RecommendedSteam player
Link's Awakening DX, Dark Souls and Castlevania had a baby and it is magnificent.Show moreShow less
0.5 hours at review574 people found this helpful
Mina the Hollower
For players seeking a focused single-player adventure with burrowing, whip combat, and hidden routes, ≈ $11.53 at 
GOG is a timely opportunity at the tracked low. Connected areas, bosses, and collectible Trinkets give exploration substance, while full controller support suits direct play on Steam PC. The player signal is also easy to place, with 87% positive from 7,753 reviews. Standard is offered at ≈ $11.53 on DRM-Free, with Simplified Chinese, Traditional Chinese, English, French, Italian, German, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese, Portuguese-Brazil, Russian, Spanish-Latin America, and Spanish available for the interface.
All-time low ~ $17.99across Steam & third-party storesat the recorded all-time low
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Price History
Past 36 months · Updated dailyHistorical Low~ $18.832026-07Current Low Across Stores~ $18.83KinguinAt its historical low now
Prices cover Steam and 39 authorized stores; only legitimate offers are counted. The chart shows weekly market-wide lows and Steam's official price across the past 36 months.
01About Mina the Hollower
Mina the Hollower is an action-adventure game built around exploration, combat, and underground movement. Mina jumps, dodges, and burrows through a cursed island while fighting monsters with the Nightstar whip, alternate weapons, and unusual Sidearms. Trinkets add varied effects, and connected areas hide secrets, demanding battles, and bosses within a dark pixel-art world inspired by Game Boy Color visuals. The Steam PC version supports Simplified Chinese, Traditional Chinese, English, French, Italian, German, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese, Portuguese-Brazil, Russian, Spanish-Latin America, and Spanish for its interface. The player rating is 87% from 7,753 reviews. Released on May 28, 2026.
Credits
Developer
Yacht Club Games
Publisher
Yacht Club Games
Lowest recorded in 36 months
$18.832026-07-30 · KinguinBase game · same records as the chart above; USD history, not a regional Steam low.Language support
| Language | Interface | Subtitles | Audio |
|---|---|---|---|
| Simplified Chinese | Yes | — | — |
| Traditional Chinese | Yes | — | — |
| English | Yes | — | — |
Show 10 more languages
| Language | Interface | Subtitles | Audio |
|---|---|---|---|
| French | Yes | — | — |
| Italian | Yes | — | — |
| German | Yes | — | — |
| Japanese | Yes | — | — |
| Korean | Yes | — | — |
| Portuguese | Yes | — | — |
| Portuguese-Brazil | Yes | — | — |
| Russian | Yes | — | — |
| Spanish-Latin America | Yes | — | — |
| Spanish | Yes | — | — |
Steam PC edition data · 2026-10-19
02Before you buy
Language
The Steam PC version lists English, Simplified Chinese, and Traditional Chinese for the interface.
Play and control
It is single-player, supports full controller input, and supports Steam Cloud.
03Frequently asked questions
How does Mina move?
Mina can jump, dodge, and burrow underground to navigate the world or fight monsters.
What weapons are available?
Nightstar is her trusty whip, while other weapons have different movesets. Sidearms add more combat options.
Is there progression?
Trinkets grant varied effects, and Mina can be leveled to suit a preferred playstyle.
What does exploration involve?
The world contains connected areas, secrets, challenging battles, and bosses.
9.0
Overall Score
Graphics9
Audio9.5
Gameplay9.5
Story6.5
Content8.5
“Ever wondered what Link's Awakening would feel like as hard as a Souls game? The Shovel Knight team built it: burrow under to dodge, surface behind a boss, and the dodge is your attack. It won't hold your hand, though.”
Our Verdict
How a top-down pixel game took 2026's critical crown
Step back and Mina's standing is faintly absurd. In a year stacked with blockbusters, a top-down pixel action-adventure posted 93 on Metacritic and 91 on OpenCritic, burrowing past Forza Horizon 6 to become the best-reviewed game of 2026 to date.
Remember the company it was keeping: 2026 is wall-to-wall with blockbusters, and a single industrial flagship like Forza Horizon 6 is enough to swallow the entire spotlight. For a top-down pixel game with no 3D, no open world, and visuals deliberately built to look decades old to wrestle the top of the critical charts away from that field says something no Metascore can. It won on ideas and execution, not on raw production budget — and that, more than the 93 itself, is the headline.
The commerce is just as firm. Three hundred thousand copies moved in the first three days, then past five hundred thousand — landing squarely on the "comfortable" line Yacht Club drew for itself before launch, a release the studio openly called make-or-break, and one that secured its near future.
The opening Steam concurrent peak neared eight thousand, almost triple Shovel Knight's all-time high. That is years of Shovel Knight goodwill cashing in, and proof that the small-but-sharp retro-action lane still commands real demand in 2026, even crowded shoulder to shoulder with the year's blockbusters.
The game was Kickstarter-funded, delayed more than once, declared finished before it would name a "true" release date — a textbook case of the difficult-but-worth-it indie, the kind of project that looked like a gamble right up until the reviews landed. Same price, same content, no platform cut anywhere.
Whether to buy it comes down to your patience for old-school grit
This is, in the end, a game with a spine, and it does not try to please everyone.
Decide one thing first: are you here to explore a beautifully crafted, box-canyon island, or to be schooled repeatedly by a roster of hardcore bosses? Mina offers both, but it will not soften the latter to protect the former. It is a game with opinions and a spine, one that knows exactly who it is for and is unafraid to lose everyone else.
If you miss the box-canyon exploration of a handheld Zelda and can stomach death stakes and tell-reading far harsher than Nintendo ever served, this is the indie you cannot skip in 2026 — it pins you with burrow combat, gothic mood, and an isle packed to the gills with secrets. Flip it around: if you want waypoints and a breezy, low-stakes Zelda-like, the difficulty, the spiteful map, and that straight-line-only swing will likely usher you out. Mina and Tunic sit at the two poles of the modern-throwback lane — Tunic conjures distance through mystery and riddles, Mina forces growth through difficulty and combat density. Version-wise, do not overthink it: every platform runs the same, and handhelds are the most comfortable home thanks to the featherweight pixel art that never strains a battery or a fan. Pick it up anywhere, and you are a few seconds from burrowing back into the cursed isle. It is not a game that wants to be everyone's favorite, but for the right player it lands among the best of the year, and the scoreboard agrees. Few releases this confident about who they are come along, and that conviction shows in every locked weapon, unmarked map, and unforgiving boss. Confidence, far more than simple nostalgia, is ultimately what makes Mina the Hollower worth your time, and what will keep people talking about it long after the year's louder blockbusters have faded.
Latest news about Mina the Hollower
Popular Steam reviews
Native-language selection · 10 reviewsSelected helpful reviews in this language show both recommendations and criticisms. This selection does not represent the overall positive rating; opinions reflect the version reviewed.
Not recommendedSteam player
I would put this review down as neutral if I could. Okay anyway here's my take so far. The game frustrated me within the two hours I've played enough to say "♥♥♥♥ this" and put it down for the evening and this is a bad sign, especially for a backer who's been looking forward to it. Difficulty is not a thing that repels me, and the earnest difficulty of this doesn't bother me. But there's a number of things that just irk me up the damn wall. Firstly, I have become doubtful that Dark Souls-seque 'lose money on death then try to reclaim it' mechanics are at all beneficial game design. However on top of this, Mina has decided to tie retrieval into beating the enemy that killed you, except now with boosted health. On its own, not the WORST, except for how oddly fast and damaging a lot of early enemies are. The game's difficulty curve starts ODDLY high. I've seen some people say "oooh you shouldn't expect an easy game from the shovel knight people" do you remember where Shovel Knight started? What most of its early game was like? All this made much worse if you make the mistake of taking the hammer. This was talk I heard about the demo but figured it couldn't be that bad. Amplifying this, the healing system is, put bluntly, kind of idiotic. You have your healing items, you can get them back at checkpoints, very dark souls. Except they don't heal on their own. You need to have *already taken* damage, then *deal* damage to fill up the empty part of your hp bar, which will then only be restored upon going through the entirety of your very long healing animation. It's like if you had to Bloodborne Rally before every single heal. My most minor of complaints but one I'll still mention. The town's pickpocket is aggravating. Three times in a row they bumped into me at the EDGE OF THE AREA and thus escaped offscreen before I could do a damn thing about it. ♥♥♥♥ off. My biggest issue though, one that aggravates me most deeply and made all of this more frustrating. Why is there no ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ MAP? Navigation is, put bluntly, a pain in the ass with a world this complex and makes everything else more annoying than it should be. Finding my way back to where I died? Worse. Trying to get a sense of direction and how areas connect to each other? Worse. Trying to find where the hell I'm even trying to go? Worse. All in all, I'm *frustrated*. I was hoping this game could be something I could just mash my face into for hours at a time, but at least so far it's aggravated me in ways that no soulslike has actually managed to do prior. There is of course many positives as well. I appreciate and value those, and there's clearly been a lot of effort put into the game. But you've heard all those positives before. I will continue to play this game, and I may update this review in the future if my opinion changes. But right now I'm deeply frustrated.Show moreShow less
1.9 hours at review694 people found this helpful
RecommendedSteam player
Recommending it but be warned the game can be incredibly frustrating. I'm going to start with some complaints but I promise I do actually enjoy the game and don't need to "git gud." People will defend the game's difficulty but there are a lot of design choices around the combat that just outright confuse me. You can jump over some attacks, you can burrow some attacks, you can deflect some attacks back, but there's no indication on any attacks which way you're supposed to avoid the damage. It seems like trial and error. Some enemies fly, and you have to jump and attack them, but because they're positioned over a dozen pitfalls you have to wait and hope they fly near your direction so you can kill them, otherwise you'll just get hit and fall in to a pit. You can only attack on a grid, but some enemies fly around you off the grid and shoot projectiles at you. I'm not sure how I'm supposed to deal with those enemies except attack in a direction and pray. The bosses are great, but it's a bit silly how every boss I've fought so far was easier than some of the standard enemies. I don't know if it was my weapon choice (the daggers) or what, because it's not like I can experiment with the other weapons without spending thousands of bones. It's hard to justify spending thousands of bones on weapons when I don't know if I'll enjoy them and there's other things that ALSO cost thousands of bones. I'm sure I'll be rolling in calcium eventually, but it is a pain point at the moment. Sidearms are super good, but I feel like they don't hand them out nearly often enough and the fact that you completely lose them on death sucks. I now have two sidearm slots and they are usually empty. I attack the environment every screen so I'm not sure what my problem is there, I'm open to advice. Losing your spark on death and then losing all of your bones is annoying. I get it, I know other games do this, but with how tight a lot of the level design is, how brutal the enemy designs and placements are, and how long some of the runbacks can be, it can feel really REALLY bad to die sometimes. Not to mention that bones feel more valuable than when games usually do this because buying things seems very important. I know that difficult game design can appear spiteful or unfair because the skill ceiling is so far above where you are currently, and over time playing the game you catch up to it, and everything becomes easier and the whole process feels rewarding. This game could end up being like that, but right now I'm just going through a gauntlet of (what feels like) intentionally frustrating level and enemy design to then 1st try a boss in 20 seconds and then leave. Sometimes I get trinkets; those are pretty fun even if some of them seem useless. I don't think it's comparable to any souls-like and I don't think it does the game justice to describe it like that. It feels like A Link to the Past. Sometimes it feels like an early Castlevania game. Sometimes it feels like Shovel Knight. It has done a good job at being its own thing with plenty of clear inspirations. The art is great and charming, the music is really good and fits the style, I love exploring, I enjoy the platforming, and the difficulty isn't a problem for me, but sometimes I have to roll my eyes at what diabolical screens they put together. Don't get me wrong, I ENJOY difficult video games, and I'm enjoying this one, I just think there's room for nuance. If the reviews about difficulty are putting you off, I genuinely don't think there's been anything yet that couldn't be conquered by a moderately determined casual player (probably with a hefty dose of annoyance.) EDIT at 12.8 hours: The skill ceiling is very high and it DOES feel rewarding when you catch up to it. The game feels significantly better with bone ups, shop purchases, trinkets, and more experience in general. You start to alleviate a lot of the problems and frustrations with bones, but they remain in high demand and you need to spend them wisely. Flying enemies are still annoying, but I'm enjoying the game even more than when I wrote the review. Let it grow on you!Show moreShow less
12.8 hours at review503 people found this helpful
Not recommendedSteam player
great game, but even though i am overall having a blast i cannot recommend this game in good faith due to the lack of epilepsy warnings paired with the lack of a setting to disable the bright white eye-piercing screen flashes that this game frequently has (especially during cutscenes, bosses, and the proto spark trinket) i want to give it a positive review and i will change it if there is some way to disable screen flashingShow moreShow less
11.1 hours at review527 people found this helpful
RecommendedSteam player
As with many critically acclaimed difficult games, the reviews are polarized between "This game is amazing" and "This is completely unfair and bad design". If you enjoy the challenge style of this game, it is outstanding. If you don't, you're probably going to be frustrated. The devs really go out of their way to design encounters to punish your habits in the way of enemy and hazard placement (think Sen's Fortress in Dark Soul 1). Platforming is often done under pressure and demands a good level of precision. If that intrigues you, and you spend the time to learn the flow of the gameplay, then this will be a very rewarding experience. Difficulty aside, the exploration/art/vibe are all on point.Show moreShow less
15.3 hours at review436 people found this helpful
Not recommendedSteam player
Not photosensitive friendly </3 had to quit within the first level due to eyestrain and dizziness + a headache developed after. Devs! please fix this i want to like your game! Edit: as it stands there are no toggles or accessibility settings to address this. fellow photosensitive people have emailed the devs and they said this will be fixed! Until then, please be cautious.Show moreShow less
0.7 hours at review360 people found this helpful
RecommendedSteam player
If you have played a souls game this is less punishing than that. The negative reviews main complaint is the punishing nature of the game (which is really not as punishing as they say) The game gives plenty of checkpoints even right before difficult bosses, making runbacks nonexistent. I assume people see the little funny mouse character and buy it without looking deeper into the product. Like going into Hollow Knight expecting a walking simulator. Some things in the game could be better, example, the bike sidearm is incredibly frustrating to control making some optional areas to get extra bones feel like a time sink for very little in return.Show moreShow less
11.5 hours at review173 people found this helpful
Not recommendedSteam player
i absolutely cannot recommend this game until they update it, will change the review immediately if they do, because there's a lot to love here. achievements are permanently disabled for your save file if you use any of the in-game gameplay related accessibility options to make the game a little easier. this is dumb, and i'd return this if i could. unfortunately, it didn't tell me this until i passed the two hour return window. this is the point when my hands started aching, so i went into the accessibility settings to lower the difficulty. by doing this they've placed the importance of getting achievements over the importance of giving people with disabilities an equal experience to someone without disabilities. i don't want to be shamed or told i'm not allowed to have achievements for a game i paid for because i turned down the difficulty. i don't know why people put up with this. the developers have even produced content on social media advertising just how accessible their game is, so this decision is baffling. EDIT: well i really didn't want to make my review worse but then the mina the hollower developers decided to put the analog to a rape/grooming scene revolving around stripping the main character of their ability to consent and then used it as a punch line to get a power up. these developers are beyond careless and i do not recommend you ever support or purchase their games again. about the actual gameplay, it's disappointing. you might have thought i found it too hard based on the above text but in reality they shower you with power ups and extra lives and trinkets and sparks that it invalidates 99% of the gameplay they were going for. there's something deeply annoying about having a character start off with really slow walking speed and then giving you a trinket to fix it. it's like the video game equivalent to lampshading. i guess i could use the harder difficulty options, but idk i just wanted a game that was balanced well, it's very 6/10 so far. i do appreciate some of the artistry that went into this game, you can tell they really care, but... for the above reasons i'm going to keep this review as a negative and not update it even if these problems are fixed.Show moreShow less
19.3 hours at review334 people found this helpful
RecommendedSteam player
Okay, so I have completed the game twice now, collected every item, done pretty much everything I could in terms of stuff to grab. I still probably have like 60 hours left of doing stuff in this game. This is easily my GOTY thus far and I have extreme doubts it will be topped. The gameplay is immaculate, I love the art and world, Jake Kaufman OST, cute victorian mouse girl, it's really just perfect. I wasn't a huge fan of 2D Zelda going into this. I just didn't grow up with it and never found any avenues to change that. Mina has changed that. It's so fascinating that a game largely based on a genre I really have zero interest in is probably one of my new favorite games of all time. Mina does this fascinating thing where if I wanted something from this game, and I DARED to think it wouldn't have it, the Yacht Club Devs break into my house and spit in my mouth for ever daring to doubt them. Randomizer, hard modifiers, palate swaps, being able to customize your base, etc. It's just so rare to play a game nowadays where you can tell the team behind it ALSO thought about the thing you wanted and wanted it while playing their own game, and put it in. I think the absolute best thing about Mina is obviously the level design. It is actual witchcraft. I have zero idea how you create what is effectively an open world that so effortlessly guides and teaches the player while letting the them feel they're doing it all on their own with no help. Like this is level design so good it should be studied in school. It's a world that's also incredibly dense and fun to explore, while still being pretty huge. It's just so fascinating how the team has created a world that is so vast and also so speed-runnable. It's tight as ♥♥♥♥. Minor things - I like how the animal characters act like animals. Obviously Mina digs around in the ground as her main ability. There is a moment in the game in which mouse traps are laid around to stop Mina and she lets out this horrible incredibly sad heart-wrenching bit-crushed shriek if it snaps on her and it is so funny. There's also an enemy later in the game where they just grab Mina in their mouth and shake her around like a dog toy. - I like that Mina is an actual character. Not necessarily in an depth one, but she has a personality and ideals and I feel like I'm playing as MINA the whole game, not as myself as many other games often feel. -I like the mirrors, I wish you could also make Mina do different poses along with the facial expressions. Give me a photo mode DLC. Nitpicks - The story and world was so fun and cute I was sad it didn't feel like there was enough of it. I think more character interaction and dialogue from Mina especially would have made me love the game even more. - Some side quests and achievements are a little annoying and unintuitive. They feel less like challenges and more like; "Do this random ass thing I thought of during my lunch break." I wish the feats especially more accurately represented mastery of a weapon or sidearm. - I wish there was something fun you could do with spare bones. Not 100% sure what, but on my new game+ run I had literally tens of thousands of them and they were useless which was sad. - More people should have called her "Meens". I also wanted to give a PERSONAL NOTE to a lot of the negative reviews I've seen. Comparisons are bad, you're hampering your enjoyment of your own accord. This is not a straight up 2D Zelda, and it's not a straight up soulslike either, it's also more than just a mashup of the two. Mina is it's own, fresh, game. I wish people would realize this. Anyways sorry for the slightly disjointed review. I wanted to blab about this game a bit because I'm obsessed. 9.8/10 Give me a Mina amibo Give me DLCShow moreShow less
35.7 hours at review172 people found this helpful
Not recommendedSteam player
This game is interesting, its easy to see why some will give it a 10/10. The music, artstyle, world design and storytelling are all excellent. They also took alot of risks and where willing to try out mechanics totally new to the genre, unfortunately not all of the new mechanics land well. The centerpiece mechanic is a 'jump into a dodge/dig' that replaces staple mechanics of jumping, running and/or dodging into a one input mechanic that is definitely one that is not going to click for everyone. These heavy mechanic differences from other genre entries create a rough learning curve for new players. Combined with high difficulty frontloaded by early strong enemies and bosses will definitely cause many to bounce off this game. If you click with this game you will love it, but those who are looking for a casual Zelda-like may want to look elsewhere. The issues that may hinder enjoyment from my experience: - New Jump/dig mechanic works extremely well for traversal, but does not mesh organically into combat. Many attacks cannot be avoided by the jump portion of the move and since its inseperable fom the dodge, leads to the need dodge far earlier that it feels you should need to. Combined with the fact most enemy attacks have no clear visual language to distiguish if attack are 'jumpable' or need to be dodged leads to either dodging everything a full second ahead or unfun trial and error for every enemy move. - Healing Vials, is this game healing mechanic, it is overly complicated and its functionallity is poorly explained. The baseline version requires you to build up 'Potential Healing' through damaging enemies before you can heal at all, and then has a very long interuptable healing animation. Thankfully there are upgrade later on that make it better, or ingame modifier settings to change it entirely. Not the worst healing mechanic Ive ever found but its on the list. - Frontloaded difficulty makes the early game experience far harder then mid-late game. This combined with the rough learning curve for the new mechanics make a unforgiving early game that is going to cause alot of players to bounce off - Final issue I had was early weapon choice is locked in before you can try it in combat. Its is faster to restart a playthrough then save up for replacement weapon at the cost of 2000 bones (related: I don't recommend hammer personally as a first weapon choice) *Note: My review is meant to inform general games that this game is not for everyone, not that I think its a bad game. If you are looking for a game that is challenging, unforgiving and somehow also super charming, them this is the game for you. However if your just looking for traditional Zelda-like, to scratch the nintendo itch, I would recommend a game like Under the Island instead. Breakdown: World Design: 9/10 Storytelling: 9/10 Music: 10/10 Puzzle Design: 8/10 Early Gameplay Experience: 3/10 Later Gameplay Experience 7-8/10 (with more experience and tools you unlock later) Hammer: 1/10 (don't recommend it for first time) Healing Vial: 5/10 (its workable but not enjoyable) Edit: Rewrote initial reviewShow moreShow less
7.5 hours at review315 people found this helpful
Source: original Steam user reviews. Helpful votes are an archived snapshot, not live data. Last collected: 08/15/2026.