A Strong Spark of Life
I can imagine the disappointment that Yacht Club Games felt when they couldn’t release this in October 2025, because Mina the Hollower is rife with Halloween spirit! The colors, music, creatures, and environment embody the month of ghosts and ghouls. When entering a major province, a beautifully animated still showcasing the region, with our titular rodent heroine grimacing at the distant tower, became the cue to tighten my belt and get ready for the real journey. It gives the locales an episodic quality. Sean Velasco of Yacht Club Games admitted that where Shovel Knight was their Mario, Mina the Hollower is their Zelda. I think it lives well beyond the visage of Zelda, because Mina’s adventure feels like a top-down Castlevania with creatures and mundane and supernatural weapons, and twists that culminate in a world of monsters and a civilization that’s both familiar with the danger but unprepared for it. There are larger species on Tenebrous Isle, so being the smallest species leads to harrowing encounters with monsters and denizens.
World of Scavengers
With little to distinguish regions from dungeons. I found trap-filled paths leading to recently abandoned villages. I’ve stumbled upon NPCs taking shelter, as prisoners or on their own missions. At Queensbury Crypt, I found fellow grave robbers, a disgruntled grave tender, and a sanctioned grave robber, called an archaeologist. Some of these characters are strange, some creepy, and after one interaction, I questioned the ethics of my play through. A second play through helped me appreciate things missed during the first.
Half of Tenebrous Isles population are a diverse mix of animal species, with many having preferences for different areas of the isles. Ossex consists of scavengers, mice, dogs, raccoons, and opossums, Nox’s Bayou has reptiles and amphibians and Septemburg has farm animals. There’s a few outliers, but it most follow this rule. Strange as our animal cast are, the humans can be just as weird; one old man in particular gave the same vibes as the blind old guy in a barrel from Disenchantment. I’ve explored muck-filled swamps, inside a giant creature, and fought rotting mutant monsters, but somehow this guy felt gross. There’s a fun weirdness in this cartoonishly grim world.
Maybe it’s the love bones as jewelry and osteomancy, but I’m fascinated that the world revolves around bones! Bones are both the currency and means for leveling. You’re literally digging them up, acquiring them from slain enemies, trading them in all shops, and converting precious gems into bones, making it rain skulls, ribs, femurs, and bone chips! It’s a world built around carrion, and I’m for it! I found a noble’s tomb with the engraving, “Beneath this vault of sturdy cobbles lay my bones and treasured baubles.” My first response, “Don’t mind if I do!” It’s the kind of world a mouse could thrive in! I scurried under the stone and looted that crypt! Then there’s the Bone Beach, where a giant mutant leviathan triggers a bone rush, making some violent miners!
Digging the Details
Sound’s great; it feels like it has a nearly dynamic track that changes when in a deeper part of the region or underground. Every level had a tone, and they nailed it. My hard-hitting attacks had a nice, sharp crack, and some of the little summons have cute, mischievous squeaks. There’s a pub with NPC musicians playing lovely music, and after stepping away from the game, I had a few region themes stuck in my head, like the Tainted Thicket.
Despite the lack of a map, I didn’t feel lost because every area had unique obstructions, platforms, and enemy layouts. Learning the nuances of each area to find undiscovered sections and alternative routes to other regions required expanding my perception, scrounging for weakened walls, analyzing enemy positions, and environmental details. Mina’s diverse puzzles never left me frustrated; they challenged me. The majority didn’t require specific item loadouts, but if I wanted to change my trinkets, there was an underlab not too far. They used a simple psychological method: give a basic introduction to a mechanic, then an escalating series of tasks and puzzles using the mechanic. Platforming has mechanisms that make it easier to judge jumps and the distance between ledges. Mina starts sweating when close to hazards, like spikes and ledges. Doesn’t mean I didn’t sweat like the mouse every approach. Enemies loved to bully my tail during platforming segments, and it caused many deaths.
Scurry for My Life!
This is a hard game. If you’re used to the snappy dodge button, you’ll need to adapt to Mina’s jumping and burrowing mechanic. Fights can be a game of cat and mouse, only the mouse got ghosts and guns! It’s fun as heck scurrying underfoot, popping out the dirt and cracking a giant mutant boar in the back with my flail. There was a big oar-wielding frog; they were pretty dangerous. I pistol-whipped it, burrowed away, then started blasting with my cannon. But because Mina always jumps before burrowing, she’s vulnerable. She can jump over some attacks, but if the enemies are big or swing too large, you won’t get over it. By mid-game, some enemies catch onto your tricks and have attacks you can’t burrow under! Monsters have tells, but attacks still come in fast and frenetically. The bosses are intense, panic-inducing fights that depleted all my resources. They always came down to who scored the last strike first. A few I won, by a combination of partial pattern recognition, trinkets, sub-weapons, and the fact they’re often bigger targets, but I was at critical without any vials.
Even though death caused me to lose a spark, and depleting all sparks caused all non-crystallized bones to be lost, it never felt too oppressive. I get sparks back by killing the enemy that killed me, or by picking it up where I last died. However, I noticed I still had bones on my person, as long as I didn’t use up the last Spark. So I went to town and bought items to make the loss negligible if it happened. Because health regen requires fighting and acquiring plasma, pressing on or withdrawing depended on enemy presence. I had to factor in health, my plasma pool, the remaining health vials, and environmental dangers. It’s a great way to consider my capabilities. Using the underlab replenishes all health and vials, but resets enemies.
A Hollower’s Arsenal
There are five main weapons, but I favored her signature Nightstar Flail and the Battery Buster! The Nightstar, in the spirit of Castlevania, works great with my trinkets; I dub the playstyle “Snap, crackle, pop!” The Battery Buster makes me feel like Samus or Megaman, only I charged this cannon up by aforementioned pistol-whipping people! There are also 15 sidearms with unique roles in my arsenal. I’ve been reliant on the Mist Jar, which briefly transforms Mina into a ghost that phases through enemies, steals health, and avoids damage. I’ve fallen into a few pits getting a little too enthusiastic with it. Sometimes I like my bike, and commit vehicular manslaughter with the lance welded to the front. Then there’s the trinkets! They give everything from passive buffs to fun things like cause explosions exiting my burrow, super speed on hitting enemies, a bounce attack, etc. There are 60 trinkets, and you’ll want to keep expanding your trinket slots. The options to customize Mina’s playstyle are immense, and so are the opportunities to synchronize with other trinkets. I had a jar that increased plasma regeneration beyond maximum, creating a cache of extra health potential, and an item that fired shockwaves when at max health or plasma. Synced up, I had an overabundance of plasma, and almost all my attacks shot shockwaves.
All the Tools at Your Claw Tips!
If the game’s roughing you up too much, or feels too easy, Mina the Hollower has the largest selection of in-game modifiers I’ve ever seen. This is stuff I’d use cheat codes or Gameshark to modify. I can increase enemy size, alter the weather, explore mode, isekai guys with my bike mode, ultramina mode, some modifiers to make a Mina-Must-Die mode, one hit kill mode, auto complete towers, make everyone talk Victorian English, jump into space, make everyone fast or slow, and so much more! They have a playset list for silly things, like a prank mode and visual changes. You can save modifiers to your favorites for easy access! Just be aware that some changes affect the entire save, and I couldn’t revert them after starting a playthrough. There was a playset that removed leveling from the game, making stats and unlocks occur automatically during the playthrough. I also lost the shopkeepers because items will be rewarded during the playthrough. Another modifier randomized item and trinket locations. However, some of my favorite NPC interactions were with the shopkeepers, and that’s not discounting the NPCs. I had a feeling one or two events didn’t play because the reward was swapped to another chest, leaving an empty one where the event would’ve played out, so it was counted as already completed.
Perhaps one of the flaws I encountered was in the weapon upgrades. While I can buy all the items from a blacksmith, a few upgrades are acquired in the shop, but others are scattered throughout the world. I’ve found upgrades for almost every weapon except for Whisper and Vesper, and I’m over halfway through my first New Game plus run; yes, there’s a New Game Plus. So before completing your first playthrough, you’ll want to hunt for these upgrades. There will be times you’ll bang your head trying to figure out how to attain them, then you’ll have an epiphany. Unfortunately mine came after I acted like a tough rodent cause I beat the final boss and had “all” my upgrades. Then I got smacked by the kraken, cried, and crashed my ship.
Unearthed Treasure
Mina the Hollower is an amazing adventure. It pays homage to different types of horror movie monsters, and like a good horror movie, you don’t realize it’s multi-layered on the first viewing. This humble looking game embodies the spirit of the genre with its robust atmosphere, bosses, creatures, and puzzles. The NPCs evoke my Hollower’s spirit, making me dig for the truth in the dangerous wilds of Tenebrous Isle. The game has a shocking ending, and I’m left with questions about the world’s aftermath. If Yacht Club Games returns to Mina at a later date, I’ll be there, covered in dirt with bones in my fur.
