Review: Mina the Hollower, a "Zeldavania" with accessibility... and controversy

In Mina the Hollower, players step into the shoes of Mina, a brilliant mouse inventor and skilled monster hunter belonging to the renowned guild of Hollowers. The story unfolds in a setting steeped in a gothic horror atmosphere combined with steampunk technology.

After surviving a devastating shipwreck caused by a terrifying Kraken, Mina washes ashore in the capital city of Ossex only to discover absolute chaos. A faction of the local guard has rebelled, joining forces with monsters to unleash widespread destruction.

Featuring 2D art inspired by classic entries in The Legend of Zelda series, alongside gameplay and systems drawing inspiration from Soulslikes and Castlevania, this is the world we dive into!

Official Trailer

About Yacht Club Games

Formed in 2011, Yacht Club Games took the gaming world by storm in 2014 with Shovel Knight. While their debut success was essentially a direct love letter to the classic platformers of the 8-bit NES era, the studio expands its horizons significantly with Mina the Hollower. The developer proves once again its mastery at capturing nostalgia while incorporating modern mechanics that give their games a distinct soul.

After facing serious financial difficulties in recent years, Yacht Club Games bet its entire future on the development of Mina. It took four years of total dedication to deliver Mina the Hollower.

Fortunately, the game proved to be both a critical and commercial success, grossing over 6 million dollars and selling 300,000 copies in just three days. It is a game that showcases all the love the developers poured into it, featuring a fabulous art style that captivated audiences right from the start. Thank goodness!

Graphics and Soundtrack

Visually, the game emulates the classic resolution and color palette of the Game Boy Color. The art direction delivers a perfect blend by merging gothic horror with characters inspired by cute animals, starting with Mina herself, a little mouse scientist and monster hunter.

However, despite its graphical "simplicity", the game is packed with secrets, tunnels, and complex puzzles. It is a visually charming game, and it is easy to see that every single detail was carefully thought out. The cutscenes are also wonderful.

As for the soundtrack, it is a spectacular achievement on its own. It reminds me of compositions made with retro audio chips and brings eerie, gothic tunes that instill a sense of urgency during battles and a fear of the unknown while exploring dungeons and the Island.

Gameplay and Combat

The gameplay of Mina the Hollower centers around combat and navigating the map while trying to avoid taking damage. It is a game where you are constantly moving, running, and jumping, all while searching for hidden secrets and treasures.

Mina possesses a unique mechanic called Burrowing, allowing players to jump and dive into the ground to travel beneath the surface. This ability serves both to bypass environmental obstacles on the map and to dodge projectiles and enemies during combat. Furthermore, when Mina emerges, she performs a leap that reaches twice her normal jump height, which comes in handy in many situations.

There is a learning curve crafted with genuine care by the developers. The game does not offer a standard tutorial at the beginning; instead, events naturally showcase and teach mechanics step-by-step. Before you know it, you have mastered several techniques fundamental to the gameplay style. This demonstrates immense planning and care for the player's experience.

Additionally, the game world is structured in an "open-ended" format. There are no paths blocked by specific progression abilities, for instance. The only limit to tackling the initial dungeons in any order is your own survival skills or the items you have chosen and discovered to enhance your build.

If you die due to environmental hazards, your bones remain trapped in a spark at the site of the accident. If you fall to an enemy, that creature absorbs your energy. Should you be defeated a second time before reclaiming these belongings, they will be lost permanently.

Healing also demands risk management. Players use plasma flasks to recover health, but the amount restored is based on how much you attacked enemies after taking damage, represented by a yellow health bar. To make matters worse, or to heighten the tension, Mina must execute an animation to open the flask and drink. If you are hit during this process, the healing is canceled and the item is lost.

That being said, Mina is a difficult game. You must calculate every step and, above all, learn the movement and attack patterns of your enemies. This makes a massive difference and saves a lot of health for our little mouse. This learning curve can be quite frustrating for some players, especially those who are not accustomed to Soulslikes. Because of this, the developers included a modification menu to make the gameplay more accommodating depending on individual needs and difficulties.

Shortly before its official release, Mina the Hollower found itself at the center of an intense debate across social media and gaming forums. The spark for the controversy was an announcement by Yacht Club Games showing that the title would feature pages upon pages of difficulty and accessibility modifiers.

Through this menu, players gain the ability to toggle features that drastically alter the game, ranging from doubling damage dealt and reducing damage taken to enabling a full "God Mode" with complete invulnerability.

A portion of the more purist audience, who favor strictly punishing experiences, criticized the decision. The critics argued out of fear that an abundance of options meant the developers were being "lazy", essentially leaving the job of balancing the game to the players instead of crafting a "standard challenge" for everyone to share the exact same experience.

However, the game's release proved that this skepticism was completely unfounded. Yacht Club Games demonstrated through the final product that the baseline design is balanced at a high yet rewarding difficulty level.

The extra options function as accessibility features for those who just want to relax or are unfamiliar with the genre. Hardcore players can simply ignore them to enjoy the default difficulty, while players looking solely for exploration, lore, and story gain the freedom to play in the way most comfortable for them.

The heated discussion surrounding Mina the Hollower is not an isolated incident. It reflects one of the most complex and long-standing debates in modern pop culture, which is the relationship between accessibility, inclusion, and difficulty in game design.

For years, the gaming and development communities have been divided into two major schools of thought on the matter.

Inclusion

It is overly generalized to assume that difficulty is a one-size-fits-all concept and to expect all players to have the same physical, motor, cognitive, or time capacities.

Accessibility goes far beyond "making the game easy and simple." It involves:

- Motor Accessibility: Allowing full button remapping, toggle settings for button mashing, or continuous commands, which benefits individuals with motor disabilities, arthritis, or injuries.

- Visual and Auditory Accessibility: Colorblind modes, text size and contrast adjustments for subtitles, and visual cues for sound-dependent elements greatly assist in delivering a richer experience for those facing these challenges.

- Cognitive and Time Accessibility: Options to slow down game speed, disable screen shake, or provide extra health and reduced damage assist players who might struggle with precision gaming.

An accessibility feature might mean nothing to you personally, but for someone who needs it to join in on the fun, it means everything. This is precisely what the developers envisioned when giving us various options to make the game more playable and less demanding.

Selective Customization

Instead of "ruining" the game, modifiers allow players to adjust only the specific elements holding them back.

For example, a player might want to keep the combat challenging but wishes to disable losing currency upon death because they lack the time to backtrack. Another might have excellent reflexes for attacking but needs the dodge window to be slightly longer due to a motor limitation.

These and many other nuances can be smoothed out thanks to the care the developers put into considering different player experiences.

The evolution of the gaming industry has shown that including accessibility options does not diminish the achievements of those who beat the game on the highest difficulty. A "God Mode" or an assist menu in a single-player game has no impact on anyone's gameplay except for the person who chooses to activate it.

- Fabulous art direction

- Incredible soundtrack

- Unique mechanics despite the retro look and feel

- Highly inclusive accessibility menu

- Organic learning curve even though the game itself is challenging

- Risky healing mechanic due to the animation length

- The game has an end

With an incredible main campaign that offers between 20 and 30 hours of gameplay, a number that increases significantly for completionists or those diving into New Game Plus, Mina the Hollower is a masterpiece from every perspective.

It is a game bursting with love and respect for its inspirations, and in my book, it already deserves the Game of the Year title!

Rating: 10 out of 10.

I highly recommend playing Mina the Hollower because it is entirely worth your time. Have fun, and see you next time!