Yacht Club Games, creator of the delectable Shovel Knight games, promised some big news this week. Earlier on the Xplay Live show hosted by G4, the company revealed Mina the Hollower, a retro, Zelda-like game now on Kickstarter. The game stars Mina, a little mouse taking on a dangerous world.
Shovel Knight felt like a celebration of classic, action platformers of yore, and Mina looks to do that same with Zelda-likes. Yacht Club’s Kickstarter page for the game makes it pretty clear just exactly what kind of influence spurned Mina the Hollower‘s creation. It takes cues from Castlevania, Bloodborne, and the best Zelda game, The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening. The result of these various ingredients is a colorful action game with dark themes, monsters, and of course, plenty of pots to chuck at enemies.
“Smooth 60fps action combat, a world full of mystery and horror, and top-down adventuring combine in a mix that may remind you of classic titles like Castlevania, The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening, or even Bloodborne,” reads the game’s description. “Whip foes, burrow through the ground, and explore a pixel-perfect world in Mina the Hollower, a brand new game from the developers who brought you Shovel Knight!”
“What is a mouse?”
Mina, as described by Yacht Club, is a Hollower (title drop) — a member of a guild “dedicated to studying the earth and its latent resources.” This is some fancy talk for what amounts to a set of abilities you can use as Mina. She’s able to burrow underground, and use skills befitting a Hollower. There aren’t many more details on her abilities. For the most part, the game seems designed around exploration and using a whip for combat.
Yacht Club writes that the story of Mina the Hollower is darker than the original Shovel Knight. The developer is basing the game’s theme on the latter’s expansion, Specter of Torment.
“That’s why Mina the Hollower is inspired by Gothic Horror, a literary genre popularized in the late 1700’s,” explains Yacht Club. “Known for its macabre and morbid tone, the genre’s stories often focused on a horrific descent from normality into an unknown world. Many of our popular horror fiction stories come from this era- Dracula, Frankenstein, The Picture of Dorian Gray, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde – and countless others.”
If you’re interested in knowing more, or would like to support the game, you can check out its Kickstarter page. The page includes everything to know about the Mina the Hollower, and its world, characters, and enemies.
