Mina the Hollower Review – Soilsborne Masterpiece
Mina the Hollower is Yacht Club Games at the height of their powers, a pseudo-retro throwback/love-letter to the GameBoy Color era that over the course of two dozen hours reminded me why I fell in love with videogames in the first place. It rewards players for paying attention, engaging with its systems creatively and pushes accessibility more than any title it’s going to be inevitably compared to. If you already plan to skip ahead to the score, don’t bother – boot up your system of choice, navigate to its digital storefront and plonk down $30AU for this game.
If you’re still here, wondering how this title could possibly be worth the price of a whole-ass mid-tier takeaway meal, let’s get down to business. For a start, much like Shovel Knight cosplayed in an era of game design that has largely been left in the dust, Mina the Hollower again expertly plays into nostalgia of the GameBoy Color generation it apes. Short of comparing side-by-side, Mina sure as (night)soil feels like games from that era while skirting many of the common complaints; scaled down worlds, awkward save systems, chintzy music; you won’t find any of it here. It’s modern when it needs to be, inclusive in ways that ensure only the most masochistic of gamers would find it impossible to get though. Operating within self-imposed limitations graphically has pushed the team at Yacht Club Games to put a mere 66 colours to WORK, crafting a series of gothic-flavoured locations that feel distinctive. Coupled with expressive sprite animations and gameplay that scales to absolute brutality, I have no doubt that in the hands of the most skilled players, speedruns of Mina will be poetry in motion to behold. This is in no small part due to Mina having a little trick up her blood-red sleeves.
Mina is a ‘Hollower’ you see, the effect of which being she can dive snout first into the ground and burrow underneath quite a few things. Pesky enemy that never turns its back got you down? Leap in the air, plough through that topsoil and next minute you’re laying down a smooth surprise smackdown into their posterior. Can’t swim? There’s dirt under that thar water, and leaping out of a burrow also powers up your jumping distance juuuust enough to make an extra wide gap, at least until you find an extra, extra wide gap that will need some more hustle to make it across. Combat-wise, Mina drew comparisons to Bloodborne during its preview window for the way health is lost and regained – it can’t be replenished by a health vial unless Mina regains ‘Plasma’, the easiest method being to beat the snot out of a nearby foe that will cause a Plasma build up, which a vial then converts back to health points.
Mina’s verb set is fairly limited – eight directional movement, a jump button that combos into a burrow movement when held, a button to skoll a health potion and of course, a dedicated attack button. This minimalist approach could become tiresome if not for the ingenious ways Yacht Club remix and rework Mina’s basic mechanics, to the point that even towards the end of the main storyline I was often rethinking my approach to problems. Over and again I encountered the sort of puzzles that are obvious once you’ve solved them but nonetheless make you feel like a very clever mouse indeed when you spot something slightly secret or off-kilter on Tenebrous Isle. Aspects of Metroidvania creep in later when inaccessible areas are unlocked by certain ‘Sidearms’ or ‘Trinkets’. Sidearms are secondary attacks Mina can deploy, ranging from a weird Jackass jousting bicycle that sends it across larger gaps, or freaky little Demon dudes that hover around on a chain…chomping, naturally. These run on ‘joules’, basically a short mana bar that depletes based on how many joules a particular Sidearm consumes. Trinkets are gear that grant Mina new or improved abilities, like a Shield that blocks a lightning strike or something as basic as offering a lengthier burrow time. Yacht Club Games have gone on record stating that no critical paths in Mina require the use of specific Trinkets or Sidearms, but completionists will want to become very familiar with them as quite a large portion of the game can be considered ‘non-essential’ to the story. The main questline sees Mina journey far and wide to repair six damaged Spark Generators, huge crackling structures of her invention that are purported to keep the lands safe for Baron Lionel, lion Baron of Tenebrous Isle and the primary contributor to Mina’s technological research. Beyond this venture are numerous side-quests and NPC interactions that flesh out the world and are more than welcome diversions enriching the whole affair.
An element in Mina I have to applaud Yacht Club Games for are the Modifiers, a collection of in-menu options that are also titled ‘Assists’ in many cases. These range from reducing the damage Mina takes during combat or increasing her jumping distance to removing the timed element of burrowing or even making enemies ignore Mina completely. It’s also possible to make the entire game far more punishing, tripling damage, removing Sidearms or sprinkling less healing items throughout the world. Not my cup of tea, but definitely somebodies. This level of experience customisation is enormously helpful in tailoring Mina to a challenge level that balances difficulty and enjoyment. Early on, struggling quite a bit with some of the systems and still being in the doldrums of scant few improvements to Mina – where some titles trade in ‘souls’, Mina trades in ‘bones’, and bones can upgrade Mina’s attack power, defense and sidearm efficacy – I decided ‘fall damage’ and I were done professionally. So I turned it off. Sue me. Git Gud? Gatekeep somewhere else nerd! Yacht Club Games want players to meet Mina on their own terms, so I did. There’s a whole set of adjustments for those needing a little more spice, but toning down the damage taken a smidge (25% to be exact) and losing any fear I had of platforming was the empowerment I needed to power through the rest of the game. Where an authentic GBC game would have expected hours of head-bashing, Mina seems more interested in players seeing the journey through to the end than becoming another game that gets put aside after a few hours. Included is a full Assisted Mode that promises to preserve the gameplay experience while toning down the difficulty considerably, as well as an Explore Mode that states it will remove challenge altogether. Veteran Mode sounds like what it is, hardly something the softest, wettest boys like me are looking to mess with on a first playthrough.
In many ways, the wider community will get an even better experience playing through Mina, because they’ll have one another to swap secrets and commiserate over encounters. While I eventually puttered around the Yacht Club Games Discord server, my first twenty hours of Mina were in a solitary bubble which, while it didn’t diminish my experience, certainly made me appreciative of connecting with other players when it became possible. Oh to be excitedly swapping stories at work or school about what secrets lay hidden behind some innocuous looking scenery – there’s a slight sense of jealousy for those discovering Mina for the first time. I can already foresee introducing this to my two young sons will kick off an obsession not seen since Astrobot.
Currently sitting at the forefront of my 2026 GOTY list, Mina the Hollower is a reminder that vast resources, enormous teams and near-endless multi-generational content is but one end of a spectrum. Mina reflects on past design principles and pays homage to the best of them, and quietly shuffling out the door those aspects we would prefer to forget rather than remember. I fully expect Mina the Hollower to become a formative experience for younger players, in the same way the titles it draws inspiration from were clearly formative for the developers at Yacht Club Games. For those of us who are a bit longer in the tooth, Mina recreates the magic of yesteryear, recalling heady days of AA batteries, long car rides and zero backlights. Those portable worlds felt far larger than the cartridges that held them, and revisits almost always diminish such recollection. It’s a rare gift then, to get to play something that feels like experiencing the past as we remember it, not as it was.
Mina the Hollower was reviewed on a ROG Ally using code kindly supplied by the publisher.
