Yacht Club Games has built a reputation on reverent retro tributes, but Mina the Hollower is something bolder than their earlier work. Where Shovel Knight stayed faithful to its NES inspirations, this new action-RPG takes the DNA of classic handheld Zelda games, wraps it in a Game Boy Color aesthetic, and then smuggles in influences from Castlevania, Dark Souls, and FromSoft's combat systems to create something that feels genuinely its own.
The opening hours make this clear fast. You're dropped into a hostile world with no obvious path forward and roaming enemies that can end you in a handful of hits. It's disorienting by design, and it's at that moment when Mina reveals itself as far richer than its blocky exterior suggests. This is a game about reading a world, understanding risk, and knowing when to push forward or retreat to grind for upgrades.
The world itself is anchored around Ossex, a central village in the Tenebrous Isles. The setting defies easy categorization: gothic fantasy architecture sits alongside magically-infused steampunk tech. Animal denizens wander alongside building-busting giants and affably ghoulish abominations. There are many possums, which are a type of monster. Cute overworld sprites flip to unsettling character portraits during dialogue, evoking the David Lynch-inspired strangeness that Lynch himself cited as an influence on Link's Awakening. These aren't throwaway NPCs either. Characters have lives shaped by your actions, and they often factor into the larger story's twists.
Your protagonist, Mina, is a monster slayer and amateur scientist who has littered the Tenebrous Isles with mysterious technology. The core plot hinges on whether her machines are benevolent or destructive. Mina operates in moral grey territory, solving problems for islanders while inadvertently creating new ones. She's small, brave, and fully realized as a character in ways that make exploring feel purposeful rather than obligatory.
The map is genuinely open. Unlike traditional Zelda games where specific items gate progression, Mina's four initial dungeons are accessible immediately if you can survive the journey to them. There are no artificial locks, only your own skill and resources standing between you and any area. Blocked passages open via secret routes, side quests, or by equipping specific Sidearms and Trinkets found while roaming. This is open-world design executed with genuine intelligence: The game dangles reachable treasures that demand you master movement and combat to claim them.
Combat is where the FromSoft DNA shows. Your currency is Bones, earned through exploration and combat, functioning exactly like Souls but with mercy built in. You can equip multiple Sparks that prevent Bone loss on death, letting you recover them from the room where you fell without the crushing punishment of Dark Souls. This same risk-reward loop persists: Do you push deeper or retreat to spend your Bones on upgrades?
Mina's movement toolkit is the heart of her combat identity. Her signature ability, a burrow-and-leap move, serves as dash, dodge, gap-jumper, and nimble evasion tool. Mastering it turns you into something closer to a ninja than the typical action-RPG protagonist. The game gives you five selectable weapons at start, with the Nightstar (a mace-on-chain straight from Castlevania) being the reliable anchor, while daggers named Whisper and Vesper offer speed and finesse. Secondary Sidearms function like Castlevania's sub-weapons, consuming a resource called Joules with each use. Some are conventional, like swords and axes. Others veer wonderfully strange: an Iron Steed bicycle with a jousting rod, a ghost that drains Joules over time, a demonic Chain Chomp on a leash.
Trinkets layer onto all of this. These swappable modifiers boost movement, attack, or defense in both useful and bizarre combinations. You can stack five at once, and your optimal loadout shifts dramatically between exploration and boss fights. A Trinket that lets you float gently down from jumps becomes essential for traversal but useless in a duel. Before major fights, you swap it out for attack multipliers and revival mechanics. This constant tinkering transforms combat from a fixed problem into an evolving challenge you're always refining.
Six main dungeons populate the Tenebrous Isles, each with its own thematic region. One area, Septemberg, stands out as a masterclass in environmental storytelling. Frozen in autumn with howling winds, scattered leaves, and an escalating supernatural threat, it turns a seasonal aesthetic into an adrenaline gauntlet. The sequence spirals from creeping dread through hedge mazes and lightning storms into pure schlock-horror spectacle. It's bonkers in the best sense, the kind of sequence that sticks with you long after you've moved on.
The art direction sells this entirely through restraint. Most of the world is constructed from blocky tiles, but sweeping backdrops and establishing shots showcase stunning pixel work. There's even a specific nod to Castlevania: boss tower silhouettes on the distant horizon that grow larger as you climb, echoing how Dracula's castle looms throughout that series. The soundtrack is pure baroque Castlevania energy performed on NES and Game Boy sound hardware. It's tight, it's rad, and it absolutely works.
All told, reaching the credits takes roughly two dozen hours. The game respects that time investment by making exploration consistently rewarding, combat systems deep enough to support dozens of playstyles, and the world strange enough to stay intriguing across its runtime.
Author Emily Chen: "Mina the Hollower proves that the best Zelda-likes stop trying to be Zelda and use it as a springboard instead."
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