell you much about sidearms, so allow me to do that instead. There are little lit candles littering literally every screen in this game, and breaking them yields rewards. Sometimes these rewards are yellow roses that help with healing. Sometimes they're fuel for the sidearms. And in very specific, unchanging places, they're the sidearms themselves. You can only get your sidearms from these candles. I'm not sure how exactly you get a bike this way...but then, Mina is quite small...so it stands to reason that maybe you could fit a mouse-sized bike in there somewhere?
Either way, that's the way you typically acquire sidearms.
Until you acquire an item that proves you're investing in this specific side of gameplay, you can only hold one sidearm at a time. And here's another thing the game won't tell you: until you get a different item than the one I just mentioned, you aren't storing these suckers anywhere.
What this means is that until you get said storage-enablement, you lose your currently-equipped sidearm on death, and the only way to get it back is to go to a set of candles out in the world that you know holds it. If you happen to be using a sidearm that has a candle set right before a boss, you're in luck! But realistically, this means that until you get things figured out, you're going to be doing some legwork if you want to keep your loadout consistent.
Now, you may be wondering why one would even go through the trouble, then? These are, after all, called "side" arms. Surely they don't make that much of an impact in combat, right?
Well, they can make a big difference. Not all the time, but sometimes. The first post-intro boss can be killed just by chucking the axe sidearm with reckless abandon, so there's clearly something there. And if you aren't confident in your ability to land hits on a boss just yet, the little summon sidearm can help you deal damage and generate passive healing benefits while you suss out the attack patterns.
But even if that weren't true, sidearms also have a sneaky secondary use...and that's in exploration.
Where this most frequently comes into play is in giant holes blocking your path that you can't possibly jump across. If the hole is sufficiently small, you can probably cross that with a hollowing jump (jumping up from underground to reach greater distances). But if it's too large a gap for even that, some extra imagination is called for.
It's possible you'll have the drill sidearm in your possession in this moment, or it might be in a candle stack nearby. You use this sidearm to close the distance with an enemy...so why not try using it to get across the gap? You could chain from a burrow jump into that sidearm for maximum distance!
Or for another example, the gap you're trying to cross might be just a little bit too big for a burrow jump. Maybe in that situation you don't have the drill or anything that's obviously about closing distance...but maybe you have the little vial sidearm that lets you dash through an enemy to help with healing. That sidearm typically moves you around 1-2 tiles, so perhaps chaining a burrow jump into that would work in place of the drill?
Or for a crazy example that the devs never make clear in any capacity...maybe you're in a labyrinth you need to reach the center of. Perhaps in said center, there's an unassuming little slime enemy. And maybe you're equipped with an equally unassuming fishing rod sidearm. Sure would be a shame if someone yeeted the line of that fishing rod all the way across the labyrinth, hooked it on that slime, and completely sequence-broke the whole thing!
Yes. That's a thing you can do, and it isn't a bug. When I say to use your imagination when tackling exploration, I mean it. The devs equipped the fishing rod with near-limitless speedrun tech. Who knows what use cases we haven't yet discovered for the other tools?
But sidearms are only one way of getting around hard traversal challenges. Another way is with the use of special trinkets you'll find on your journey.
Trinkets, just like sidearms, have both combat and exploration uses. They can give you extra healing phials, raise your attack stat by 1 while equipped, give you a "second chance" after being killed, standard combat enhancements. But the exploration trinkets are the interesting ones.
One creates a little spider that lets you take two steps over a pit before you fall down. Depending on the size of a pit, this might mean you don't have to use any imagination at all to get to where you're going.
Another is like a small trampoline that gets deployed when you fall in a pit, then pushes you one tile over at the cost of a small amount of health. This can work in a pinch if you know you have several slightly too big gaps to cross and you've already walked half the way and don't want to have to turn back to find a sidearm.
Another lets you summon a little wisp to levitate you for a couple tiles if you press and hold jump while in midair. This is another one that can work well in a pinch.
For example, there was an optional boss I was up against that I wanted to keep a specific combat sidearm equipped for. The short trek to this boss wasn't doable without something to cross large gaps, and I was able to make it work with this specific trinket equipped. Without it, I might've had to mix and match two or more other trinkets to get the same effect.
You can carry up to six trinkets at a time depending on how many upgrades you make to your capacity. So your loadout is going to depend on your current goal.
Are you combing an area looking for secrets and not worrying too much about the enemies along the way? Then maybe you'll have the life preserver, the spider, the carrying wisp, the glove that lets you hollow in walls, the boots that keep rough terrain from impacting your movement, and the doodad that lets you do a mid-air dash equipped.
Are you heading straight into the thick of battle and wanting to survive? Then maybe you'll have the glove that raises attack, the mirror that sometimes makes you invulnerable, the item that doubles your healing speed, the jug that lets you collect more plasma for healing, the "second chance" trinket, and the scarf that increases defense equipped.
Are you maybe just looking to see how creative the devs got here? Then you might equip all the trinkets with the word "beastium" in the title and enjoy the healing effect!
There are a total of 60 trinkets scattered across the world, and I've only listed 18 thus far. Therefore, my advice to you is to explore as much as possible for the sake of finding these trinkets, if nothing else. You might very well come across something in some cave somewhere that completely changes things for you!
Difficulty.
Mina the Hollower has garnered a (in my opinion, unfair) reputation as this behemoth of challenge. It is going to challenge you, sure. And as much as mega-fans such as myself don't want to admit it, there are some valid criticisms to be made in regards to how much heavy lifting your imagination has to do. But it's old-school. That's it. Difficulty isn't the point. In reality, you're given more than enough tools to meet any challenge head-on.
You have three stats that govern combat: attack, defense, and sidearms. You also have four resource stats that govern survivability: healing phials, overall health, joules, and sparks.
Most of these are self-explanatory, so I'll skip ahead a bit.
"Joules" are your sidearm uses. Each sidearm uses a certain amount of joules when activated. Depending on your upgrade amounts, you can carry a maximum of 20-99 of them.
"Sparks" are akin to "lives," I suppose. You start out with one spark and can upgrade to 4 of them through exploration (or more with trinkets). When you die, you lose one spark and drop it where you took the killing blow. By returning to where you died and interacting with the spark, you can re-absorb it.
But remember...this isn't a soulslike. "Sparks" are not your XP/currency.
Instead, your XP/Currency is "bones," which you pick up in the world or absorb from enemies you kill. As long as you have at least one spark, your bones are safe. But once you've dropped all your sparks, you will lose your bones if you die again. So it's similar to a soulslike, except with as many as 4 more degrees of mercy.
Each of your combat-governing stats start out at level 1 and can be upgraded up to level 10 (until New Game +), with each level costing more bones than the last. When you've picked up enough bones to level up a stat, you'll automatically be brought to a level-up screen where you can choose an upgrade or back out to spend the currency later.
There's one other thing you can do in the level-up screen, though: converting the bones to bonestone. Bonestone serves the exact same function as bones, but it cannot be lost upon death. Basically, if you choose this option, your current earnings are compiled and stored in a bank. These funds can be accessed in shops or in your underground checkpoints with no strings attached. So if you're saving up for something big, waiting to do upgrades until you know what you're up against next, or you're not quite at the bone amount your need for the next upgrade you want but you're one death away from losing it all, this is the option for you. Just like the stats, this conversion mechanic requires more bones to pull off each time...so you can't just grind up 300 bones at a time and store them one batch after the other.
That's how you get stronger as a character, and you'll find the upgrades for your survivability stats (such as amount of healing phials) out in the world as you explore. You'll of course also find bones as you do that exploring, so I cannot stress enough that you need to go off the beaten path for your own good!
So, how do you survive combat while you're waiting to get stronger or to have more resources at your disposal? By actively engaging in it!
See, the healing phials don't work how you might expect. Like just about everything in Mina the Hollower, this isn't explained...so I'll do that legwork now. If you just try to heal willy-nilly when you take damage, you're going to find that you can't actually use the phials...poor Cr1TiKaL never figured out why in his first evening playing this.
The secret ingredient is "plasma." Sometimes you find this in yellow flowers, but most of the time this is a resource you have to generate by dealing damage.
For a clear visual: your health bar is red, and if it isn't full, then generated plasma will be represented by a yellow bar appended on the end of your health. When you use a phial, you'll heal as much of the health bar as the yellow currently takes up. If you've generated enough plasma to completely fill the non-red portion, you'll fully heal. If you've only gotten a hit or two in on an enemy or boss, you'll find you only heal a little bit. If you haven't dealt any damage at all, you simply won't use the phial...unless you equip yourself with one of two special trinkets.
Again, this isn't explained to you. You just have to watch your health bar colors and put two and two together. If you aren't paying attention, you're going to suffer...and that's where some might say this game's reputation ultimately comes from. Fans might insist that all you have to do is pay attention...but that isn't necessarily true.
In my own experience, there was a point early on where I was convinced I'd gotten soft-locked. Lo and behold, I was expected to figure out that you can dig...under deep water. Based on the game's visual language and what happened when I fell into that water, I'd assumed that it functioned the same as a pit: if you fall into it, you respawn back on land with some damage taken. You can't dig under a pit, so why would this be any different?
Well...it was. You can actually dig under deep water to get where you need to go. It's just that if you don't reach shallow water or land by the time you surface, it acts like a pit. And this isn't the only time where the game's established visual language betrays it. I say "language" intentionally, because there isn't really much "logic" to speak of.
Early on, you're taught that roadblocks that look a certain way can be jumped over but not dug under. Then, roadblocks that look a different way can be dug under but not jumped over. Then, some roadblocks that look like they're crumbling can be attacked and destroyed. Then, if a roadblock looks pointy, it's higher ground and walking in the direction of the points will see you fall off.
There's no particular reasoning why roadblock x can be jumped while y can't. So you find yourself relying on visual language, but there isn't much logical extrapolation you can do based off that. That language is sometimes the only way you can determine the topography of an area, so I really do mean you rely on it.
But there's a point in the critical path where you're expected to bring logic into the equation in a way that is in no way intuitive. You're expected to move a bouncy flower over to a wall that looks like no wall you've ever interacted with before and use the flower to leap over that wall. You only get to this point by figuring out that the flowers can get you over those jagged roadblocks...but you've been trained to realize that those particular roadblocks are part of the equation in the first place. They're things that you interact with one way or another. This wall you're expected to jump over is not that. And again, this is the critical path. You can't complete the game if you don't figure this out.
That's not the only thing, but it's the most egregious one...so I've armed you with the knowledge you need to avoid the most major frustration.
Oh, and also you should walk into the mirrors, not interact with them despite the fact that an interact prompt shows up. Some might be upset that I spoiled that. But I legitimately only figured this out because of Yahtzee Croshaw's video on the subject, since I missed the brief second of animation that evidently shows you what to do. You're welcome.
The stunning thing is that I'm not complaining. I eventually came to realize one fundamental truth about Mina the Hollower that will help you out of almost any jam: nothing is an accident. If something exists in an area, it has an intended use. And if you really think outside the box, you're most likely going to eventually figure it out. Whether or not you still want to continue after figuring it out, though, is a question only you can answer.
Before you even get to these brain-bending puzzles, the early game is going to kick your ass. That's just how it's going to go. Even if you've already been through the game once and know all the systems. I can see it getting incredibly frustrating for some, especially if they end up going the non-recommended way with the heavier-hitting enemies first. All I can say is to stick with it. Once you get a couple level ups in, you'll notice things getting far more manageable than level ups typically make things in games like this. The same goes for when you start finding resources and trinkets in the world, and also when you start figuring out a build that works for you.
It's beyond strange how much harder the early game is than the late game. I finished the first phase of the final boss in one try, then beat the second phase in two....but I died over and over again to the basic enemies in the first proper area of all places.
This, I believe, also contributes to this game's reputation. If the first thing you experience in a game is a firm ass-whooping, after all, that could keep you from seeing anything else. But just take my advice and stick with it. Spend time grinding if you have to. It'll pay major dividends sooner than you think.
The first topic is one that I regularly forgot about while prepping for this review. I'd look back on my talking points and think "I'd bet I'm giving this a 10!" only to then remember this point.
So...what is it?
Oh, nothing much...just what I consider to be the cardinal sin of game design: contact damage.
Yeah...
I kept forgetting that Mina the Hollower features the game design choice that I hate above all others. Think on that for a moment.
I believe the reason this slipped my mind so much is that there might be no challenge at all without contact damage. Most of the bosses that consistently inflicted it were also huge, so I suppose it just made sense.
In the end, I'm not sure why I'm so inclined to just...let Mina the Hollower off the hook here. But I suppose I'll see how I feel when I reach the scoring portion.
The second thing to discuss are the tower-climbing segments. When you defeat the major story boss guarding one of the generators you're trying to repair, you must then scale the generator in a semi-3D "Sonic and Knuckles ball-gathering minigame" sequence...if you get that reference at all. This involves swiftly ascending a tower while avoiding enemies and obstacles, because if you get hurt, you get knocked down a bit and run the risk of getting zapped by the electric current below you. There are little outlets you can burrow into to push the current down, but you still can't be careless during these sequences. Even if you're as careful as can be, though, these sequences are still incredibly difficult to do in your first playthrough.
Now, I know what you're thinking...you just finished fighting a major boss and then you need to do something else that's difficult?
Well, the good news is that there's no penalty for failure in these sections. If you get zapped, you just start over again from the bottom. You also don't actually lose any health if enemies get you on the way up. So these segments can be frustrating at times...but it's not like they have any tangible impact on you.
The last difficulty topic is the myriad of modifiers. Mina the Hollower comes with options to make things easier, harder, or weirder. It's a truly massive, comprehensive list usually featuring a handful of effect tiers for each concept.
For instance, you can turn down the damage you receive by 1.5x, 2x, etc. The same concept can be found on the hard end, where you increase the damage you receive by these same degrees.
Then there are modifiers that only exist for giggles, like replacing Mina's idle animation with a special dance animation.
Some of the easy modifiers well and truly trivialize things, such as the one that removes pitfalls entirely, or ones that completely ignore all incoming damage.
Where I'm conflicted on the modifier concept isn't the existence of those easy ones.
It's that if you enable any of the easy ones, you lock yourself out of achievements for that save file permanently. Doesn't matter which easy modifiers you enable, you're donezo from a trophy perspective from the second you confirm the activation.
Some people won't see a problem with that and will just activate whatever they want to activate. But if you as a developer are so emphatic that a player shouldn't be rewarded for altering the experience in a way that actually allows them to play (or at the very least enjoy) your game...then why even include accessibility settings in the first place? Why imply that kind of contempt?
On the other hand...seeing that warning pop-up actually kept me from activating one of those modifiers at one point. So it's an effective deterrent, I suppose. And I did feel proud of myself that I made it through that particular challenge without giving in.
But there's this nagging discontent in the back of my head that doesn't like this choice. Knowing the kinds of people the developers are (they're charging $20 because they "couldn't ask people to pay $30 for a pixel art game"), I don't really sense any malice in the decision...but I do think locking off the achievements is a pointless idea that kind of sours the concept at the root.
I won't be taking any points off for that since it didn't affect me, but this is the kind of thing that needs to be brought up when trying to sell people on a game with a reputation for difficulty. And dear reader, I'm trying to sell you this damn thing if it's the last thing I do!
We've come a long, long way since I first brought this subject up, but I'll reiterate that there's more to find in the world than just the trinkets and sidearms.
The most common reward you'll find out in the world is various iterations of bonestone. To recap, bonestone is currency/XP that can't be lost upon death. Some types of bonestone grant amounts as small as 100, some grant amounts up in the thousands. Either way, going off the beaten path or trying to solve puzzles you come across will frequently net you a bit of extra spending money.
The second most common reward you'll find are "kears." These are keys, plain and simple, and they're used exactly how you imagine they would be. They're needed to access countless other optional areas, and by extension, other (better) rewards. So while you might initially feel disappointment upon opening a chest and finding a kear, it helps to remember that having one around might eventually lead you to something that completely changes your play style!
Strangely enough, each area is also home to at least one unique fish that you need the fishing rod sidearm to get. These don't net (pun not intended) you anything too useful, but they're still a fun little collectible to track down wherever you go.
You'll also occasionally come across weapons and weapon upgrades. Each weapon has two upgrades you can get, with one being purchased in the blacksmith's shop and one being found in the world somewhere. The main benefit of that is self-explanatory, but it's worth noting that having fully-upgraded weapons is actually crucial to getting certain rewards. There's a sizable bit of bonestone, for example, that can't be obtained without fully-upgraded daggers.
Then there are some mystery rewards that don't fall under anything I've discussed so far, so you'll have to go find them for yourself!
This is the part where I tell you that I'm halfway through my 4th playthrough of Mina the Hollower, having reached 100% completion for two of those and working on it again for this current playthrough.
This is because the scope of content becomes far more clear once you get started going through NG+ runs.
The first NG+ run is what you might expect. You keep your stats and your items from the first playthrough, but things get harder. In addition, the "fewer checkpoints" modifier is forcefully applied.
Then comes NG+2, where things start to get interesting. You keep your stats, but you lose all your items (hence why I reached 100% more than once)...and the entire world flips.
Yes. Flips. Locations and screen transitions that were on the left side of the screen are now on the right and vice-versa. The developers know that if you made it this far, it's because your knowledge of the world is unparalleled. So obviously the best way to throw you off is to make the world less familiar and tell you to go get your items again.
And if you survive that challenge and come back for NG+3 (where I currently am), they take that concept to a new level. They release the tension a little bit by returning checkpoints to normal...but they bump up the enemy danger levels AND randomize each and every item placement. I had to go up against the first major generator boss with only one heal. And I only had that one heal in the first place because right before taking on the fight, I went exploring on the other side of the world to try and cast a wider net for the items I was used to. I didn't get the three healing phials you're supposed to start the game with until right before the 4th generator boss.
I've been made to understand that these types of hijinks continue until you beat NG+7, with the craziness only getting crazier each time.
The base game's wealth of content was already on par with some AAA experiences, but it's unthinkable that $20 gets you not one, not two, not three, not four, not five, not six, not seven, but eight uniquely-curated campaigns! Like, come on!
And that's to say nothing of the "softly" curated campaigns. These are campaigns that you voluntarily do yourself, but which the developers have made clear in no uncertain terms they'd like you to try.
One of these involves completing the game with -1% completion. Meaning beating the game with no healing phials in your inventory, no trinkets, no health upgrades, no nothing.
Or for a more extreme example, there's the super-secret ending. Not the "true" ending, just a secret one. I want you to think about the hardest secret ending you've ever achieved in a game. You probably thought of a soulslike, right? I personally would've thought of Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice's true ending there. If memory serves, there were like 5 super unclear things you had to do to get the secret ending in that game.
For the secret ending in Mina the Hollower, you have no less than 50 different parameters you have to meet. Mess up even one of those parameters and you're locked out of that ending for the save file. I won't spoil any of those parameters...but you'll almost certainly fail at least one of them by accident even when you know what they are. Possibly before you even step foot on the island in the first place.
$20 for all of that. Geez Louise.
What's more, all of that content comes in a mostly-strong technical package.
Strangely enough, there are maybe 2 or 3 screens that I experienced mild single-second frame drops in. This would happen just about every time I returned to these screens. It didn't impact my experience that much (especially because I forgot about it every time), but it's frankly shocking to me that this was a problem.
Aside from that, Mina the Hollower is a flawlessly-executed experience. No glitches of any kind, no crashes, no missing textures, no audio bugs, etc.
The pixel art is as detailed as 8-bit pixel art can possibly be, and I found that the art direction was just as strong as its baseline quality. Each area has its own distinct color palette, and each palette is used to its fullest potential.
Take the autumnal area of Septemburg. The burnt oranges and browns of the leafy ground contrast excellently with the subtle blues of lightning rods.
Or maybe look at Nox's Bayou. This is an area with a predominantly light purple palette, but the hardest enemies are denoted with greens and blues.
See what I mean? Color is utilized to great effect everywhere you go.
The soundtrack is equally strong. At the moment, I can't think of a single track I disliked...good thing, too, since I've gotten at least one track stuck in my head every day for the past couple weeks.
There's been something of a trend in 2026 where the strongest games have caused me to break my routine to continue playing them. Mina the Hollower continues that trend to an extreme degree. Some nights I've ignored my usual routine entirely just to keep playing. For a more quantitative look at what I mean, I started this game on June 4th. Between then and the day this review goes up, I've put close to 100 hours into it across my 3.5 playthroughs.
With all that in mind, is this game for you?
As you'll hear from just about anyone, first impressions might not be the best since the opening hour or so is so brutal compared to the rest of the game. But if you're not averse to missing out on achievements, you can set up modifiers to help with that. If you are averse to missing out on achievements, that's a different story. But I have to insist that gaining a few levels decreases the difficulty by stunning amounts...it's not like gaining two or three levels in a soulslike.
Complete aversion to 8-bit pixel graphics might also be a deterrent for you. If so, I don't know how to help you there. All I can say is that I tend to be the same way...and look at what I would've missed out on had I just looked at some screenshots and said "no thanks!"
Finally, while I think this game's difficulty reputation is a bit undeserved, there are valid criticisms to be made. If you're like me and you despise contact damage with a burning passion, I legitimately think it won't bother you much this time. But the exploration can sometimes push the boundaries of your imagination to degrees you don't see often, and the combat is undeniably old-school. It's not even remotely Hollow Knight: Silksong (which I'll remind you is GOTY 2025) levels of difficulty, but there are ways it'll challenge you that might not feel right.
Now that we've reached the end of this review, I find myself at a crucial juncture. My scoring system is a combination of objective flaws and how much they affected my experience. A flaw that completely obliterates my enjoyment loses a game a full point, while a flaw that only minorly irritates me might remove 0.1-0.5 points. But what about objective flaws that I forgot about? What about clear problems that affected me so little that I come into the review fully prepared to give a perfect score until I look through my notes again?
At the end of the day, if I don't have my self-imposed rules, I'm no different than a ravenous animal. So, despite how much my heart yearns to give this game a flawless 10/10, I can't.
I can, however, weigh the objectivity of the flaws and go from there.
Normally I take a full point off for the cardinal sin of contact damage. But here it felt like a borderline necessary thing. And because I regularly forgot about it, I can't really say it was a flaw...which only leaves one teensy-weensy little objective flaw to take points off for.
So with that in mind, let us review:
Teensy-weensy framerate drops - 0.1
The final score for Mina the Hollower is a damn near-perfect...
9.9/10 - Near Masterpiece
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