Mina the Hollower, the new Zelda-like action game from Shovel Knight maker Yacht Club, needed to be a certified hit to get the studio out of a funding hole. It's currently tied for the highest-rated game of the year on Metacritic, and we've now learned that it's sold 300,000 copies in its first three days – a strong start to a sustainable future for the studio.
Bloomberg reported the figure, with Yacht Club co-founder and director Sean Velasco saying he was pleased with the critical response but was actually hoping for higher numbers on the sales side, even if this figure is great news for the studio.
"I wonder how come the best-reviewed game of 2026 is not the fastest-selling game, so I feel a big fire lit to close that gap," Velasco says. The sales are strong, but the reviews are incredible, is my read. It'll be interesting to see how long Mina's launch momentum lasts, to say nothing of what its longer tail may look like as those discounts do start to come in.
Shovel Knight was famously supported for years via additional content and even game-sized releases that wound up packed into the Treasure Trove collection, not to mention multiple spinoffs that came as Yacht Club worked to build its own Mario.
Mina is the studio's Zelda, and could potentially see long-term support. That said, Yacht Club has discussed learnings from Shovel Knight and how it got caught up in some Kickstarter obligations, so I'd expect the studio to look for a clearer plan for anything new for Mina. It also paused a 3D Shovel Knight project to get Mina over the line, and Bloomberg's previously reported that the devs don't want to split themselves up again.
Velasco's question touches on a lot of forces in games, and I don't see it as a function of greed, but rather a desire to see a demonstrably great game go as far as it can.
Price is an obvious factor. Mina is $20, and curiously, it's stayed at full price on Steam, skipping the usual launch discount. It does, however, have some Steam bundles with hits like Mewgenics and No Rest for the Wicked, which can help with visibility and sales. SteamDB estimates anywhere from 118,000 to 157,000 of those 300,000 copies were sold on Steam.
Recently, Velasco explained that Mina the Hollower is priced at $20 to make it more appealing up front, saying, "we don't want people to wait" for a discount when "we only get one chance at this."
As for how Mina's sales compare to its reviews, well, quality has never really been reliably correlated with popularity in games. Great reviews are fantastic news for any game, but games with exceptional ratings report underwhelming or average sales all the time.
Games mired in mixed reviews may reach many more people through brand power, which is yet another factor here. Mina is not only a new indie IP, but one with very different gameplay to Yacht Club's previous releases. It's also up against highly rated installments for Forza, James Bond, Pokemon, Resident Evil, and other giant series, just to skim the Metacritic charts. I don't think Yacht Club seriously expected to outsell or outpace, say, Resident Evil Requiem, but Velasco's point about reaching the huge audience that Mina's critical reception implies is out there – a game this good will surely be liked and played by many – is reasonable.
Our Mina the Hollower review calls it classic Zelda vibes with a splash of Bloodborne.
