Yacht Club Games "make-or-break" moment Mina the Hollower gets a May release date

The mouse is almost in the house

It's been four years since Yacht Club Games last put out a game, and 12 years since Shovel Knight first launched. In those years, their entire output has been completely Shovel Knight focused, in the form of either expansions or spin-offs. Back in 2022, they announced something new: Mina the Hollower. And after an indefinite delay, the Zelda-ish action adventure game has a release date.

That date is soon, actually, as it's arriving on May 29th, just a few weeks away. It will also only be $20, a very reasonable sounding amount of funds to part with for what looks like quite an authentic yet still modern interpretation of Game Boy Color games. For those that haven't heard of the game yet, you play as the titular Mina, a "renowned Hollower hurtled into a desperate mission to rescue a cursed island." There's certainly a nice gothic vibe about the whole thing, more in the vein of Castlevania than say Bloodborne, with some obvious love for the classic 2D Zeldas in there.

The success of Mina the Hollower also sounds quite pivotal for Yacht Club Games. Last year, the studio shared in an interview that the game is something of a "make-or-break" moment for them. "If we sold 500,000 copies, then we would be golden. If we sold even 200,000, that would be really, really great," the studio said at the time, continuing on to say, "If we sold, like, 100,000, that’s not so good." To assuage some concern they did at least say that if the game flops they'd "still be around."

Personally, the thing I'm most curious about is what a completely new Yacht Club Games game looks like. Even as different as some of the Shovel Knight spin-offs are, they'll still have shared some design sensibilities here and there, or at the very least a particular ethos. Not to mention that 2014 was a very different time for the indie game scene, where retro throwbacks were a lot more in vogue than now where they're almost a dime a dozen. Fingers crossed for the team that it pays off for them.