When it comes to top-down action platformer games, The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past and Link’s Awakening still both reign supreme. Their simple combat design along with rewarding exploration and semi-challenging puzzles both set the bar and gave inspiration to game designers for decades to come. There’s been more games in their ilk, hell, there’s been many more 2D Zelda games, but none of them felt like true successors to the formula. That is until now, with Yacht Club Games’ Mina the Hollower.
Calling this a Zelda-like does Mina some disservice, but I also think it’s more accurate than any other single label. For the longest time, Zelda games were defined by a fairly straightforward game loop: find a dungeon, collect the new item or weapon in that dungeon, and then beat the boss using that tool. Rinse and repeat six to twelve times. Nintendo themselves have challenged that notion since 2013’s A Link Between Worlds, where the tools could be rented out at any time, and dungeons challenged in a non-linear order. This was followed up by both Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom, where all the tools were given to you in the first hour and then you’re set free after that.
So the past 15 years or so of Zelda games have relaxed what a Zelda-like actually is. It’s less now about a rote order of dungeons and tool gathering, and more about exploring the world, finding its weak points with the tools you have at the moment, and venturing deeper. Mina the Hollower recognizes this and throws you into a populated world absolutely packed with enemies, pits, and puzzles that can virtually all be tackled immediately, but it’s up to you to find the next area you feel equipped for.
But Mina is also a Castlevania-like (but distinctly not a Metroidvania), with sub-weapons, different main weapon options, tough platforming during fights, and an emphasis on secret discovery (also a lot like Shovel Knight, unsurprisingly). It has Dark Souls elements too, with safe rooms that respawn the enemies and replenish your health (and the game’s Estus Flask substitute). You even collect bones to level up (bone up!) with and lose them if you die too many times in a row. It’s almost like Mina the Hollower is a modern game with many influences! Some of these work well together, others not so much.
Mina herself is a mouse who in the past invented and installed giant Spark generators across Tenebrous Isle. Those generators are now acting up and kingdom leader Lionel has recalled Mina to repair them. She’s confronted by Thorne the bat, who proclaims the generators are turning denizens into monsters and begs Mina to destroy them, before attacking her. This is laid out over the game’s first hour and it immediately feels obvious how it’s setting up a twist, but the premise is set efficiently and mostly only revisited when dungeons are completed.
The game’s world is broken down into six areas with dungeons integrated into them surrounding a town in the middle. It’s generally one big overworld, with the line between “going to the dungeon” and “in the dungeon” very fuzzy. You’ll often find shortcuts and warps that bring you back closer to town, even in the middle of a dungeon. The lack of classical structure with the game’s dungeons makes them feel underdeveloped and indistinct. There’s no new weapon or tool to collect, so eventually you’ll just run across the dungeon boss and do battle. It’s not bad, but it doesn’t feel great, and the sense of place is quickly lost.
This is exacerbated by a lack of overworld map in the game, a staple of both Zelda and Castlevania. Games don’t need to do everything their ancestors did to be successful, they don’t even need a map, but the lack of pause map in Mina the Hollower makes navigation rather annoying at times. Later in the game you’re required to backtrack to some previous areas and dungeons and I literally could not remember how to even get to a few of them. Not just making my way through them, but to get to them in the first place.
But when you’re not feeling lost, the game has an incredible rhythm to it. Hollowing allows you to burrow underground and pop up behind enemies or solve puzzles in unique ways. It feels so good to hollow: you’re not only faster than simple walking but you get a nice big jump when you explode out. Plus there are a ton of interactions with the game’s many trinkets, from hollowing longer or faster to hurting enemies upon ascending. You can eventually equip a slew of trinkets at once giving you finer control over how you want to tailor Mina. I generally stuck with an extra life, a trinket that would always refill some health when using a flask, and one that let me take a few steps onto a pit.
The game is tough though, especially at the beginning when you have limited health and few options at your disposal. I died quite a few times and lost some bones along the way until I had beaten my second boss, it was around this point that I felt the game flipped and almost got too easy. I didn’t lose bones again until well into the endgame when they didn’t matter. There’s a host of game modifiers at your disposal though, similar to Celeste’s assist mode. You can turn off pit damage or reduce enemy damage, along with over 200 other switches. Most of them disable achievements though, and while I was playing on Switch 2 that lacks a formal achievement system, I wanted to beat the game the first time without any mods.
Beating the final boss took me 20 hours, and then another 10 hours to hit 100% completion. Secret hunting was such a joy in the post game, until it wasn’t and became extremely tedious. My last few percentage points were on scrolling stages that if I missed the secret I would have to loop around again to attempt it, kind of annoying! Overall, it was a fun challenge to go for 100%, but I don’t think I would do it again.
There’s a souls-like New Game Plus which is actually a new thing to me. I only just started the first New Game Plus, but it gave me everything I had collected in the first completion but made enemies harder and allowed me to level up more. I’m not sure how far I’ll delve into it but it’s nice to know the challenge is there; plus I could pair it with experimenting with some of the game’s extensive modifiers.
Mina the Hollower is extremely fun in the moment to moment gameplay, but suffers from a lack of overworld map and insubstantial dungeon design. It’s a must play though for fans of any of its predecessors, as its puzzle design and burrowing gameplay is sure to put it in the annals of 2D adventures. And a very cool thing: it runs at 120hz on the Switch 2! Like hollowing through butter.
