Mina the Hollower

Yacht Club's newest game is for people like me, but maybe slightly more on the sicko side. Pros: +Amazing art and soundtrack, the presentation here is top notch. This is easily Jake Kaufman's finest soundtrack yet. +Some legit great bosses and set pieces in the biomes. Room and world design feels very cohesive, even though it isn't linear as you can do the areas in (mostly) any order. +It has a LOT of content for the price you pay. It took me a good while to see the end of the game, much longer than previous YC games. +A ton of assist options that make playing a very difficult game much more enjoyable and reasonable. Cons: - It is too difficult to recommend to most people, but mostly in the early hours. This is offset by how powerful you can become later in the game, and the bevy of weapons, trinkets and aforementioned assist options there are. However, I have to be honest and say the pacing of the base game (I did my first playthrough with no modifiers) doesn't feel so good because I struggled so much in the first 5 hours. And 5 hours is a LONG time to get to an actually reasonable difficulty curve. - The story and main antagonist is just kinda lame. I cared more about the characters in Shovel Knight, and those weren't 15+ hour action RPG's like this. The ending is also nowhere near as good as their previous games, despite how good the actual boss fights are. Just leaves a bad aftertaste on a mostly great game. Overall, Mina is an awesome game that's guaranteed to be a good time AFTER you get over the obnoxious difficulty from the jump. If you vibe with it eventually, you'll really dig it. And if not? Well you can still buy the soundtrack or watch someone else play it. 9/10.

10/10, got emotionally attached to a mouse with a shovel.

the initial learning curve is brutal (at least it was for me), but once you get into the groove it's an insanely fun experience. if you're struggling in the beginning, i recommend rushing to buy health upgrades.

Do NOT underestimate the sidearms

Fantastic game. The way it gives you a really slow walk speed accompanied by the much faster and safer burrowing, but then limits the burrowing by making you complete a jump first is a really deep and interesting set of mechanics that the whole game revolves around. I love how just those basic movement rules naturally create interesting decisions and tradeoffs, because everything else benefits from it a lot. There are sections of the game I found really frustrating, so it's definitely not perfect, but it really hits when it wants to. Art is cute, and the music has a nice melodrama to it that I found very charming.

How do you manage to make a top down action platformer that doesn't suck eggs? I have no idea but yacht club did it! tight controls, loads of customization, satisfying secret hunting. This game really does have the works. It is hard as hell but personally for me that's a plus, you can always modulate the difficulty with the in game modifiers if it ain't your thing, or make the game harder or weirder or eye searing virtual boy red! if that's your thing instead. Worth beating at least once, and if you fall in love and want to go again the game has virtually endless replay value in the same way classic megaman games do, just an order of magnitude more of it.

Une petite merveille comme on en voit rarement ; une source inépuisable d'idées de game-design, toutes plus originales, inventives et jouissives les unes que les autres ; le plaisir de jeu est constant et constamment renouvelé. Le jeu réussit l'exploit de combiner les éléments les plus attrayants du metroidvania (progresser dans le jeu en débloquant de nouvelles capacités, revenir en arrière...) et de l'open-world (exploration libre et sans ordre imposé), genres qui semblaient antagonistes... À moins que, comme ici, l'exécution soit magistrale. Bien des jeux ont, il me semble, cherché à atteindre cet équilibre entre les sentiments de liberté et de progression, sans réussir à atteindre le niveau que celui-ci propose. C'est un jeu généreux, qui offre un nombre impressionnant d'options, qu'elles soient d'accessibilité ou au contraire destinées aux amoureux de défis ; un jeu difficile mais toujours équilibré, bienveillant, grâce à son game-design impeccable qui fournit les indices ou les éléments pour dépasser ses obstacles, jamais décourageant. Le scénario est malin, l'univers riche et fouillé. On se laisse prendre d'affection pour cet étrange monde, ses contrées et ses enjeux. La musique est exceptionnelle, dans une maîtrise du 8-bits et de la composition qui laisse pantois. Je comprends que la première heure de jeu puisse sembler déroutante si l'on s'attend à un Zelda-like, mais ce serait bien vite oublier que les premiers opus de cette licence étaient loin d'être faciles, et que, toute nostalgie mise à part, il me semble que ce jeu-ci propose une expérience bien meilleure en tout point. Bref, probablement un des meilleurs jeux indés de ces dernières années.