PAX: Mina the Hollower mixes fast action with Game Boy nostalgia

destructoid.com:

Yacht Club Games has been the “Shovel Knight studio” for a long time. Since the blue knight first took up the spade, the studio has made and published many spin-offs. With Mina the Hollower, it’s trying something different. And a change of scenery feels like it’s ignited a spark for Yacht Club.

Rather than the themed side-scrolling platforming of Shovel Knight, Mina the Hollower takes directly after Game Boy treasures like The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening or the Oracle games. This was an overt direction Yacht Club went for, as a “love letter” to the Game Boy Color, as lead artist Sandy Gordon describes it.

“So after doing Shovel Knight, we knew we wanted to do something different,” Gordon said. “And we also knew that we wanted to do something that hit similar nostalgia buttons, but not the same ones, right?”

Gordon cites the Game Boy Zelda entries as inspirations, but also those like Dragon Quest III and Monsters. They went for for something a little more muted and less saturated, but still inspired by their favorite Game Boy Color games. It’s a mix of the new and old, and we got a chance to go hands on with it at PAX East 2023.

There is platforming and navigating treacherous obstacles, all while slimes, birds, and other monsters trying to take you down. Moving through stages becomes a careful dance of spacing and cautious advances. Mina is powerful, but not invulnerable, and depending on the attacks you use, a big wind-up could lead to a big opening. There were a few enemies who had no problem with smacking me down in a couple of hits.

Mina is not ill-equipped, however. While the look and style of platforming is quite like Link’s Awakening, there’s a decent amount of Castlevania and even a splash of Bloodborne too.