Mina the Hollower is a far more complex follow-up to Yacht Club's Shovel Knight

If you’d like an interesting look into the games industry, I really have to suggest Jason Schreier’s YouTube channel. Jason's videos are an entirely unedited look inside his brain, which is filled to the brim with industry news and stories. One of his first videos is particularly great, and is about how Mina the Hollower became a “make or break” game for Yacht Club Games, the crew behind indie classic Shovel Knight.

It’s a great watch, but what you need to know for this piece is that the team originally split up to try and build too many things at once before eventually collapsing as a unit onto Mina.

I’ve now played and beaten Mina myself, and I’m extremely happy to say that you can’t feel the years that the game stalled in development ... but you can absolutely feel the bear hug of love from the game in its final years.

That said, Mina is not Shovel Knight. It’s a far more complex game, which is great in a lot of ways, but is a lot harder to recommend than just “hey buddy, you like the old Ducktales game? How about Mega Man?”