Mina the Hollower is the best old-school action adventure I've played in a while

Modern Legend of Zelda games like Breath of the Wild are built around Link's ability to run, climb, and jump with the best of them. In old-school, top-down Zelda titles, though, the ability to increase mobility takes a backseat to deliberate movement, item-driven progression, and tight dungeon design. Mina the Hollower nails that formula without feeling like a museum piece. Yacht Club Games, the studio behind Shovel Knight, released this title after years of development, and it delivers the sharpest top-down action-adventure since The Minish Cap.

Why the industry needed this exact game right now

AAA studios keep chasing open-world spectacle and verticality. Nintendo leaned hard into physics toys after 2017. Meanwhile, the top-down Zelda style that defined the series from 1986 through 2004 has been mostly abandoned outside remakes. Indie developers have tried to fill the gap with games like Cadence of Hyrule or unsatisfying pixel remixes, but most miss the balance of exploration, combat, and puzzle density. Mina the Hollower arrives with 12 major dungeons, a 25-hour main quest, and zero filler towers to climb. That scarcity of modern bloat is the point.

Yacht Club started with a Kickstarter in 2021 that raised $1.8 million. The team used custom tooling built on their Shovel Knight engine rather than licensing Unity or Unreal. This choice kept sprite work crisp at 60 frames per second on Switch and PC, with zero loading between screens in the 2D overworld. Players notice the difference immediately when Mina dashes across rooms without a hitch.

Core loop that respects the player's time

Mina moves on a four-directional grid with pixel-perfect collision. She cannot climb walls or glide across gaps at launch. Instead, she earns tools that reshape the map: a lantern that burns specific vines, a magnet that pulls metal blocks, and a hollowing mask that lets her phase through certain barriers for three seconds. Each new item immediately opens three to five new routes on the overworld, creating the same satisfying backtracking loop classic Zelda mastered without the modern habit of dropping fast-travel points everywhere.

Combat stays weighty. Mina carries a standard sword that can be upgraded three times, but the real depth comes from sub-weapons. The whip stuns armored foes so the sword can finish them. The bomb arrow clears groups but consumes scarce bomb flowers. Enemy patterns require exact positioning rather than button mashing, and bosses demand full use of recently acquired items. The fourth boss, a giant hollow construct, forces players to use the magnet to yank its core into exposed wiring while dodging homing projectiles. One missed step ends the fight.

Level design that actually teaches

Each dungeon introduces one new mechanic and then layers it with prior tools across six to eight rooms before the boss. There are no hand-holding tutorials after the first hour. The game simply places a pressure plate next to a magnet block and lets players figure out the solution. This approach weeds out tourists fast. Data from the first week of release shows 38 percent of players quit before finishing the second dungeon, according to Steam achievements. Those who persist report average completion times around 27 hours on normal difficulty.

The overworld connects five distinct regions through hidden tunnels that only appear after specific items. One desert canyon becomes a shortcut only after the player obtains the grappling hook from dungeon five. This single change reduces travel time between the starting village and the final area by 70 percent. Such thoughtful connectivity is rare in current releases that prefer fast travel menus over earned shortcuts.

Technical decisions that serve gameplay

Pixel art runs at 320x180 internal resolution before clean integer scaling. Animations use limited frames on purpose so every attack and dash reads clearly. Sound design relies on a small live-instrument palette with heavy emphasis on low brass for tension. No voice acting exists, which keeps focus on environmental cues and enemy tells. The game runs at a locked 60 fps on base Switch hardware without dynamic resolution drops, a feat most 3D open-world titles still cannot match.

Save points are limited to dungeon entrances and the central hub. This design forces commitment during exploration runs. Death sends Mina back to the last save with lost currency that can be recovered once, creating risk without the modern trend of unlimited checkpoints. Players who treat the game like a Souls title quickly adapt; those expecting constant autosaves get punished early.

Market implications for the Zelda-like space

Since its launch, Mina the Hollower has sold over 420,000 units in its first month across Switch, Steam, and PlayStation. That number puts it ahead of Shovel Knight's lifetime sales on Switch alone. Several mid-sized publishers have already announced similar top-down projects in 2025, citing Mina's reception as proof that audiences still want focused 2D adventures instead of another 80-hour open world. The success also validates Yacht Club's decision to self-fund after the Kickstarter, avoiding the feature creep that sinks many crowdfunded sequels.

Critics who prefer 3D Zelda have called the game "narrow," but that misses the intent. Mina never promises vertical freedom or emergent physics. It promises tight item gating and memorable boss patterns, and it delivers both without compromise. In an era where most games add systems until they collapse under their own weight, this restraint feels radical.

Where it could improve and where it refuses to

The inventory screen forces a pause to swap sub-weapons, which breaks flow during heated exploration. A quick-select wheel would help without changing the core design. The final dungeon also leans heavily on one specific item for 40 percent of its puzzles, creating slight repetition. Yet these issues remain minor compared to the consistent quality across the rest of the 12 dungeons.

Yacht Club has already confirmed post-launch support focused on new game plus modes and a boss rush rather than DLC story expansions. That roadmap respects the complete package delivered at launch, another rarity in 2024 game development.

This is Jessica Ali for Global1 News, reporting from Atlanta. 🔥