Mina the Hollower Review | A Modern Masterpiece Disguised as a Retro Game
I Was Skeptical of the Perfect Score. One Session Changed My Mind.
REVIEWS
MattGhostie
6/20/20266 min read
I’ll be honest, I never paid much attention to Yacht Club Games or Shovel Knight. In fact, the only reason I even heard of Mina The Hollower is because IGN gave it a 10/10. Not that it’s reassuring, because the last perfect grade they awarded was to the very divisive Mix Tape.
There was a time in my life where all I played were 8-bit retro games…when they were 8-bit mainstream games. Needless to say, I wasn't convinced an 8-bit adventure game could realistically deserve "masterpiece" status in 2026. Retro games are often charming, but they're also limited by design.
Well, one session with Mina The Hollower was enough to win me over!
It's not a perfect game. It still suffers from old-school problems. But blemishes aside, Yacht Club Games created what feels like a genuinely modern 8-bit adventure game.
Is This a Retro Game?
Presentation is the first hint that Mina The Hollower is more than your average retro title.
When I think of 8-bit games, I’m reminded of simple animations, oddly shaped models, and barely any VFX beyond screen flashes or puffs of smoke. Mina embraces the look, but pushes it much further than I thought possible.
Boss and enemy designs are fantastic. Their attacks are flashy and fluid, with complex patterns. The different environments look great and are surprisingly rich with detail. Moving around the screen feels as free-flowing as any modern isometric game.
The artwork also pushes the limits of what I’m used to seeing with 8-bit pixel art. The intro montage looks phenomenal, and each cutscene features beautifully detailed stills of the upcoming level. The environments also stand out, and are filled with rich details that you typically don’t see in 1980’s-era games.
As someone who grew up playing on NES, there were several moments where I found myself wondering how developers from that era would react to seeing visuals like these.
The soundtrack deserves equal praise. Every region has its own memorable theme, combining retro-inspired synth melodies with a darker tone that fits the game's atmosphere perfectly.
Everything about Mina The Hollower’s look and sound was so well executed that I forgot I was playing a retro game after a few sessions.
Exploration Is The Real Star
Mina The Hollower takes a great deal of inspiration from Legend of Zelda. It takes that basic formula of interconnected screens and packs it with even more puzzles, secrets, collectibles, and rewards. I finished the game with roughly 54% completion, which should give you an idea of just how much content I missed.
Mina's signature burrow ability completely changes how you navigate the world. You’ll use it to find buried treasure, jump across bigger gaps, move through tunnels, and find secret passages.
A number of trinkets and side-arms you collect along the way will change how you move too. For example, you’ll collect a pair of boots that let you jump further and a wisp that lets you glide through the air. You can grab a bicycle that speeds up travel and can jump four tile gaps easily.
You'll need to master using these items to get through Mina’s challenging platforming that includes all sorts of creative traps, crumbling floors, moving tiles, and puzzles. The game is merciful in the early going, but some of the later sections take some serious practice.
Luckily, the game is great at rewarding you for completing these tough sections, giving you more incentive to keep exploring. There’s always another chest or passage that’s out of reach, pushing you to experiment further to find the solution.
For players who enjoy uncovering secrets, Mina The Hollower is incredibly difficult to put down.
Challenging Combat With Old-School Frustrations
Combat in Mina The Hollower is another area where the game feels unapologetically old school.
Enemies move quickly, bosses hit hard, and success comes down to timing and positioning rather than overpowering opponents with better gear. Several bosses took me close to ten attempts to beat, and I died a lot travelling between under-labs (i.e. save points).
Mina's burrow ability plays an important role here as well. You can use it to avoid most damage, but it only activates when you land from a jump. That small limitation adds a surprising amount of challenge because it forces you to anticipate attacks rather than simply react to them. If your timing is off, you're probably taking damage.
Mina can heal using vials, but there’s a catch. Her health bar accumulates yellow plasma when she damages enemies, and loses plasma when she takes damage. Drinking a vial only restores plasma, meaning that you can’t always rely on healing to keep her alive.
Mina can take one of five weapons in battle that all behave very differently. She can also pick up side-arms scattered throughout the world that range from a dagger to an axe to a ghost that attacks everything in range. Including trinkets, there’s a surprising number of ways to come up with different builds.
Unfortunately, the 8-bit design does impact the combat. You can only attack in the four cardinal directions (except with the blaster). The controls aren’t crisp, so you’ll often strike in the wrong direction. The top-down perspective made gauging enemy hitboxes or jumps tough at times.
I think players who grew up with titles like Zelda, Ninja Gaiden, or Mega Man will accept this as part of the experience. It’s folks coming from modern action games that might find combat frustrating at times.
Still, once I adjusted to its quirks, I found Mina's combat entertaining and difficult for the right reasons more often than the wrong ones.
Plenty of Value for Completionists
At first, I worried Mina The Hollower would be the kind of game you finish once and never think about again. That turned out not to be the case.
My first playthrough took roughly 22 hours to complete, which is already good value for a game that costs around $20 USD. Completionists can expect to spend much longer tracking down hidden collectibles and finishing the game’s 50 Steam achievements.
Beating the game unlocks a New Game+ option that introduces new modifiers to make the game harder each time you complete a run. Those can include flipping the map horizontally, reducing the number of save points, or shuffling power up locations.
The game also lets you customize your run by adjusting certain features. For example, you can choose to start with the first three areas cleared, or with only specific weapons in your inventory.
Whether you're interested in a single playthrough or chasing 100% completion, Mina The Hollower provides excellent value for the price.
Verdict
Mina The Hollower is one of the best retro-inspired games I've played. Yacht Club Games managed to capture everything that made classic adventure titles memorable and elevated them to modern standards.
It’s still an 8-bit game, so the controls can occasionally feel clunky. Players accustomed to modern action games may need time to adjust to its old-school quirks, but those frustrations are well worth putting up with.
For retro fans, this is a must-play. For everyone else, it's an easy recommendation and one of the strongest adventure games available at its price point.
