Mina the Hollower earns a 93 on Metacritic and sells 500,000 copies in two weeks

Mina the Hollower plays like a Game Boy Color classic treated with modern design rigor. The title character is a mouse inventor and guild engineer called a Hollower — a profession that explains her signature ability: she can dive underground at any moment, passing through enemy hitboxes, crossing gaps, and accessing hidden passages. This burrowing mechanic transforms combat from a damage race into a spatial puzzle, and combined with sixty-frames-per-second action, a 3/4 isometric perspective, and three distinct starting weapons, it produces a game that moves faster and feels more precise than its pixelated surface suggests.

The critical response landed decisively. Mina the Hollower scores 90 to 93 on Metacritic across platforms — the highest aggregate for any release so far in 2026, placing it above Forza Horizon 6 and every major studio title of the year. On OpenCritic, 98 percent of critics recommended it, with perfect 10/10 reviews from IGN and Eurogamer. IGN compared Mina’s achievement directly to its inspirations: the game reaches the same heights as Zelda, Castlevania, and FromSoftware RPGs, and it does so with far fewer resources.

Yacht Club Games built its reputation on Shovel Knight, the 2014 platformer that became a touchstone for indie pixel art. Mina the Hollower represents a significant shift — a different genre, a new protagonist, and a six-year development cycle funded partly through a Kickstarter campaign that raised $1.24 million from more than 21,000 backers. The original release window slipped from late 2025 after internal playtesting identified structural problems that required extensive rework. Yacht Club described the project as a “make or break” moment for the studio’s financial independence.

The game offers three starting weapon options — a whip, dual daggers, and a hammer — with two additional unlockables earned through exploration. Currency called Bones funds combat stat upgrades, while collectible trinkets provide permanent ability bonuses and sidearms add temporary support tools. Boss design draws explicitly from the Soulslike tradition: multi-phase encounters and punishing attack patterns require reading enemy behavior rather than overwhelming it. The burrowing dodge integrates directly into boss strategy — players who treat it as a passive escape rather than an active combat tool tend to struggle with the later encounters.

The setting is Tenebrous Isle, a 1700s gothic horror world rendered in a palette that recalls the Game Boy Color’s visual language without feeling technically constrained by it. Mina returns to the island after her Spark Generators fail and finds environmental collapse and a conspiracy involving Lionel, a local philanthropist, and Thorne, a former guard with unclear loyalties. Composer Jake Kaufman, who scored multiple Shovel Knight campaigns, wrote the soundtrack, with guest tracks from Yuzo Koshiro — the composer behind Streets of Rage and several entries in the Ys series.

The game’s main friction point is the gap between its soft aesthetic and the demands it places on players once boss design takes over. Several reviewers noted that players arriving from Zelda-style adventure expectations encounter a meaningful difficulty spike when multi-phase Soulslike encounters begin. The burrowing escape mechanic neutralizes many of the game’s hardest moments once internalized, but that learning curve is not explicitly communicated. Kickstarter backers who waited more than three years past the original estimated delivery date received the final product during a period of broader community frustration with crowdfunded delays — context that shaped parts of the online conversation around launch without affecting critical reception.

The commercial result resolved the studio’s existential question. Mina the Hollower sold 300,000 copies in its first three days and crossed 500,000 within two weeks — enough, Yacht Club indicated, to sustain the studio without staff cuts or outside investment. For a game that required six years and a crowdfunding campaign to reach market, that outcome validates both the decision to delay and the decision to build a new IP rather than return to Shovel Knight.

Mina the Hollower released in May 2026 and is available on PC via Steam, GOG, and the Humble Store, and on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X and Series S, Nintendo Switch, and Nintendo Switch 2. The game’s pixel-art engine runs on modest hardware, making it compatible with mid-range laptops and older discrete GPUs — one of the few critically acclaimed titles of the year that does not require a recent GPU upgrade to run at full fidelity.

Tags: gaming, indie games, Metacritic, Mina the Hollower, Shovel Knight, Yacht Club Games