Mina the Hollower review: "Classic Zelda vibes channel Bloodborne to create one of my new retro-style favorites"

Yes, Mina the Hollower is a love letter to Game Boy Zelda titles. It's also a 2D Soulslike, a top-down Castlevania, and somehow, something all its own. You can probably find a precedent for every mechanic here, to the point where it's almost impossible to discuss Mina the Hollower without invoking other games. But it manages to avoid feeling derivative by offering a tremendous amount of choice and variety in how you engage with those systems.

Shovel Knight, the previous project from developer Yacht Club Games, found similar success in remixing ideas from many of the best games of the NES era. But while Mina the Hollower takes some obvious cues from classic handheld Zelda titles, you need to know right now: this is not just an indie follow-up to Link's Awakening. Mina is, well, meaner, and if you're looking for a Nintendo-style blend of breezy overworld exploration and lightly challenging exploration, you're going to be disappointed. It's not a challenge on the level of, say, Hollow Knight: Silksong, but it will absolutely kick your teeth in if you're not willing to meet it on its own terms.

Mina the Hollower asks you to overcome an intricately designed world full of Gothic horrors and anthropomorphic animals – Castlevania by way of Looney Tunes – by taking your pick of a cornucopia's worth of weapons, perks, and other tools to get the job done. Creating your own character build is hardly an unusual concept, but here you get far more than the mild percentage buffs that are the bread and butter of other RPG-influenced action games. A single upgrade can completely change the way you play.

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Have it your way

Those options start with your selection of one of three weapons at the beginning of the game, and each one completely changes the rhythm and pace of the action. The fast-swinging daggers instantly feel like the sword from Link's Awakening, and you'll need to make good use of it thanks to a host of equally fast moving and reactive enemies that'll have you chopping away at brief windows of vulnerability. The whip, on the other hand, makes combat more of a spacing game, as you have to set your feet for a beat before your attack comes out, very much like in classic Castlevania.

You eventually get access to all three weapons – plus a couple more – and while I usually prefer to pick one tool and stick with it forever in a game like this, each new acquisition was exciting enough that I had to stick with it for a few hours to see what all it was capable of. Add to that the sidearms, which are Castlevania-like subweapons that have limited ammo, and you've got even more to play with.

Regardless of the weapon you have equipped, as a Hollower you can always dive into the ground, and swim around like a land shark while briefly invulnerable to most enemy attacks. You pop out with a little extra momentum, letting you jump across wider gaps, making burrowing a tool for both combat and platforming.

You'll need to do everything you can to avoid enemy strikes, too, since healing is tough to come by. You get a pile of healing vials that refill at every checkpoint, but they'll only restore your health as far as your plasma meter has been filled – a gauge that you build by successfully striking enemies. It's a Dark Souls Estus Flask system combined with Bloodborne's Regain. You have to go out of your way to be aggressive simply to be able to heal, and even then you always have to weigh when you want to heal. Do you take a small heal right now, when your plasma is low, just to ensure you won't die within the next couple of hits? Or do you try to risk a few more attacks to build up for a full heal, taking your chances with death to ensure you're making the most of your next vial?

But you can revamp even these core aspects of the game, if you find the right items. Trinkets are hidden throughout the world, which you can equip to get new perks. Don't like the plasma healing system? Just equip the trinkets that give you boosted plasma and use vials automatically. Or spend those slots instead on trinkets that let you burrow in walls, keep an extra life in reserve, or a swarm of deadly flies that circle you like a shield.

New game fuss

I could keep going on and on with examples of every way you can tweak your playstyle, because I kept finding new combinations that fundamentally changed my approach all the way through the 18 or so hours it took me to reach the end. There are far more collectibles I want to go back and find, and I still want to see how many different ways I can put together all these options. Luckily, there's a robust New Game Plus mode which will – depending on how many rounds of clears you've gone through – boost the difficulty, randomize item positions, mirror the world, or even shuffle enemy stats.

It definitely feels like the world you're exploring is intricate enough to stand up to the scrutiny of repeated playthroughs, too. Where Mina the Hollower's inspirations might distinguish between the overworld and dungeons, here the entire map is effectively one massive dungeon, with a variety of spokes pointing in different directions to the six MacGuffins you need to reach the final boss.

Here, too, the game lets you approach things pretty much however you like. A clever series of newspapers that appear after each area is completed will gently prod you in the direction you're "supposed" to go, but there are few actual gates on your progress. You'll have a tough time defeating enemies with your low attack and defense stats if you try to hit a late-game area too early, but you're welcome to try. The rare instances where I did a bit of sequence breaking to wreck the leveling curve for a bit were pretty satisfying, too.

There's wonderful variety in each of the areas, from the swamps where you need to use your burrowing abilities to swim through murky waters to the icy mountains that have you riding half-broken train tracks like it's Ratchet & Clank. My highlight is a Halloween-themed town where you're constantly stalked by an invincible monster worthy of the legacy of Mr. X from Resident Evil 2.

There are yet more comparisons I could make to other classic games – I can't not mention the ghostly enemy that chases you around like Phanto from Super Mario Bros. 2 when you pick up certain key items – but as I said at the beginning, Mina the Hollower is able to combine this massive pile of old, familiar ideas from across the vast history of gaming into something that still feels all its own. Yacht Club Games clearly understands what works about the classics, and Mina the Hollower is an incredible collection of tested ideas rebuilt in new ways.

Going retro? Check out the best Game Boy Color games of all time!