Please note that this article contains spoilers for Mina the Hollower. I personally feel these spoilers are surface-level, and you could gleam any of these “twists” from the introductory cinematic, but we are still denoting potential spoilers here. Light spoilers, but spoilers all the same.
And, yes, those puns were intentional. Now let’s talk about The Simpsons…
Season 8, Episode 14 of The Simpsons is The Itchy & Scratchy & Poochie Show. This infamous tale starts with the children of Springfield participating in a focus group where they are asked a series of questions about their favorite cartoon, The Itchy & Scratchy Show. The result of the survey is that… Well… You probably know the punchline:
And to further gild the lily, the director’s commentary confirms that this joke is the direct outcome of being behind the glass for a number of focus groups. It is proven that the audience eternally demands, “a realistic, down-to-earth show that’s completely off the wall and swarming with magic robots.” We horrible peons want it all! And it is impossible for creators to satisfy the desires of such capricious viewers. There is no way to make a show, movie, or videogame that is equally sincere and zany, or realistic and fantastic. Creators are frustrated because it simply cannot be done.
Well, unless we are talking about Mina the Hollower.
I want a retro game! Like from when I was a kid!
You do not need to play Mina the Hollower to identify what is going on here. The color palette, the sprites, and the general “vibe” of Mina the Hollower is so obviously retro, your jock cousin that is currently dispensing opinions on that King of Fighters guy’s World Cup chances (“They’re not great, Bob”) can immediately identify that it looks like a Gameboy game. And, yes, said fictional cousin may be slightly off the mark there (it’s obviously Gameboy Color! Or even Neo Geo Pocket!), but we are playing horseshoes (mouseshoes?), and we can call that assessment close enough. Mina the Hollower is an obvious throwback to the Gameboy games of the “wow, look what we can do” era, which birthed such amazing titles as The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening, Pokémon Silver/Gold, or even Final Fantasy Adventure. There was a time when the system that could barely support Pac-Man was made to render epic adventures, and Mina the Hollower is a love letter to that time of myths and monsters.
And it is not just about the look. Once you start playing the game, you will find that Mina (who is a hollower) controls like a “classic” videogame hero. Firing in diagonals? Not for this mouse (unless you give her a gun). You have four cardinal directions for aiming, an attack button, and a jump button. The most default weapon available is a whip that may as well just be a line of danger pixels, and even the “complicated” armaments are based on charging in different ways. You know, like Mega Man! And the setup here is old school: there are six or so towers that are on the fritz, and you must venture on over and fire ‘em up again. You may as well be fighting Koopa Kids to recover magic wands. This is indisputably a retro title.
But I want a modern game! Something on an AAA scale!
But have you played any classic titles recently? I have! A lot! Games from The Age of High Gameboy Color are still fun today! They are also generally over in about two hours. Yes, there are a few Pokémons or Harvest Moons in there that could take more than an afternoon, but even luminaries like Shantae or The Legend of Zelda: Oracle of Ages will be over in less time than it takes to lookup which direction is West (turns out it is left this time). And if we are talking about “modern retro” titles? Well, there is a reason they are generally valued around twenty bucks. They can be amazing! But they are also not expected to last longer than Link’s journey across even one Great Plateau. Big, meaty adventures are the exclusive domain of modern titles where six interns lost their thumbs trying to properly animate The Last Dragonborn’s armpit hair.
Mina the Hollower is an AAA game that happens to look like it could exist on the Gameboy. Every last area of Tenebrous Isle is gigantic. There are sixty different trinkets to find across the world, and every one confers a new and different ability. Epic battles are not limited to area bosses, so you occasionally are surprised by ambitious clashes with mothmonsterman or the second-most threatening moon. You are encouraged to make genuine, meaningful decisions about level up spending habits and orphan robbing. Subweapon choices matter, and drastically impact both fights and traversal. And if this just sounds like a list of nonsense that makes a game more complicated, then how the heck else do we define AAA!? Mina the Hollower may feature a tiny mouse, but her universe is gigantic, and will likely take a player just as long to complete as Bioshock. Nobody claimed that was anything but AAA! And it places just as much of an emphasis on combat drills!
Though if we are going to use marketing terms like AAA, we may as well also address…
I want cute characters in zany situations!
A brave and intelligent mouse is called back to her old home to fight her rival, a hotheaded bat. Unfortunately, the intrepid mouse finds that her rival is simply misunderstood and well-meaning, and the real villain is the twofaced lion that will show his fangs when the going gets rough. But our heroine will triumph! Because she is good and true and knows right from wrong!
That is every third Disney movie. In fact, give or take replacing a mouse with a rabbit, I am pretty sure that is exactly Zootopia.
There is nothing wrong with that! Disney movies are popular for a reason! And Mina the Hollower will be popular, too. Like Shovel Knight before it, Mina the Hollower features not just memorable heroes and villains, but a bevy of supporting players that could appeal to anyone. Would you like to help the romantic chances of extendable nose guy? Or patch up the relationship between Too-Many-Arms Man and Too-Many-Legs Dude? My favorite NPC is Urchin the urchin urchin, but you there is a complete city full of fun, memorable personalities. Even the monsters of this tale are notable! Moonshine swilling reptiles launching molotov cocktails certainly make an impression, and you might even feel some sympathy for a hungry miner.
Then again, that cannibalism can be scary, so…
But I want serious characters in a sad world!
We had to get to this sentence eventually: like Shovel Knight before it, Mina the Hollower is gravely influenced by FromSoftware titles. In this case, there is more than a little Bloodborne old blood leaking into the proceedings. Mina, Lionel, and many supporting players are scholars first and foremost, and they have constructed this spark system as a technology that is indistinguishable from magic. But they hollowed too greedily and too deep, and now, ten years later, that hallowed system is birthing unholy monsters. Ossex is protected in its cocoon of ignorance, but everywhere outside of town is experiencing… issues. Issues may include, but are not limited to: invincible horror slashers, undead chthonic atrocities, parasites the size of bears, and eternally damned trains full of the undead. Just two of those terrorizations are enough to give your average hunter nightmares for weeks, but combine them all, and the world of Mina the Hollower feels like a chilling place.
And like the retro aesthetics, this is not a superficially horrible world. That silly, misguided bat is essentially an ecoterrorist that is trying his damndest to convince our heroine that she should join his side. And he is right to do so, as the true villain of Mina the Hollower is capitalism and exploiting natural resources for selfish, globally destructive ends. There is even a conversation between Mina the Hollower and Thorne the Bat that may as well be boiled down to…
“We need to take extreme measures, or everyone will die!”
“No! Even if that is true, we have to work within the system!”
So we get confirmation that not only is this a serious world with serious problems that parallel our own, but also that Mina the Hollower can have a future job as an uninspiring senator. Trust the administration, Thorne! We can maybe primary Lionel in two years!
Though if we are going to admit that it is hard being a hollower, we may as well note that…
I want a difficult game that challenges me at every turn!
Mina the Hollower is not an easy game. Even if you swallowed a The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening cartridge as a child, and its gameplay became part of your DNA, Mina the Hollower is an all-new challenge filled to the brim with monsters that want to destroy you. As ever with games including a leveling system, the start of this adventure is the most difficult, and being murdered by a lowly slime is certainly on the menu. Learning the ins and outs of hollowing is harrowing, and just identifying that your digging powers are less about parrying/dodging and more about quasi-stealth mechanics (or whatever you call it when you manage aggro through active hiding) is more trying than one would expect. It takes effort just to understand the game’s titular verb!
Additionally, much of Mina the Hollower includes complicated systems that require some level of mastery to survive. Healing is based on dealing damage to opponents, so managing your recovery in areas rife with pits or traps is problematic. Any deaths mean that you lose valuable sparks, so you must learn when it is smarter to fight your way back to your corpse, or power through to a spark-restoring level up. Bosses are strong enough that you always doubt whether you have taken the proper level up paths. And to top it all off, there are several surprises all along the way, so you might see a dead hollower for no greater reason than someone decided to stick a surprise lion knight at the end of an innocuous secret passage. I was just exploring the town! Why is my mouse now skewered barbecue!?
That AAA aspect of Mina the Hollower leads to a thousand choices, and that inevitably means you can make a thousand wrong choices. Some foresight or a strategy guide will make your life easier, but if you are coming into Mina the Hollower without so much as understanding there is a built-in instruction manual (it’s in the options menu!), you are likely going to have a difficult time. You are welcome to tout the reflexes of a Battletoad, but if you blow all your bones on kears that are not going to be useful for anything beyond optional content, you are going to have a bad time. Contrary to the flow of most games, even the leveling system seems to be almost vestigial compared to the gains you will receive from purchasing the right trinkets in the right places. You can even make your life about 10,000% easier by paying off the right gardener about twenty minutes into your adventure! We often consider “difficulty” to be nothing greater than “can you survive the attacks of this icy horror?” but Mina the Hollower proves that whether a challenge takes ten minutes or ten hours is often a matter of knowing what tools you have in your kit.
Or, ya know, you could always cheat.
But I don’t want to ever get stuck!
Difficulty is fun an’ all, but what about when you just want some challenge to be over? Or maybe it is a matter of you know this would be easier with that shiny new Uranium Bracelet, but you don’t feel like scouring the world for funds? After all, what is the difference between “grinding” for a level up or new item, and just flipping a switch that gives you the necessary support? Isn’t our entire society based on extolling the concept of “there’s gotta be a better way”?
Mina the Hollower gives you 255 better ways.
Right from the start, Mina the Hollower practically buries the player in “modifier” options. And many of these modifiers exist exclusively to make your life easier. And they toggle, too! Do not feel like taking pit damage for the length of a sea monster throat? Turn it off! Know a save point is just around the bend, but you are limping at 1 HP? Turn off damage! Make your life easier with 10x bone drops, or increase Mina’s speed to dash through a hoop game. I am a big supporter of cheating, and the kind of customized cheating seen here is an anathema to the modern gaming solution of “easy mode”. Easy mode for what? I am down for difficult combat, but a cheat that means I do not have to pour over every choice down at Pinky’s Shop? The last thing I want is to die just shy of a level up because I blew my bones on a weapon I will literally never use (looking at you, Guardian Casket).
And if you are tired of “better ways”, some of the modifiers are built to add difficulty and additional challenges to the proceedings. Or just to make you barf (enter code MAXIMUMPUKE to learn more). But the important thing is that you can always toggle these modifiers on and off, so if one particular challenge is too much for you, you can go back to non-hard, non-barf mode to get over the hump.
Mina the Hollower is allowed to be as hard as you want it, and you always have the option of dialing it back to something easier.
But you know why this kind of “cheating” works? Because there is a “game” here that is not 100% reliant on your health meter. The option of “explore mode” is so outstanding because…
I want a new Zelda!
We define genres by their most prominent games. Rogue-likes are like Rogue (1980). Metroidvanias are like Super Metroid or Castlevania: Symphony of the Night (so they should actually be called Super Symphonies, dummies). At this point, there are likely more people that identify RPGs as “final fantasies” than there are Final Fantasy games that are actually RPGs (Final Fantasy 16 is a Devil May Cry ‘em up). And, yes, while we often identify it as an “adventure game” (“You mean like King’s Quest?”), The Legend of Zelda is definitely a genre onto itself. And, in case today’s topic was not discernable 2,000 words in, Mina the Hollower is a Zelda-like.
You know the beats here, right? This is a top-down action-adventure where there is a central town in the rough middle of the map, and venturing off into any direction will lead to a dungeon. Dungeons contain unique monsters and distinct puzzles. There are large, challenging bosses, and every area inevitably teaches the player some new way to conquer the world. Skills upgrade as you make progress, and your piddly “it’s dangerous to go alone” blade will be magical and shooting laser beams by the time you are tackling centaurs. After it all, there is one last terrifying castle/cave/cave-castle where the darkest demons dwell, and you will need all of your strength to confront these dangers that simultaneously test the extents of your mettle and summarize the adventure. There are probably some returning (un)friendly faces in there! And a final boss that has a familiar form and will graduate to something more monstrous. And then you get the Triforce! Yay!
You know it, you love it, you want more of it.
But I don’t want another Zelda!
Couldn’t agree more, fictional header architect, Zelda is played out. How about if we included the “learn a new skill in every dungeon” aspect, but dropped the whole “get a new item in every dungeon”? Would that help?
Mina the Hollower looks like a Zelda, and plays mostly like a Zelda. But the essential difference is that it forsakes obtaining tools for pulling from those FromSoftware titles again. You do not get mandatory new equipment every dungeon, you are forced to learn new techniques that were always there, and will now change the future of your hollowing.
The best example of this phenomenon is Nox’s Bayou. This is the requisite “water dungeon” (complete with raising and lowering water levels! This is 100% a Zelda!), but you will not find a pair of flippers or iron boots here. Mina’s main verb is still hollowing. So when you are trapped in a soggy marsh at the start of Nox’s Bayou, your only way to escape is to learn that you can temporarily “burrow” in water. You’re diving! This is a technique onto itself: the timing of diving is significantly different from regular burrowing, and the rest of Nox’s Bayou is primarily based on learning the whens and hows of that ability. Is this a skill you have had from the moment you started the game? Yep! But you are unlikely to learn it before you need it. And once you complete Nox’s Bayou, you will find that this same proficiency will serve you well across Mina’s world. There is another dungeon at the beach! You better believe diving is going to come in handy there!
This happens so often in Mina the Hollower that it makes you feel stupid. When you first enter Ossex, there are areas that are clearly blocked off. “I’ll come back later with some item to clean out that mess,” you inevitably think. But no! You had the power all along, Dorothy! You are not Link or Samus Aran, you are Mina the Hollower, and you can dig your way into those far-off corners with a little bit of pluck and ingenuity. You just have to know what you are doing! That last part is so important, as no boomerang or hookshot is ever required, simply knowledge. You’ll want to exploit a few subweapons for bonuses and shortcuts, but those are temporary by nature. This journey looks like a Zelda at first blush; however, it is so much more.
That is the critical je ne sais quoi of Mina the Hollower: there is always more. Play it long enough, and you will realize that Yacht Club Games has produced something that is a retro-AAA horrifying ‘n cute game that is distressingly hard and baby soft, and is incidentally a Zelda that is definitely not a Zelda.
And there are a few magic robots in the Astral Orrery. Everybody’s covered!
FGC #736 Mina the Hollower
(More specific spoilers will be deployed in this area)
System: Gameboy Color is somehow the wrong answer. Play Mina the Hollower on Nintendo Switch (+/- 2), Xbox X|S, Playstation 5, or any given computer operating system. That even includes Linux this time!- Number of players: Shovel Knight eventually expanded to multiple players. I could definitely see Mina the Hollower adding multiple simultaneous Minas. It would be the worst thing ever, but it could happen.
- Just play the gig, man: Jake Kaufman returns for a soundtrack that I will still be humming in twenty years. I am going to eternally confuse some of the tunes with comparable Shovel Knight compositions (“Was that Specter Knight’s theme, or something from Queensbury Crypt?”), but it is definitely going to be in my ears forever.
- What’s in a name: Wouldn’t it be funny if the Nether Kraken from the game’s start was actually the nethers of another, different boss? Wait… that actually happened?
- What’s in a name #2: Where does the word “Ossex” come from?
Dark Nights: Death Metal, 2020, DC Comics
Is it bones? It is probably bones. - Game Design 101: The tower runs make excellent set pieces, you know they are going to occur a handful of times (once for each tower), and it is all smoke and mirrors (complimentary). Mina controls almost exactly the same while rapidly scaling a tower, you just have to worry about a ticking clock instead of a health meter. And it works every time! It feels different and unique, but it is immediately understandable thanks to its familiarity. Further oxymoronic trickery!
- Favorite Dungeon/Boss: The Astral Orrery forces itself to be a later dungeon (since mirrors must be activated in other spots) and is one of the more difficult areas. But it is not the most difficult area, nor does it require absolute knowledge of everything else in the game. It is just a collection of challenges that require, like, B+ skills. And I’m a B+ kinda guy! Also, it is space themed! Also also, it contains the marching Lumenarks, and that is the kind of “always be managing what is happening” boss battle I enjoy.
Unanswered Questions: I thought I would get another fight against Maxi the Whip Lover. He gives up after one battle? I know there is a history of people with whips being pushovers in the Yacht Club Games extended universe, but come on!- Strange, but true: Fishing ain’t bad. That has happened, like, twice in all of gaming history.
- Say something mean: I did not care for Septemburg. Beyond appreciating the Fall-theming, the whole “chase” aspect just never felt like it landed. A slasher villain does not stack up against the multiple elder gods that are running around the place. And then it is topped off by Carving Man dropping his invincibility because… he got bigger? Electric? It is unclear why you can suddenly whip him to death. Oh, and your reward is then being able to trudge through a sewer level. At that point, I know the game is trying to piss me off.
- An end: I have seen some people disparage Mina as “stupid” or “ignorant” for not acknowledging what is going on after her first, left alone fourth or fifth giant mutant rampage monster. And I contest that with the fact that it is stated over and over again that Mina and Lionel worked together years ago to get this whole Spark system going, and Mina came back in the first place basically to maintain her life’s work. And that’s the thing: Mina really does not want to believe what is happening is happening. And Lionel being outwardly benevolent helps her own delusion. It is not until Mina literally sees Lionel’s vicious side that she even considers rebelling, and even then she sits down to dinner with the guy for the best character assassination hoedown in gaming rather than storm in whips a-blazin’. It all feels like a very honest statement on how long it can take you to see “the truth” when that truth means upending what you believe about yourself and others. Her personal seal is Spark-light coming out of the ground! “The Spark System is good” is literally part of her identity! Of course she going to be in denial rather than admit her life is a lie.
- Did you know? Early in Shovel Knight’s development, it was planned that Shield Knight (or the vaguely generic damsel that would eventually fill Shield Knight’s place in the story) would perish as part of the final battle, and Shovel Knight would “ironically” use his trusty shovel to dig her grave. However, during production, this was rightfully seen as too somber an end for an adventure that was otherwise light and hopeful, and the concept was scrapped. But you can see how the idea of a mandatory “bad end” may have returned for the finale of Mina the Hollower.
- Would I play again: I never even got around to noting how Mina the Hollower handles New Game+ runs! That is great, too! So here’s a surprise capper for the article: yes, I think I will play Mina the Hollower again.
What’s next? June is coming to a close, so we are back on the Smash Bros beat with Squirtle! He’s just a little guy! And he’ll save the Pokémon world! Please look forward to it!
Damn. Forgot to talk about this. Oh well.