You play as Mina, a whip-wielding Hollower and visionary inventor. She receives a troubling letter from Baron Lionel, her longtime patron and the overseer of Tenebrous Isle. Mina’s advances in Spark Technology brought power to the Isle for the first time many years ago, ushering in newfound prosperity for its citizens. But now, the Spark Generators have gone out, and foul play is suspected.

You will use a myriad of weapons and oddball trinkets to vanquish the monsters thwarting Mina’s objective. Along the way, you’ll unearth the secret horrors of Tenebrous Isle.

The Hollowers are a guild dedicated to studying the earth and its latent resources. By using their special technique, Hollowing, they can move faster underground than above it! Hollowers have worked for ages to analyze and amplify secrets buried beneath the surface. Mina’s Spark technology is her latest contribution to the Hollowing arts.

Some time ago ago, Spark technology transformed Tenebrous Isle from a backwater nowhere into a bustling and industrious place. Under the guidance of Baron Lionel, the Spark Generators were installed, transforming everyone’s lives nearly overnight. But now, the prosperity of Tenebrous Isle is threatened. The sparks have gone out of the generators, and a creeping evil is growing closer to the heart of the island’s capital city Ossex, the only area still running at full capacity. 

Moreover, the Spark Generators were constructed remotely like spokes around the island, making their locales fraught with danger. Mina will have to undergo a whirlwind tour of the island’s exotic biomes in order to restore them all.

This week, our team made a tough decision: we decided to delay Mina the Hollower.

The entire crew has been working tirelessly day and night to finish development for release on Oct 31st, but we’re just not quite there yet.  This isn’t a major delay, it’s just a stretch of time to apply some final polish and balancing to make the game truly shine.

With that said, we would like to apologize! Nevertheless, we will not waver on our commitment to quality. Our goal is to make sure our development team has the time and resources to deliver an incredible adventure and we will be giving you just that. That’s no hollow promise!

We don’t want to announce another release date until it’s submitted to platforms, so please hang tight as we reach the finish line.

The game is so close to being done- we’re playing it from start to finish every day. In the final hours, this is what the crew is working on:

• Finalizing design, art, and sound

• Overall game balancing

• Implementing localization

• Eating cheese

• Testing, testing, testing… on all platforms!

Thank you for your understanding and patience.

Sincerely,

The Yacht Club Games crew

Smooth 60fps action combat, a world full of mystery and horror, and top-down adventuring combine in a mix that may remind you of classic titles like Castlevania, The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening, or even Bloodborne. Whip foes, burrow through the ground, and explore a pixel-perfect world in Mina the Hollower, a brand new game from the developers who brought you Shovel Knight!

Mina the Hollower is inspired by Gothic Horror, a literary genre popularized in the late 1700’s. Known for its macabre and morbid tone, the genre’s stories often focused on a horrific descent from normality into an unknown world.

You won’t want to miss this harrowing, yet heartwarming tale!

Are you ready to level up? Mina the Hollower features an experience point and level-up system (a first for Yacht Club Games!).  Here's how it works: As you defeat foes throughout the world, you’ll earn Bones. You’ll also find Bones hidden in chests, and all around the world. The Bones are your money, but they are also your experience. Beware, there will be ways to lose your Bones! We’ll detail those mechanics in a future update.

Once you get enough Bones, you "Bone Up" to the next level! You can Bone Up on your Attack, Defense, Sidearms, or create Bonestone as currency to spend later. Every time you Bone Up, that category becomes more expensive. Should you build your character evenly, or put all your eggs in one basket? If you take too many risks, you could lose your Bones...

What exactly does it mean to be a next-gen Game Boy Color game?

• Compact Resolution - Game Boy’s screen resolution was a tiny 160x144. Mina’s is 256x144, essentially the same screen real estate, but widescreen. This small resolution (smaller than Shovel Knight!) gives a close-up view at the expense of screen real estate. Each pixel is very impactful!
• Finite Color - Art assets in Mina the Hollower all conform to the Game Boy Color's palette restrictions, limiting sprites to only 4 colors per 8x8 pixel tile. That even includes black and transparency!
• Focused Tech - Mina features sprite art with no 3D, scaling, or rotation, just like the classic 8-bit handhelds. Instead, we use a lifetime’s worth of 2D wizardry knowhow to bring the world to life.

The "Expanded NES" music and sound effects in Shovel Knight were all made using the free program, FamiTracker, and they can be played back on a real hardware console. For Mina the Hollower, audio recluse Jake Kaufman is imagining that the souped-up fantasy Game Boy supported extra sound chips of its own, and has turned to the MSX home computer and its beloved Konami SCC expansion to capture the lush, haunting sound of this chip mashup.

Key Features:

• Hauntingly authentic 8-bit visuals in the style of Game Boy Color, refined for the modern era.

• Modern touches abound: detailed animation, widescreen visuals, and rock-solid controls!

• Leap, dodge, and burrow through the ground to battle monsters or navigate the world.

• Lash at foes with your trusty whip, Nightstar- or choose from an arsenal of weapons, each with a totally different move set.

• Discover and utilize a reliquary's worth of unusual Sidearms to gain the advantage in combat.

• Collect and equip Trinkets to acquire a variety of exotic effects. Level Mina up to suit your unique playstyle.

• Electrifying MSX-style soundtrack by chiptune virtuoso Jake Kaufman.

• Descend into the depths of madness with a bone-chilling, yet heartwarming tale inspired by Victorian Gothic horror.

• Explore a huge, dark world brimming with secrets, challenging battles, and interconnected level design.

Legendary video game composer, Yuzo Koshiro, will be a guest composer for Mina the Hollower. Koshiro has contributed to iconic games going back 30+ years. Some of his musical contributions include: Super Smash Bros., Shenmue, The Revenge of Shinobi, Streets of Rage, Etrian Odyssey, Castlevania, and much much more.

Mina the Hollower is coming to Nintendo Switch, Nintendo Switch 2, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S and PC (Steam).