Developer Yacht Club Games claims Mina the Hollower “is more ambitious than anything our studio has created before.”
Mina the Hollower, the newest indie title from Shovel Knight developer Yacht Club Games, is now set for a Spring 2026 release after getting delayed last year. The new release window for Mina the Hollower was revealed during this week's PlayStation State of Play.
Mina the Hollower is a top-down action adventure game that hearkens back to Game Boy classics like The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening, but with the gothic atmosphere and combat flair of Castlevania. It was initially slated to release in Halloween last year, but Yacht Club Games delayed the launch as the game was “not quite there yet” at the time.
In a post on the official PlayStation blog, Yacht Club Games claimed that Mina the Hollower “is more ambitious than anything our studio has created before.”
“A lot of hard work, joy, tears, cheese, and love went into this expansive game’s development journey! […] We put our hearts and our future into this game and we believe it is a worthy follow up to our beloved blue burrower, Shovel Knight. We implore you to hollow into Mina’s world of monsters and mystery this spring,” the studio added.
In addition to announcing its new release window, Yacht Club Games also revealed that a limited-time demo for Mina the Hollower will be available on the PlayStation 5 starting on 13 February. The demo features the game’s opening stage, and concludes with the first major boss fight, with progress made during the demo carrying over to the full release.
What is Mina the Hollower?
As described by Yacht Club Games themselves, Mina the Hollower takes place in a large, densely packed, interconnected world made up of dozens of distinct areas. There game features over 25 unique bosses and mini-bosses to encounter, 60 trinkets to discover, weapon upgrades, a level up system, new game plus, hundreds of gameplay modifiers, a fishing mini-game, tons of puns, and more.
The game's titular character and protagonist, Mina, once built the Spark Generators that transformed Tenebrous Isle into a bustling and industrious place. But after the generators started to malfunction, allowing a creeping evil to grow closer to the island's center, Mina must descend once more into a now cursed world to rescue it from the brink of destruction.
Players must guide Mina in reaching and repairing the six Spark Generators, with each one guarded by a ferocious boss. Players will be free to choose their path and which challenges to tackle, with Yacht Club Games adding that players “will never need trinkets or special equipment to progress.”
The combat in Mina the Hollower also offers depth that fans of Shovel Knight should enjoy, as they will level up stats, choose and upgrade weapons, stack trinket abilities, and equip powerful Sidearms to create their own unique builds. Players will also earn Bones, the currency of Tenebrous Isle, as they defeat enemies. These can then be used to buy items and Bone Up (level up), which then allows them to improve various aspects of Mina's combat abilities. Yacht Club Games also emphasised that experimentation is encouraged in Mina the Hollower.
Mina the Hollower is set to launch on the PlayStation 5 sometime in Spring 2026.
