Mina the Hollower

Really liked this one. Extremely secretful game, just packed with cool weird stuff and surprises to find, at least every other trinket I found had me going "oh man this is a game changer". Every area adds some fun new wrinkle to the gameplay, platforming and combat is fun throughout. Looks and sounds great. It's great! Ending's a real bummer though lol

Outstanding game that is fully realized with its gameplay and creativity. Mina the Hollower is a magnificent blend of Game Boy era Zelda and Soulslike mechanics. It does take some getting used to the controls but once it clicks, the game just feels so tight and good to play. Highly recommend for everyone to try it out!

Pretty dang fun zelda-like. Very much so wants to look like a gameboy color game, and it gets pretty close! The close-up cutscenes and character art is really good, though I wish they didn't fade away so quickly. I only really have a problem with the beginning. It's pretty frustrating losing all your bones early on. If you can find a place to grind for an hour, then it's worth doing.

As someone who backed the Kickstarter for this game (barely; i only contributed enough for a single game key), I'm overall pleased with what Yacht Club Games delivered; but some aspects of Mina the Hollower left a sour taste in my mouth by the time I was done with it (at least for now). The game absolutely nails the "Game Boy Zelda" look and feel, and this is mostly to its benefit. The burrowing mechanic grew on me, and the game taught me how to make good use of it organically, by throwing enemies at me which required good burrowing to survive and defeat them. However, later enemies were so difficult for me to read that I tended to get by more on "burrow spamming" tactics, [i]combined[/i] with sheer repetition of dying to enemies over and over while trying to learn their patterns - and get my own impulsive habits under control - well enough to survive. The difficulty on the whole pervades every inch of the game, and while I found everything manageable for the most part, some areas and bosses were sheer cliffs in terms of difficulty spikes. Special mention goes to the [spoiler]Mined Mind[/spoiler], a boss that had me ready to snap my controller in two. The other difficulty spike I want to mention is the final boss itself - I just [i]could not[/i] adapt to their attack patterns or respond fast enough, and even with Mina's stats maxed out, I just couldn't keep up. I finally ran out of patience and just turned on the Assist Mode set of modifiers simply to stand a chance - and I had to turn on [i]even more[/i] difficulty-reducing mods before I finally "won". It is for this reason alone that I do not have the Steam achievement for beating the game, and that frustrates me to no end. I feel punished for not having enough dexterity and/or patience to overcome that final hurdle without help. I'm not going to delve into the entire topic of Souls-like games and difficulty modes and allowing achievements and yadda-yadda, for that way lies madness and flame wars. But I do think that there's a blurry line between [i]difficult[/i] and [i]punishing[/i], and I feel that Mina may have crossed into the latter by the endgame. With all that said, the game is very rewarding in other ways. Exploring for secrets is chief among them - you're bound to find some hidden challenge and feel incredibly clever for discovering it, and even moreso (well, clever or skillful) for overcoming that new challenge. There are hidden paths which lead to optional bosses, which may lead to greater rewards than the main area boss does. On the other hand, some aspects of exploration are [i]also[/i] rather frustrating. One (required!) dungeon is locked behind the act of finding at least three (out of four) special mirrors and doing something with them, and while that something has been made easier to figure out since launch (for example, the game basically tells you by the time you have to visit the dungeon), it can still be a pain in the butt to go [i]find[/i] those mirrors if you missed them exploring the areas your first go-round, even with all the shortcuts unlocked (or, quite likely, if you found them but didn't figure out what you were supposed to do!). Another problem is the Cash Gate (thanks for ruining my vocabulary, TV Tropes). Yet another (required!) dungeon is simply inaccessible until you have paid enough Bones to a certain fund. You have the opportunity to begin doing so in the early game, but the game doesn't tell you it's mandatory until you've cleared all of the other dungeons. I wasn't too bothered in practice, but only because I accidentally spoiled the fact that it was mandatory, and so I started dumping in Bones now and again if I wasn't feeling pressured to Bone Up and/or was worried about losing Bones to dying. It's a gimmick that potentially forces the player to grind for "money", if they hadn't already been grinding to Bone Up and/or have had an exceptionally bad time of losing Bones to dying. You'd think a certain character would be more than happy to pay to aid Mina's quest, if only to keep up appearances ... Anyway, I had a decent enough time with Mina overall, and the game is quite memorable, for reasons good and ill. I'm not planning on a replay any time soon, but I can't rule it out entirely (it likely won't be a NG+ run, however). I do love the characters, the art style (it's quite colorful!), and the music (Jake Kaufman delivers once again!), and honestly I even enjoyed the story, however predictable it may have felt. [spoiler]I knew who the real antagonist was before I even tackled the first dungeon, no spoilers necessary.[/spoiler] But the steep difficulty alone make it a difficult recommendation, even to battle-hardened players. One last thing: any folks hanging on to an Intel/x86_64 Mac are simply out of luck unless they choose to use Bootcamp or dual-boot with Linux. The game simply doesn't support that architecture for its macOS build. There is one build - based on 1.0.4 - which [i]might[/i] work and which YCG keeps available in the Steam servers as of this writing, but it is already out of date (and missing important fixes/tweaks). So Mac fans will need Apple Silicon/arm64, or another OS. (I know basically every Intel Mac is itself out of date and no longer supported for current versions of macOS, but it's still disappointing for me, as someone who regularly uses outdated hardware just to have a chance of affording it.) Them's the breaks, I guess.

Incredibly good. The best part is the exploration, and how you unblock new areas as you progress and get new items and habilities.

Mina the Hollower is my game of the year. This game is hard. Like, very hard. It's hard to the point where it feels punishing enough by its difficulty alone. And I don't just mean bosses or enemies. World navigation, platforming, even the puzzles push you to the limit of difficulty. At times, this game feels like an isometric souls-like with how critical patience, learning patterns, and understanding enemy attacks all are. But that's only half of it. Mina is at its core, also a platformer. Isometric platformers are rare, so the general lack of experience in this area makes things even more difficult. And the platforming isn't just asking you to get good at isometric platforming, it's asking you to master it. Don't just think there's precise platforming, it's precise platforming with moving platforms, annoying enemy placements, temporary platforms, timed platforms, switches, moving hazards, bounce pads, moving bounce pads, intermittent wind, nature physics (swamp, ice, sand, etc). When games are hard, needing to redo sections, bosses, and so on is punishing. So punishing in fact that Mina's additional punishment feels unwarranted. Similar to games like Dark Souls or Hollow Knight, Mina has a corpse-running mechanic, but with a twist. If you die to hazards or platforming, your spark (which is the bloodstain/soul) will pop out of your body with all your currency. And just like those other games, you need to retrieve this spark or you'll lose all this currency. The twist however, is that if you die to an enemy or boss, that enemy or boss will absorb your spark, and you will not be able to retrieve it until you defeat that enemy. This mechanic feels especially punishing on bosses because if you died before a phase transition or while you're still learning many of the early attacks, being able to retrieve your spark immediately is nearly impossible. Enemies can only ever hold 1 spark, so eventually you will obtain more than 1, rendering the enemy and boss mechanic to be more similar to traditional corpse-running, but I think you should've just started with 2 sparks to begin with. Having only 1 spark at the start just makes the early game especially miserable because you cannot buy anything to help alleviate how difficult the game is outside of early game farming, which no one wants to do. The platforming in this game is tied to its level design, and it's some of the best level design of all time. If you keep holding the jump button as you land, Mina will enter a burrow. You can move around underground while you hold the jump button, but only for a limited time. Essentially, if you don't release the jump button Mina will automatically pop out of a burrow after some time because she needs to breathe. When she pops out of this burrow however, she performs a farther jump of 2-tiles. The simple concept of jump 1-tile normally but 2-tiles when you pop out of a burrow is taken to heights unseen. Every area in the game has its own unique spin on this simple mechanic, and every time I think that no new mechanic could possibly be added, time and time again, I am surprised and impressed by how far they've managed to stretch the limits of the imagination. Every screen in Mina the Hollower felt jammed packed to the brim with intentionality. There never felt like there was any wasted space; even when the space was empty, it was empty with purpose. Empty spaces were moments of repose before or after difficult encounters, space to breathe after you just navigated Satan's gauntlet of platforming. These screens loop back into each other in a way that always felt so relieving. Dark Souls is often cited as the best at creating interconnected level designs that wrap around on itself, and many games have tried to copy this formula without understanding what made it work. While having levels loop back on themselves is cool, giving it purpose is what made Dark Souls so great; shortcuts gave you relief after extremely difficult sections. Mina understood this perfectly. Shortcuts in Mina are often "cool" and showcase great interconnected level design, but the game understands that purpose comes first, and there are many additional shortcuts that don't care for the level design but for the player instead (for example, pipes that Mina can use to warp back to an earlier section of the map; these pipes ignore creating a diegetic shortcut in favor of a utilitarian one instead). As we zoom out into the macro, Mina has a large open world with 0 forced direction. This world is also interconnected, and you can go in any direction immediately. Mina is not a Zelda or Metroidvania. You don't get ability or item progression. Her hollowing ability is the single core ability that allows you to go everywhere. There are trinkets (equippable gear) and sidearms (temporary items) that offer further movement and navigation, but these are never required to go anywhere in the map. There's genuine diegetic exploration and adventuring here, and every discovery felt extremely rewarding from both a cool goodies perspective and a "damn, I really cleared that extremely difficult section" perspective. Even through my rage and frustration in difficult areas, I always left with a sense of accomplishment. I wish I could go into more detail about trinkets and sidearms, but I've gushed enough over the level design that I'll try to keep this brief. Trinkets are exactly as you expect like badges, tools, or charms in other games, so I don't need to go into a ton of detail; there are a lot of different ones that offer a myriad of build variety. The sidearms on the other hand are very interesting as a temporary item. You find a good variety on the map, but because they are temporary and require "mana" they feel very weird to use early on. It's not until you purchase the ability to retain sidearms upon death (and the ability to hold 2 sidearms) that they feel much more like an active part of your kit. That being said though, since sidearms are an active part of your kit, they are extremely fun to use. Bouncy projectiles, an air dash, a dodge, a chained pet. All of the sidearms were a ton of fun to use and were certainly a huge part in making enemy and boss encounters much more manageable and interesting. Finally, let's talk combat. Mina has 5 different weapons she can use, with a choice between 3 at the start. The spiked whip is the more intended weapon because its spacing allows you to be safer in enemy encounters. I played the entire game with the hammer however. It's slower, has a smaller range, and is very awkward at times. But it's got a charged attack that hits like a truck. It's a great high risk high reward type of weapon, and I full committed to it and never looked back. For space, I can't talk about them more, but they're all fun. Mina's hollowing ability (burrow) is the key to combat however. Apart from learning enemy patterns and proper spacing, hollowing gives you a new dimension to work with in combat. While hollowing, you are invulnerable to almost every attack (the exceptions are usually elemental hazards that affect the ground). As such, you can think of hollowing like a "dodge" in most games. Unlike a dodge however, because you can only hollow after jumping, you need "time" to dodge. You can never just "react" to dodge like in traditional games, you need to "read" attacks to give yourself proper spacing to dodge and punish. There's 100% a dance when it comes to Mina's combat, and that dance is beautifully unique and rewarding. Due to space, I haven't had the chance to describe how inspired and fun every area and NPC are. But briefly, some of my favorite NPCs include a deer with a drill for antlers, a giraffe whose head pops into the 2nd floor, and... a leaf. Mina the Hollower is at the paramount of gaming. While her hollowing ability is the star of the show with how creative it makes combat and platforming, it can only be truly highlighted by how fantastic the enemy and level design is.

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