Shovel Knight developer, Yacht Club Games, says that it needs its next release, Mina the Hollower, to be a success or the company may have to downsize, forgo independence, or worse, with co-founder Sean Velasco claiming, "It's make-or-break for sure."
Shovel Knight was the first major indie game success on Kickstarter. Raising more than $300,000 over the course of the campaign, Yacht Club earned a lot of goodwill by not only delivering an excellent game, but overdelivering on its stretch goals with three full-game length expansions.
However, that was back in 2014, and while the small studio has released some Shovel Knight spin-offs, it hasn't found its second hit. Hopes are all in on Mina the Hollower, a Game Boy-style soulslike that began development in 2019. Six years later, Mina still hasn't burrowed her way up to the surface.
A new report by Bloomberg reveals that things may be more dire at Yacht Club than expected for a studio with an industry-breaking hit like Shovel Knight. A number of factors have apparently contributed to the situation, including the pandemic, the small team splitting in half to work on two projects simultaneously, and worse-than-expected sales of spin-off games, Shovel Knight Pocket Dungeon and Shovel Knight Dig.
"It's make-or-break for sure," Velasco says. "If we sold 500,000 copies, then we would be golden. If we sold even 200,000, that would be really, really great. If we sold, like, 100,000, that's not so good." He doesn't think Yacht Club will shut down if Mina fails to sell, but the future of the company is uncertain. "If Mina flops, we'll still be around," Velasco says. "[But] we would need more money."
Yacht Club has already let go of its office as it switches to a remote model, following Mina the Hollower's delay from its original Halloween 2025 release date. However, the developer says that the game is playable from start to finish, though the team still wants time to polish, and feedback from the demo was excellent.
Co-founder Nick Wozniak blames the lengthy development cycle for the burden now placed on the mighty mouse's shoulders. "What we're doing in the future is try to figure out ways to have a game come out every couple of years, instead of every five or six," Wozniak says. "We haven't released a game in so long."
The team is confident in the game's quality, but that doesn't always turn into sales. As Alex Faulkner, who came up with the initial idea for Mina the Hollower, put it, "the project is just cursed."
"We were looking at the Zelda Oracle games," says Shovel Knight dev, but the gorgeous Mina the Hollower actually feels more "like a Castlevania or a Bloodborne"
