Mina the Hollower review: Mouse on haunted hill

Mina the Hollower is a charming and challenging adventure that never ceased to delight and surprise in music, art, and gameplay.

I must say, when I stepped into Mina the Hollower, I was never expecting this game to kick my a** as much as it did. Despite its spooky theming, the world of Tenebrous Isle is a cute and charming place, the music is catchy and stays with you well after you’re done playing, and the aesthetic is unmistakably Yacht Club wearing a mask of the top-down Zelda games of yesteryear. But make no mistake: This is far from a picnic. At normal difficulty, Mina the Hollower will push back on you relentlessly and force you to adapt to its expansive and satisfying quest. That said, take heart if you just want a fun mouse adventure game. Yacht Club also covered the needs of the less hardened with a bevy of options to make Mina the Hollower fun at any skill level.

An island of promise and secrets

Mina the Hollower puts players in the role of the titular mouse as she heads for Tenebrous Isle. Tenebrous is an island supported by towering Spark Generators that power the central city of Ossex, the manor of its lord, Baron Lionel, and the areas around. However, the generators are failing and poisoning the land, and in the midst of civil unrest, the baron’s loyal guard, Thorne, revolts and leads a fight to bring the generators down. Mina, who helped Lionel install the generators, has been summoned to help fix them. As a Hollower, she uses the power of the Spark to fight creatures of the night and put them to rest. At Lionel’s call, she comes to Tenebrous to fix the generators and confront Thorne about his betrayal.

It’s genuinely interesting how many different vibes Yacht Club hit with this one. One would think they were in for a cutesy time throughout. One would be wrong. Tenebrous is all sorts of charming, but in staying with the spooky aesthetic, Mina the Hollower also has some downright unsettling stuff, and even a jumpscare or two. Ultimately, I really like the variety of vibes. And though I felt the story beats were a bit obvious, I still felt completely engaged to see what fate had in store for these characters and was surprised by the ending.

As mentioned prior, Mina the Hollower is a top-down action-adventure game in the style of Game Boy Color games like Zelda: Oracle of Ages and Seasons. It is certainly refined from those inspirations. Every nook and cranny of Mina the Hollower’s pixel art bleeds style. Every area you travel to features its own robust aesthetic and gimmicks, but it also feels smartly designed front to back. Mina the Hollower uses a lot of verticality for being a top-down game, and despite that, it still works and looks exhaustively well-pieced together. You can cheese certain perspective elements, but I was genuinely impressed with how well this game kept environmental layering and height in order where many other games like this fail. I especially liked some of the bosses and bigger creatures and the way they deconstruct when you beat them down.

Accompanying this cornucopia of pixel visuals and story is a bopping soundtrack. Mina the Hollower was scored by Yacht Club in-house composer Jake Kaufman and legendary longtime game composer Yuzo Koshiro (Streets of Rage, Shinobi, Actraiser). The combination results in a splendid array of songs that perfectly accompany the already delightful visuals and aesthetic in each area. I’ve loved bits and pieces of this soundtrack for years throughout the demos, but the deeper I played into the full game, the more I was delighted when a new tune hit my ears and made me bounce. This might be one of my favorite chip tune scores I’ve heard in a while and I’m keeping it for my work playlist forever. It also just accompanies every visual, battle, and dramatic moment in the game so well.

A Hollower must… Hollow?

If the visuals, aesthetic, and story weren’t enough, Mina the Hollower is also an extensively well-assembled adventure. It’s a tough one to be sure. I’ll say right out of the gate that many players will die a lot and get very frustrated at first. It only takes 2 to 3 hits for any non-pest enemy to rock your socks and defeat Mina.

I pointed out how much of Mina feels like a Soulslike in my previous preview, and I still think Demon Souls is the style of game that Mina reminds me of most, with various smatterings of Bloodborne. Ossex is your hub. It acts as your roost from which you explore the rest of the world. And as you explore the world, you find bases called Underlabs that act as checkpoints to allow you to venture further out. Along the way, the enemies you fight and destroy reward you with bones you use to level Mina up and improve her skills, as well as allowing her to buy new items and equipment. If you die, your bones are left where you fell, and if you die again before you can get back and collect them, they’re gone. Furthermore, you can heal yourself by striking foes and building recoverable health that can then be restored with limited, but infinitely replenishable health vials, so smart offense is encouraged to aid in your survival. Sound familiar?

It should, because Mina’s gameplay is more than just surface-level Soulslike. It’s the whole shebang. In addition to those basic elements, venturing into areas is all about guts, strategy and finding the right combination to push through, or turning back and finding another way. Tenebrous Isle is filthy with secrets often waiting for you to tap the right wall or use your brain and items to figure out how to traverse an otherwise impassable path. And the reward is often a treasure to make Mina stronger or a shortcut to make traveling the world a bit easier.

This game is also ridiculous with choices for the way in which you traverse. It starts from the very beginning with a choice of weapon: A whip, a hammer, or daggers. Each of them has a different style of fighting that can be upgraded. You'll combine them with accessories called Trinkets and a series of sub weapons called Sidearms that let you build Mina’s playstyle your way throughout the game. If you don’t like your early choices you can find any option you didn’t take later. Want to go hard-hitting with a hammer, with a Trinket that lets you fire bolts at full health and do more damage for taking more damage? You can. Want to play fast and nimble with a Trinket that lets you jump and float and a Sidearm bike that lets you ride around fast and crash into foes? You can, as well as a zillion other different ways.

The important thing is that Mina almost always feels good. I often found that if I was frustrated with a scenario, I could change my approach in one or two ways and gain that delicious victory. Or I could go a different way and come back much stronger. If I was failing, it was because I hadn’t leveled enough or figured out the trick, and then it clicked and felt satisfying. That was a constant vibe throughout my run. Even at the end when I thought I was overpowered, the platforming and action continued to hit me with new things that made me sweat all the way down to the credits.

The one caveat I have on that is a certain gameplay segment where after you defeat a boss, you climb the Spark Generator tower to repair it. It leads to this mini-segment where you navigate Mina up the tower on a rope while a ring of electricity chases her. You have to get to the top without the ring catching you. It’s kind of a bonus minigame after the boss, but I just kind of find it annoying, and while it's one of the few sore spots for me, it’s also mandatory after every main boss.

Thankfully, if you’re not the type that feels like getting knocked down, trying new things, or taking another path over and over, there is a lot in Mina the Hollower to make it your kind of game. The modifiers menu is amazing for accessibility. I love these options. I didn’t use them in my first run (you can completely ignore them if you want), but they are all sorts of good for easier, harder, or weirder runs. More or fewer checkpoints, increased or decreased damage and life, or outright turning off enemy aggro until you attack them are just a few of the options that can be used to turn this game from Story Mode to Hardcore Mode levels of difficult. Moreover, the ones that make the game easier will turn off achievements, so you can’t really cheese a victory with the training wheels on. Even so, it won’t keep you from seeing everything Mina has to offer.

Nothing hollow about it

Mina the Hollower is as dense as a holiday fruit cake and often just as surly. I was reminded many times over of last year’s Hollow Knight: Silksong. Mina the Hollower isn’t that hard, and it can be softened to your liking, but it does feel like it has that level of polish in its challenge. It extensively rewards and arms the player in fun ways that were always satisfying to mix and match, and the gauntlets that my tools opened up always tested me in new and fun ways. Mina the Hollower is a rewarding journey all the way to the finish, and thanks to the extensive modifiers and also New Game+, I expect I'll have a blast seeing what we can do with this magnificently spooky adventure for a long time.

This review is based on an early digital PC version offered by the publisher. Mina the Hollower comes out on May 29, 2026 on PC, Mac, Linux, Nintendo Switch, Nintendo Switch 2, PS5, and Xbox Series X/S.

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Review for
Mina the Hollower
10
Pros

• Gorgeous top-down pixel world full of interesting characters & settings
• Wide variety of playstyle options to unlock and explore
• Difficult, but fair and varied challenges throughout
• Fantastic soundtrack
• Modifier menu with tons of ways to make the game easier, harder, or weird
• Solid story and a bold finish
• New Game+

Cons

• Jarring difficulty right out of the gate
• Spark Generator tower climb is kind of a chore