@smallandnerdy's review of Mina the Hollower
★★★★
I love 2D Zelda, but few things kill my enthusiasm for a game quicker than the phrase 'souls-like'. I have previously lamented my relationship with game difficulty, I love gaming, but I'm pretty terrible at it. Neither do I have much fondness or nostalgia for the Gameboy Colour era of games, so safe to say that I would not have picked up Mina the Hollower for myself until it was chosen as July's Game of the Month for Videogame Bookclub. Despite my initial reluctance, the more I played of Mina, the more I resembled that meme of the bird with the cracker. The land of Tenebrous Isle is so dense and packed with secrets to uncover, exploration almost became addictive as I tried to unearth every hidden chest, little side quest and secret room. I'm glad that Yacht Club provided so many options with the difficulty modifiers because holy shit, I would have found this game intolerable without them. Pit fall damage and boss runbacks are placed on earth only to make us suffer and I had no desire to endure any of it. Being able to customise the difficulty to a point where I still felt challenged, but didn't feel like I wanted to 'hollow' my SteamDeck towards my wall was very welcome. I've made my peace with certain games being closed off to me due to my limitations with difficulty, but I'm happy I was able to experience this one, and honestly I would love to see more of this from developers in the future. I just wanna chill guys. The other side of the coin is the combat, and unfortunately I didn't enjoy it that much. Being limited to attacking in the four cardinal directions while enemies can 360 no scope you from any direction was kind of bullshit, and I could never manage to time the hollowing in a way that felt good to dodge, often choosing to just tank enemy attacks more often than I would have liked. The boss designs and spectacle were still fantastic though, with some of my favourites being a monster house, a haunted train and the freaking moon. It is a bit unfortunate that the game missed it's original release date of Halloween, as the gothic aesthetic and spooky undertones would have matched perfectly. NPC characters are mostly cute, but every so often one will pop up that is horrifying (looking at you, Squealer and Gourdan). Don't even get me started on the fucking clown. Also, Mina has some interactions that are hilariously dark and the part where the townsfolk are calling out her sins made me laugh out loud - such as sealing a duke away in a crypt to rest with his beloved in eternity (which definitely kills him), and crushing a sentient leaf, who crawls away in agony before perishing - leaving his leaf family to rush out and grieve and curse Mina as a murderer. Oh, and the soundtrack is an all-timer - the Ossex theme permanently resides in my head now. Mina the Hollower is certain to be my biggest gaming surprise of 2026. There are a couple of rough edges that hold it back from being quite up there with my favourite games of this year, but I enjoyed it way, waaaay more than I anticipated and if you're a fan of exploration/adventure games, I think it's well worth giving it a go
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