Mina the Hollower review: A speedrunner’s dream

Mina the Hollower is a deeply impressive game, built by Yacht Club Games, the team behind Shovel Knight, and it feels like an homage to a classic era of top-down action-adventure games. With a vast world, interesting lore, and punchy combat, it’s a delight to rip through.

As someone who can’t get enough of challenge runs and speedruns – my success rate is classified, thank you very much – I’ve found Mina the Hollower to be a game that I return to time and time again. Here’s Kyusai’s full review of Mina the Hollower, looking at why it’s a speedrunner’s dream.

The perfect game for challenge runs

In Mina the Hollower, you play as the titular Mina, a Hollower mouse aiming to rescue an island that’s fallen under darkness. Hollowers have the power to burrow underground and launch themselves at their enemies, among other skills, and Mina is particularly well known for her skills with both engineering and battle.

She arrives on Tenebrous Isle after a ship wreck, ending up with the tricky task of restoring the island’s powerful Spark generator spires and protecting the island from the monsters that roam its shores.

You’ll need to take Mina through a variety of unique zones and regions, navigating top-down overworld platforming challenges, defeating enemies, and picking up an absolute truckload of collectibles along the way.

It’s standard fantasy RPG fare – a cursed land, a talented hero, a barrage of enemies and boss fights – but it’s executed beautifully here.

I got the impression that the Yacht Club Games team worked on this game as a love letter to fantasy RPGs and classics like Zelda or even Gothic, in a way, largely due to the narrative and style of overworld exploration. If you’re an RPG geek, you’ll likely feel the same while playing; the world has been made with care and attention to detail.

I’m a big fan of secret-hunting and collectibles, and I was giddy with delight when exploring Mina the Hollower’s collectible options.

There are scores of treasures on offer, ranging from Kears that unlock new paths to special Sidearms that act as secondary weapons, with the majority being tucked behind puzzles or platforming challenges.

Speaking of Sidearms and secondary weapons, there’s a simple but strong combat system in this game, largely based on burrowing and timing your attacks well.

Mina can access a wide variety of weapons, with a hammer, whip, and twin blades being two of the most enjoyable options, and Sidearms help to add extra variety into the mix with the addition of daggers, battle companions, or throwing axes.

Something I liked about the Sidearm system was that these tools could also be used for platforming challenges and movement-enhancing, not just combat. There are drills and parasols, for example, that can help you scale cliffs or cross wide gaps, meaning switching through Sidearms is crucial for success.

In fact, there are some challenges and hidden tasks that are impossible without a combination of Sidearms.

I won’t spoil when this appears, but there’s one particular treasure locked behind a huge jump where you’ll need a bike, a drill, and a floating wisp – all very normal items to have in your pockets. After finding my first one of these challenges, I felt incentivized to keep experimenting with my tool kit while exploring.

A vast, intricate world

Mina the Hollower has several dungeons scattered throughout its world, each teeming with interesting critters and – you guessed it – more collectibles and treasures to hunt down. They present a decent level of challenge, particularly later in the game, and I found exploring them to be rewarding in terms of items and upgrades.

If you’re interested in making the game as hard as possible, there is a veritable buffet of modifiers to choose from.

It’s not just a case of increasing enemy health or decreasing Mina’s stats; you can impact everything from weapons and spawns, to how the screen looks and what boss fights feel like. If, like me, you’re determined to make games as miserable as possible for yourself for some reason – Silksong fans, rise up – there are plenty of challenge options here.

It’s not just increases in difficulty on offer, either. You can opt for a more relaxed, story-led approach, limiting damage taken and implementing helpful features like being able to walk on pits or teleport to Ossex, the central city, whenever you need.

I loved the fact that the game team considered both mindsets behind modifiers and made sure to include plenty of accessibility options, too. Plus, there are sillier modifiers woven in here as well, including the option to play as a constantly-dancing Mina. Delightful.

I can’t rave enough about the art style in Mina the Hollower. I’m a sucker for pixel art across genres, be that cozy games or sci-fi horror, and the spritework in this title is deliciously well-made. Every enemy, item, and NPC felt like it’d been meticulously built, with bags of charm and personality.

The world was a delight to explore, too. While I found a few areas slightly hard to parse visually – namely the hedge mazes in Kindlewood – the regions were generally beautiful and made great use of color to keep things engaging.

In terms of performance, the game ran smoothly during my time with it and I didn’t encounter any quirks or bugs, other than the water-skiing bugs in the swampy areas.

The experience felt polished from start to finish, aside from the one playthrough where I tried to use keyboard and mouse over a controller. I would highly recommend playing this with a controller where possible, as it leads to a much more enjoyable and responsive experience, particularly in combat.

If you’ve not played Mina the Hollower yet, it’s well worth a look. It’s a vast and deeply impressive world, and it’s got something to offer all sorts of gamers.

Completionists have plenty of achievements to hunt, there’s an easy-going, story-mode option, and there’s a fiendish level of modifiers for the masochistic side of the gaming community. There’s enough challenge in its puzzles and platforming to keep things interesting, but it’s not bitterly unfair. All in all, it’s a well-balanced gem.

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