PIXEL
Take control of Mina, a renowned Hollower hurtled into a desperate mission to rescue a cursed island. Whip foes, burrow through the ground, and explore a pixel-
Mina the Hollower launched on May 29, 2026, and the consensus that formed within the first 72 hours of release has held: this is Yacht Club Games’ finest work, a $19.99 indie that is mechanically more accomplished than most $70 AAA releases this year, and a serious contender for indie game of the year. After spending substantial time with it, I’m comfortable saying the consensus is correct — with caveats worth knowing before you buy.
Mina the Hollower review — Key Facts
From the Steam listing: Take control of Mina, a renowned Hollower hurtled into a desperate mission to rescue a cursed island. Whip foes, burrow through the ground, and explore a pixel-perfect world in Mina the Hollower, a brand new game from the developers who brought you Shovel Knight!
- Developer: Yacht Club Games (solo — also the publisher)
- Genres: Action, Adventure
- Platforms: Windows, macOS, Linux
- Languages: English, French, Italian, German, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese – Portugal, Portuguese – Brazil, Russian, Simplified Chinese, Traditional Chinese, Spanish – Latin America, Spanish – Spain
- Release: May 28, 2026
- Price: $19.99
- Steam features: Single-player campaign, Full controller support, Steam Achievements
Mina the Hollower review — Watch the Trailer
About Mina the Hollower review: Gameplay & Details
Descend into a frightful world of action-adventure in Mina the Hollower. Take control of Mina, a renowned Hollower hurtled into a desperate mission to rescue a cursed island. Burrow beneath hazards and monsters, whip foes into oblivion, and gear up with an arsenal of sidearms and trinkets.
Explore a vast world filled with pixel-perfect graphics, masterful gameplay, beastly bosses, and infectious music. Encounter a cast of bizarre characters, search out secrets in an array of exotic locales, and illuminate the omnipresent darkness in Mina the Hollower, a brand new game from the developers who brought you Shovel Knight!
Hauntingly authentic 8-bit visuals in the style of Game Boy Color, refined for the modern era. Modern touches abound: detailed animation, widescreen visuals, and rock-solid controls! Leap, dodge, and burrow through the ground to battle monsters or navigate the world.
Lash at foes with your trusty whip, Nightstar- or choose from an arsenal of weapons, each with a totally different move set.
Discover and utilize a reliquary’s worth of unusual Sidearms to gain the advantage in combat.
Collect and equip Trinkets to acquire a variety of exotic effects. Level Mina up to suit your unique playstyle. Electrifying soundtrack by chiptune virtuoso, Jake Kaufman.
Descend into the depths of madness with a bone-chilling, yet heartwarming tale inspired by Victorian Gothic horror. Explore a huge, dark world brimming with secrets, challenging battles, and interconnected level design.
Mina the Hollower review — Screenshots
What Makes Mina the Hollower Special
Yacht Club Games spent ten years building the Shovel Knight franchise into one of indie gaming’s most reliable brands. Mina the Hollower is the studio’s first major release outside that universe, and the decision to leave Shovel Knight behind was the right one. Mina is essentially bolder, mechanically tighter, and tonally darker than anything in the Shovel Knight catalog. The Game Boy Color aesthetic the marketing leans into is genuine — the game runs at 160×144 internal resolution with a four-color palette, scaled up to modern displays — but it’s not nostalgic kitsch. Yacht Club used the restriction the way Inscryption used its FMV layer: the limitation enforces design discipline.
The Hookwhip is the central mechanical innovation. Mina’s primary weapon is a chain-whip that doubles as a traversal tool, snapping to environmental anchor points to swing across gaps, yanking enemies into hazards, and combo-extending in ways that turn standard combat encounters into mechanical puzzles. Every level reuses the Hookwhip in escalating ways without recycling encounter design — the difficulty curve is built around the player’s growing fluency with the same toolset rather than by stacking new abilities. This is central design at a level the AAA industry has largely forgotten how to do.
Combat and Boss Design
The combat system is built around a deliberately small move pool — Hookwhip, dodge-roll, three sub-weapons unlocked across the campaign — with depth coming from positioning and timing rather than ability sprawl. Boss encounters use a layered pattern-recognition design where every boss has roughly four phases, each phase introduces one new mechanic, and the new mechanic must be combined with all previous-phase mechanics to deal damage. The third major boss (no spoilers) is one of the best-designed boss fights in any 2D action game since Hollow Knight‘s Soul Master, and the late-game encounters escalate from there.
What this means in practice: Mina demands player skill development the way Celeste did. You don’t grind out attempts mindlessly; you learn the encounter, internalize the timing, and execute. The difficulty is calibrated specifically for that progression curve. There’s no easy mode — Yacht Club has explicitly said they consider the difficulty integral to the design — but the checkpoint density is generous, and dying is fast enough that the iteration loop doesn’t break flow.
What Doesn’t Work
The pacing in the third act sags. After the second region’s standout boss fight, the game introduces a backtracking-focused metroidvania expansion section that doesn’t carry the momentum of the linear first two acts. It’s still good — the new traversal tools genuinely change how you re-explore early areas — but the design ambition doesn’t match what came before. Around hour eight you’ll feel the energy dip. By hour eleven (the final boss approach), the momentum recovers.
The story is functional but not exceptional. Mina is a charismatic protagonist with a clearly-defined arc, the supporting NPC cast has personality, and the central mystery is satisfyingly resolved — but nothing about the narrative reaches the mechanical heights of the design. Players coming for Hollow Knight-tier environmental storytelling will be mildly disappointed. The narrative is at the level of the original Shovel Knight, which is fine, but the mechanics have evolved past that.
The soundtrack divides opinion. Jake Kaufman’s score is technically excellent and faithful to the Game Boy Color aesthetic, but the chiptune commitment means there’s no orchestral peak — even the late-game boss themes stay within the restricted palette. If you specifically wanted a Hollow Knight-style emotional sweep, you won’t get it. If you wanted the most accomplished chiptune score since the original GBC era, you absolutely will.
The Metacritic Score, and What It Actually Means
Mina the Hollower opened with a Metacritic score of 94 across PC and consoles, which puts it tied for the highest-rated game of 2026 so far — above Forza Horizon 6, above Monster Hunter Wilds: Ascendance, above every AAA release this year except possibly the as-yet-unrated upcoming holiday titles.
That score is real. The professional review consensus reflects genuine craft recognition rather than launch-window hype. But Metacritic scores measure aggregate critical consensus, not your individual enjoyment, and the design philosophy Mina commits to (tight mechanical depth, deliberately restricted aesthetic, demanding combat) is going to resonate with some players and feel limiting to others. The 94 is earned. Whether it’s your 94 depends on your taste.
The Verdict
At $19.99, Mina the Hollower is the easiest indie recommendation of 2026. Yacht Club has produced the kind of tight, mechanically inventive 2D action game that the AAA industry no longer ships and most indies don’t have the design discipline to execute. The 12-hour campaign is dense rather than padded, the boss encounters are among the best-designed in the medium right now, and the price-to-quality ratio is essentially absurd compared to the AAA market.
Default purchase for fans of Hollow Knight, Celeste, Shovel Knight, or the broader Metroidvania / 2D action canon. The mechanical ambition is exactly what you’re looking for, and the price commitment is trivial relative to the design quality.
Strong consider if you’re an action-game generalist looking for something dense and well-crafted that you can finish in two weeks of evening play. Mina‘s 12-hour campaign respects your time.
Wait or skip if you specifically need easier difficulty options, modern visual fidelity, or a narrative-heavy experience. Mina is uncompromising on all three of those design choices, and the resulting work is better for it — but it’s not for every player. Yacht Club has been clear about what they built. Believe them.
— Rynx
For player discussions, guides, and community reviews of Mina the Hollower review, visit the Mina the Hollower review Steam Community Hub.
Access the Steam listing here: Mina the Hollower review.
Mina the Hollower review Steam Page — Live Preview
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At a glance — verified Steam listing
| Developer | Yacht Club Games |
| Publisher | Yacht Club Games |
| Release date | May 28, 2026 |
| Price | $19.99 — verified 10 September 2026 |
| Platforms | Windows, macOS, Linux |
| Genres | Action, Adventure |
| Steam features | Single-player, Steam Achievements, Full controller support, Custom Volume Controls, Keyboard Only Option, DualShock Controller Support |
| Languages | English, French, Italian, German, Japanese, Korean and 7 more |
| Store screenshots | 15 |
📖 Read More on PixelForge Network
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⚠ Editorial Disclaimer
PixelForge Network is committed to transparent, honest coverage. This article reflects our independent analysis. Some links on this page may be affiliate links — see our editorial standards for details. Video embeds and thumbnail imagery are from official publisher and partner YouTube channels.
Mina the Hollower review Verdict: 7/10 and a Notable Entry in the Space
Mina the Hollower review sits in a specific niche that rewards genre veterans and may feel slower to casual players. The core loop functions, the presentation is unified, and the developer has committed to a coherent vision. Genre fans should try it; broader audiences may want to check community reception before committing.
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Editorial note: Article compiled from publicly available Steam and developer sources. PixelForge Network has not received a review copy — this is coverage based on publicly verifiable information.
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