Mina the Hollower Review
Release Date: 29/05/2026
Platforms: PS5, NS2 XBOX & PC
Platform Played On: PS5
Hours Played: 90
Score: 9/10
Mina the Hollower is a retro action-adventure from the creators of Shovel Knight. This time around they have gone with a true 8-bit, top-down style heavily inspired by the classic Game Boy Zelda games. It genuinely feels like you are playing an original Game Boy Color game, both in looks and presentation. At first the visuals can be a bit hard on the eyes and might look "too retro" for some players, but you honestly get used to it surprisingly quickly.
You play as Mina, a hollower mouse on a quest to save a cursed land filled with enemies, friendly faces, secrets, and a whole lot more. This is a big game, packed with side quests, mini-games, and plenty to discover off the beaten path, and you can tell this is a genuine passion project that the team has poured their soul into.
Your main objective is to restore all 6 Spark Generators to bring peace back to the land. Classic retro game pacing, one objective per region, and each region feels vastly different from the next. You will travel from grasslands to swamps to snowy mountaintops, each with their own enemies, puzzles, mechanics, and secrets.
At the centre of the map sits Ossex, the main town, and it genuinely feels alive. Tons of buildings to enter, NPCs to talk to, shops to browse, and secrets tucked into every corner. This is where the game really channels classic Zelda. You walk into some random house, push a box or hit a switch, find a hidden passage, and walk out with a cool new item.
Secrets are this game's beating heart. There are over 280 optional collectibles to track down, ranging from new main weapons, trinkets that grant passive abilities, HP upgrades, healing upgrades, sidearms, and tons of other gear to help you grow stronger. Some of these are locked behind genuinely clever puzzles that had me stumped for a good while. You might need to bring an item from a previous area, or equip a specific trinket to overcome an obstacle. And because the game is genuinely tough, most of these secrets actually feel worth chasing down. The exploration in Mina the Hollower is excellent.
Like a lot of modern games, Mina the Hollower goes for a challenging approach. There are some clear souls-like and Metroidvania influences (Hollow Knight comes to mind). You have a healing item that recharges every time you find a burrow, and you can upgrade it so you carry more charges between rests. Your healing items also need to be charged by hitting enemies before you can actually use them. You earn currency that you can lose if you die too many times without retrieving it, and you spend that same currency to level up one of three stats: attack, defense, or sidearm power.
I am a big fan of challenging games that do not offer a difficulty slider. Souls games are my favourites, so I genuinely welcome this design choice. It pairs really well with the light RPG elements, and as I mentioned, it makes the collectibles and secrets actually feel worth hunting down.
However, this is where I have a bit of a love-hate relationship with the game. The bosses are fine and can be good fun. I did not mind "gittin gud" and learning their patterns. The issue is some of the level traversal, especially late game, where I genuinely felt useless in a way that there was nothing I could really do about it. Picture yourself on a 2x2 platform getting swarmed by enemies that 2-hit you, getting shot at by two other things across the screen, and just accepting your fate. That happens in plenty of challenging games and not everything is going to be balanced perfectly, but in Mina the Hollower I ran into these hopeless situations a lot more often than I usually do.
The platforming is also surprisingly hard for most of the game, but in a good way. It actually introduces some pretty original platforming ideas and mechanics instead of just relying on basic jumping challenges, which helped keep those sections feeling fresh even when they were frustrating at times.
I think it is intentional. They nailed the retro difficulty feel perfectly, and I understand it is not supposed to be the same as a more refined modern souls-like. But it almost feels like a lot of those situations and MOST of the enemies are there purely to annoy you. It is a bit like if every enemy in Elden Ring was a Catacombs imp, or if Silksong had 100% flying enemies instead of 99%.
Since souls clearly inspired this game, I think it could have been easily fixed by adding a roll dodge with i-frames. Yes, every game has a roll dodge these days, but this one would genuinely benefit from one. The only real dodge option is to burrow underground (and a few optional trinkets that you only get very late in the game). The burrow works in plenty of situations, but it does not feel great in those tight late game scenarios or against the more aggressive boss fights. Then again, maybe this is just my modern gamer brain asking for an easier way out, and I just need to "git gud".
Either way, during my 90 hours with the game I finished it three times and really did enjoy most of my time with it. A few small tweaks to the difficulty here and there would not hurt, but this is honestly the only real gripe I have with the whole package.
If you genuinely cannot stand the challenge, the game offers a really impressive set of modifiers in the menu. And I mean really impressive. You can turn on 2x speed, infinite HP, make the game harder, make the game weirder, and so much more. There is a ton to play with for future runs. Just keep in mind that most of these will disable trophies and achievements.
All in all, Mina the Hollower is and will be one of the best indie titles of the year, and probably one of the best for years to come. If you want to go back to the good old days and relive something that authentically revives that retro feeling, you absolutely have to give Mina the Hollower a try.
