After six years in development, what started as a side project has now finally manifested on our PCs and home consoles. Mina the Hollower has been touted as “2026’s Silksong,” and for many of us, I think that’s an accurate description in more ways than one. However, Mina the Hollower succeeds in several ways that Silksong did not, and I find myself much more pleased by my experience with Mina’s adventure than with Hornet’s.

In Mina the Hollower, you play as Mina, a mouse from the “Hollower’s Guild” (thus the name), who has helped Tenebrous Isle into an industrial revolution of sorts. However, Tenebrous Isle is “cursed” (as the Steam Page puts it) and thus all is not well. As Mina, it is up to you to venture out and repair the “Spark Generators” that Mina helped create, while also hopefully fighting back the darkness that infests Mina’s home.

I want to talk about the Accessibility features, because I think they are important to celebrate here. However, let’s get a brief overview of the gameplay first. Mina the Hollower is a difficult game with features that many would associate with Souls-like games. Mina has limited healing resources called Plasma Vials. However, unlike most Souls-likes, where you can drink them at any time, Mina must charge them with Plasma, earned by attacking enemies.

As such, health is always a precious resource, and if you run out of health, the enemy will consume one of your Sparks. Sparks prevent you from losing all of your “Bones,” currency used for both leveling up and buying items in shops. If you lose all of your sparks through repeated deaths, you lose your hard-won XP/money that isn’t stored away in your den.

It is a brutal experience, one inspired by not just modern Souls-likes, but also Game Boy Color titles such as Link’s Awakening. As someone getting closer to their mid-30s day by day, I remember well just how difficult classic GBC games were. Though I will say that it feels like Mina has more of the Souls-like DNA than Zelda DNA, at least, in my view.

Luckily for those of us who are not as adept at Souls-likes, and those who lack the reaction time that they had as young lads/ladies, Yacht Club Games has provided a variety of accessibility features and modifiers to the game. Some of the modifiers make things easier, while some make them harder. This allows players to tune their gameplay to their preferred difficulty or gaming needs.

The downside is that turning on the modifiers to make the game easier turns off the in-game feats. Feats are achievements recorded in-game just for personal achievement purposes. These are not the Steam achievements, though I’m pretty sure there is quite a bit of overlap.

I wouldn’t have cared if the Steam achievements were turned off, as those are made public and need to be on an even level. However, why not let disabled folks enjoy the achievements, even if they complete them in an easier format? Put an icon on the save file to say I cheated or whatever; who cares? It’s a single-player game, not a multiplayer game where my information is shared with other people. Furthermore, it’s for achievements that don’t give an in-game reward; what does it matter?

Additionally, there are sections of the game that feel like Accessibility was an oversight. For example, lighting flashes in areas I would assume would cause issues with photosensitive players. With that said, there are features to turn off “dark areas,” so I’m not sure if that also turns off those sections as well. Multiple color filter options are available that can easily help people who have color blindness, which I think is an interesting approach.

Regardless, I have to applaud Yacht Club Games for putting such comprehensive accessibility features into Mina the Hollower. The game is incredibly hard on a base level, and as someone who has reflex issues not just associated with aging, I’m very glad I can enjoy the game even if the achievements are turned off.

Additionally, I interviewed one of the developers at Yacht Club Games and was informed that they are planning to look at both the Feats and the accessibility features. Along with planned bug fixes and updates, it seems they’ll be trying to make sure that accessibility is properly focused on, though they did a pretty good job anyway. You can take a look at the interview later this week.

Outside of that, Mina the Hollower is a marvel of game design. The areas can be (in theory) approached in any order, though some will be more difficult than others at the early stages. Mina’s world is a colorful one, but it has a dark undertone that feels very reminiscent of a Souls game, just during a period before everything goes to Hell.

The soundtrack is fantastic, offering a variety of tracks that kept me bopping along as I played and adventured through Tenebrous Isle. The art style is just as good and just as meticulous, offering everything from cute frogs and mice to more unnerving creatures. I won’t spoil any of them, but there is one character that I both loved and hated every time I saw him, just on principle.

Mina The Hollower easily offers 20-30 hours of gameplay. That’s not counting New Game Plus or the built-in randomizer that adds replay value in spades. As such, I can see people having just as much fun combing the world for secrets time after time for just as long as people have spent playing through Shovel Knight and its many campaigns.

I can also see speedrunners and other types of players figuring out how to optimize Mina’s movement and skillsets, as Mina plays much differently than a standard Zelda-like protagonist. Burrowing into the ground to dodge attacks feels different than anything I’ve played before, but I find myself getting into a fun little groove as I explore.

While I have my issues with Mina the Hollower (the achievement issue among them), the six years that went into its development are not unnoticed. The game plays flawlessly, the story is full of wit, and I lost many hours just exploring its interconnected world. I can easily see many people counting it as their Game of the Year for 2026. I also like that I can have a cozy time with the modifiers on, rather than just banging my head on a brick wall over and over.

A PC Review Copy of Mina the Hollower was provided by Yacht Club Games for this review.

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Mina the Hollower

$19.99 USD

9

Score

9.0/10

Pros

• Beautiful GBC-Era visuals
• Dark Story with bits of humor and wit
• Modifiers to tailor things to be easier or harder
• Built in Randomizers for endless replay value
• Fantastic Soundtrack

Cons

• A few Accessibility problems have been overlooked
• Accessibility Modifiers lock out Feats, which can be seen as a punishment to Disabled Players