Does anyone ever feel like difficulty should be an afterthought, and games should be driven by fun and the feeling of progression? Just me? Cool.
Mina the Hollower from developer Yacht Club Games is a 2D action-adventure game that prides itself on complicated levels, massive enemies, and a return to a simpler, more difficult time with gaming. It’s a hoot, but a horse of a hoot.
Led by longevity and stylishness, yet creative level design and wild mechanics, Mina the Hollower does a great job of pushing the player through impossible tasks, while properly awarding them for their efforts. While I can’t say that it’s not frustrating, because it’s quite frustrating, it’s self-aware and provides a proper outlet for the player to have fun. In other words, it knows what it is and allows the player to choose whether to go down that path or not.
Mina is a Hollower, a sacred hero who is tasked with reigniting generators on a desperate island overrun by cursed foes. She must battle with all types of baddies while trying to survive obstacles that act as secondary foes until she can bring peace and generator functionality to the large region.
The narrative is creative as hell. It builds and brings a world of heroes and villains, while taking beautiful and stylish creative liberties on how they are all presented. The story fits the action-adventure quite brilliantly and helps dance hand-in-hand with the gameplay. It’s enough to get the player interested and engaged with Mina and her world, and certainly makes the experience large enough to explore other possibilities in future sequels. It’s a good story that does what it needs to do to hook the player. Of course, the real beef with this burrito is how the gameplay works with that story.
The gameplay is led by simplicity and difficulty, and yes, they can co-exist. Mina the Hollower takes pride in how many obstacles and enemies can be thrown at the player. It purposely designs levels to feel impossible, while also requesting players to think about the enemies that reside on said levels. In short, the game forces the player to deal with difficult level design while dodging relentless enemies at the same time. It makes no apologies for this intertwined way of working, as it wants to put the player to the test and see how well they do in the midst of frustrating, continual deaths.
This is honestly the main hook for this game, as players will more than likely go into it knowing that they’re going to die a lot. I guess my fascination with the 2D, NES-like feel of the game helped me ignore the fact that this was built to be quite the challenge. It caught me completely off guard and had me inching my way through the game. I fully get that there are some sicko gamers out there who enjoy an impossible challenge with their gaming experience, but I am not one of those. If players enjoy that constant torture, then they will be right at home with Mina the Hollower. It’s tough as it is gorgeously designed to be so. And that is a point I would like to make about this overall sentiment – it’s meant to be tough, and the devs designed it well for that type of challenge.
Now, that design process works in many ways. On the surface, the level designs look uncomplicated and easy to progress through. Don’t be fooled by that visual enticement of ease. The levels have quite a few layers built in that set the player up for failure. The biggest of the bunch is traversing gaps and getting through fences to progress. Early in the game, the levels will give players fits when moving to and from locations occupied by enemies. The designs are built for timing and precision, and certainly not impatience. Each level is packed with enemies that are perfectly placed to hurt Mina, which means going into these levels and taking their design intentions into account will require forward-thinking strategies. That might sound like a frustrated writer who is just dumping all his Mina the Hollower failures into one review, but it’s not that at all.
The above type of design means the devs knew what they wanted to put the players through and understood the challenges brought by said designs. The levels and enemy placement were done so with methodical and meticulous care that anyone playing the game, no matter the amount of frustration that is born from the experience, has to appreciate the effort and execution. It’s damn good, even when one is cursing up a storm because of it.
To help alleviate some of the frustration sprung from this game, the devs also put together some fine weapon and character mechanics that, at the very least, will provide a spark of hope that progression can be easily achieved. For weaponry, the game provides four main items that include a morning star, a dual-sword solution, a large hammer, and a shield that has some magical personality to it. Each item can be upgraded and improved, which, again, only stands to give hope that progress can be gradually and easily made.
All weapons have their pros/cons, which makes them balanced no matter which route the player decides to take. For example, the hammer packs quite the punch, has some special moves that are devastating, but also moves a lot slower with its execution. Another example is the shield with some ramming capabilities, as it’s quick as a whip but not as powerful as the hammer. The balance of each weapon, as well as enough variety for all sorts of players to be happy, makes this a nice, thoughtful aspect of the gameplay.
In addition to the main weapons, the game also features secondary items that are more helpful than they are destructive, though definitely the latter, no matter what. These secondary items can be as simple as umbrellas helping Mina to travel across gaps, or as destructive as a throwing axe that is straight out of a Castlevania game. They’re additional pieces of hope that progression can be easier in the game, though they seem to give way to more difficult levels as these items are found.
Complementing all the weapons, the game also has some goodies that Mina can happen across that act as buffs. These buffs can improve damage, health, or various other categories that Mina runs into along the adventure. The inclusion of the buffs helps to push this title beyond NES-like expectations, as players will find a plethora of these buffs that they can purchase or just take. The mix-and-match possibilities are far and wide with the buffs. There are a lot of different buff options in Mina the Hollower that help make the game a bit easier, which only helps balance difficulty and progression.
To cap off mechanics and weapons, the game also features a competent and well-designed upgrade system. As Mina collects bones from enemies and objects, eventually she will get a window that allows her to upgrade attack, defense, magic, and life. The catch is that each one of these categories is opened in a predefined path, so the player can’t choose to upgrade one over another. The upgrades are done through order of operation. Either you love or hate that, but it’s a style choice that was done so with old 80s games in mind. Believe it or not, there was a time when players had zero agency of their own.
Anyhoo, the above gameplay elements combined work within a very large adventure. The strongest part of Mina the Hollower is how big the game is and all the smaller secrets that it holds that are not part of the main story. First, the former, the game is huge. Each generator search spans multiple (and I mean multiple) levels that have tons of enemies and puzzles built into them. The game has an insane variety of gameplay types that each generator level on the map feels like it could possibly be a game of its own. If Yacht Club Games had released this in episodes, it would have made complete sense given the game’s girth. It’s big, and there are a lot of hours beyond its difficulty that are going to be spent adventuring. I was incredibly impressed by the size of this game and how none of it felt wasted.
As for the secrets in the game, those are just pure bliss when you find them. While the game wants players to keep on task with its linear personality, it also wants players to go off the beaten path and find secrets. These secrets could be filled with money, items, or just plain weirdness (like a poop monster). The game will teach players early on that they must keep their eyes open for goodies lying around and take chances when the time calls for it. Not only does this gameplay design help the longevity of the game, not that it needs it, but it also gives reason for players to take a beat and go back to revisit areas that might be hiding goodies they missed, or that might have been inaccessible at the time. There are a lot of reasons to wash-rinse-repeat places in Mina the Hollower, which only stand to complement the gameplay and make the experience so much better.
Taking all the above into account, can only hardcore adventurers enjoy this game? Not at all, and Yacht Club Games gives an out to those of us who enjoy fun more than challenge. Within the game, the player can activate 30+ mods, which will help ease some of the game’s difficulty. By turning them all on, and I found this out halfway through the game, it will essentially make the player invincible while taking away some goodies that would have been earned in a normal mode. This means that if players just want to have some fun and see the entire world of Mina the Hollower without going through the headache of challenges, constant deaths, and levels that are built for the player to fail, then have at it. It’s built for all gamer types. That’s a huge plus in my book and helped me appreciate the game a lot more than I would have otherwise. It definitely kept the curse word count down to a minimum.
Anyway, overall, the gameplay is creative, well-designed, fun, and frustrating, and worth the time and money spent on it. This is a great game and another good feather in the Yacht Club Games’ cap.
Conclusion
Mina the Hollower is one of the best and most challenging games to come out in 2026. It brings great level design, balanced backend gameplay, and delivers plenty of ways to enjoy it.
