Mina the Hollower is the best-reviewed game of 2026, holding a 93 Metascore across 38 critic reviews, two points clear of Forza Horizon 6 (Metacritic, 2026). It launched May 29, 2026 for $19.99 and sold 300,000 copies in its first three days.
Those two numbers together are the actual story. A $19.99 game from a 40-person studio outscored every AAA release of the year in a year where the ceiling was 90. Yacht Club Games did not make a bigger game than everyone else — it made a tighter one.
Note
Key Takeaways
- 93 Metascore from 38 critics, the highest-rated game of 2026 so far.
- $19.99 on Switch, Switch 2, PS5, Xbox Series X|S, Steam, macOS and Linux.
- Roughly a 20-hour campaign, with the burrow mechanic as its defining verb.
- Sidearms grant active attack effects, Trinkets grant passive buffs — this is the build system.
- Difficulty is Souls-adjacent, not Zelda-adjacent. Go in expecting to die.
What Is Mina the Hollower?
Mina the Hollower is a top-down action-adventure game from Yacht Club Games, the studio behind Shovel Knight, and it is the first title the team has released outside that series (Yacht Club Games, 2026). You play Mina, a Hollower, armed with a whip and the ability to burrow underground.
The shorthand every reviewer reached for is "gothic Zelda with Castlevania weapons and Dark Souls difficulty." That is lazy but not wrong. The structural DNA is Link's Awakening; the combat pressure is closer to Hollow Knight.
Mina the Hollower
Game Rating: 9/10
Developer: Yacht Club Games
The presentation is deliberate 8-bit-plus pixel art with a Game Boy Color palette pushed through modern lighting. It is the least interesting thing about the game and the first thing everyone notices, which is a slightly unfair trade.
Is Mina the Hollower Actually Worth $19.99?
Yes, and it is not close. A 20-hour campaign at $19.99 works out to about a dollar per hour, against a 93 Metascore — a value ratio no full-price 2026 release comes near (Metacritic, 2026). IGN, RPG Site and Screen Rant all awarded perfect scores.
The relevant comparison is not other indies. It is that Marvel's Wolverine will ask $69.99 in September, and Mina is currently the higher-rated product by a comfortable margin.
Dungeon Design
The dungeons are the budget. Layered, secret-dense, and built so that a room you failed at hour two becomes trivial at hour twelve without ever being nerfed.
Combat Tuning
Enemy attacks telegraph in single frames and punish greed. This is hand-tuned work, not systemic difficulty scaling.
Build Variety
Sidearms and Trinkets combine into genuinely different playstyles across a single 20-hour run.
The Studio Context Nobody Mentions
Yacht Club has been open that Mina mattered commercially — this was the studio's first swing outside Shovel Knight, and the coverage before launch openly framed it as a make-or-break release. Selling 300,000 copies in three days settled that question. It also explains the density: this is a game made by people who could not afford to pad it.
How Does the Burrow Mechanic Work?
Burrowing is the game's core verb. Mina can dig into the ground and re-emerge elsewhere, and a large share of the game's traps, closed paths and boss patterns are built specifically around timing that dive (Metacritic, 2026).
It is not a dodge roll with extra steps. Burrowing changes your position on the grid, not just your invulnerability window, so it doubles as movement, evasion, and a puzzle-solving tool simultaneously. The learning curve is entirely about when, not whether.
Warning
The first three hours are the hardest three hours. Mina does not ease you in, and the burrow timing is unintuitive until it suddenly isn't. Reviewers who bounced off early games in this genre consistently reported the click happening somewhere around the second dungeon. If you are still fighting the controls at hour two, that is the intended experience, not a signal to refund.
Sidearms and Trinkets
The build system splits cleanly in two, which is unusually legible for a game in this genre.
| # | System | What It Does | Slot Type |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Sidearms | Grant special attack effects used actively in combat | Active |
| 2 | Trinkets | Grant passive buffs to stats, resources and resistances | Passive |
| 3 | Whip | Base weapon, upgraded rather than replaced | Core |
| 4 | Burrow | Movement, evasion and traversal tool | Innate |
The point of the split is that Sidearms change what you do and Trinkets change what you survive. Stacking both toward one strategy is how the game rewards a second playthrough.
How Long Is Mina the Hollower?
The main campaign runs roughly 20 hours, based on the figure cited consistently across launch reviews. Secret-hunting and optional content push it higher, and the game is dense with both.
Front-Loaded Difficulty
The skill ceiling arrives early. By the midpoint you are executing rather than learning, which is the correct shape for a 20-hour game.
Exploration Pays
Optional paths hold Sidearms and Trinkets, not just currency. Skipping them measurably weakens your build.
No Filler
There is no crafting grind, no collectible checklist, and no map bloat. The 20 hours are 20 hours of designed content.
Full Spec Sheet for Mina the Hollower
| # | Detail | Specification |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Developer | Yacht Club Games |
| 2 | Release Date | May 29, 2026 |
| 3 | Price | $19.99 |
| 4 | Platforms | Switch, Switch 2, PS5, Xbox Series X|S, Steam, macOS, Linux |
| 5 | Genre | Top-down action-adventure |
| 6 | Metascore | 93 from 38 critics |
| 7 | OpenCritic | 92 |
| 8 | Campaign Length | Roughly 20 hours |
| 9 | Core Mechanic | Burrowing |
| 10 | Build Systems | Sidearms (active), Trinkets (passive) |
| 11 | Launch Sales | 300,000 copies in three days |
| 12 | Release Type | Digital only at launch |
What Mina Gets Wrong
Two things, honestly.
The first is accessibility framing. The game is hard in a way it does not warn you about at the point of purchase, and a $19.99 price tag attracts people expecting a breezy Zelda homage. That mismatch is real and it shows up in user reviews more than critic reviews.
The second is that the story is thin. The atmosphere is excellent — gothic, restrained, genuinely eerie — but there is no narrative here that will stay with you the way the combat will. If you want a game where the writing carries the experience, this is not it.
How It Compares to 2026's Other Top Games
2026 has been a low-ceiling year by Metacritic standards. The top score is 93 — compare that with the 96-plus territory of Elden Ring and Baldur's Gate 3.
| # | Game | Metascore | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Mina the Hollower | 93 | $19.99, indie, 20 hours |
| 2 | Forza Horizon 6 | 91 | 550 vehicles, Japan setting |
| 3 | Resident Evil Requiem | 89 | Full-price AAA horror |
| 4 | Pokémon Pokopia | 89 | Switch 2, March 2026 |
| 5 | 007 First Light | 88 | Narrative action |
That a $19.99 indie tops that list is the most interesting fact about 2026 in games so far. Whether anything unseats it depends largely on the autumn slate — our game reviews archive will be where that gets settled.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is Mina the Hollower a Zelda clone?
Structurally it borrows from Link's Awakening — top-down perspective, dungeon-driven progression, item-gated exploration. Mechanically it diverges sharply. The burrow ability has no Zelda equivalent, and the combat difficulty is closer to Hollow Knight or a 2D Souls game than to anything Nintendo has shipped.
Is Mina the Hollower too hard?
It is genuinely difficult, and it does not offer the difficulty options many players expect at this price. The burrow timing is the main barrier and most reviewers reported it clicking around the second dungeon. If you have finished Hollow Knight or a Shovel Knight campaign, you will be fine.
What platforms is Mina the Hollower on?
Nintendo Switch, Nintendo Switch 2, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, Steam (Windows), macOS and Linux. It was digital-only at launch on May 29, 2026. The Switch 2 version is the one to pick if you have the hardware, for the higher frame rate.
How does Mina the Hollower relate to Shovel Knight?
It shares a developer and nothing else. Yacht Club Games built Shovel Knight and its expansions, and Mina is the studio's first project outside that franchise. There is no shared world, characters or continuity — only a recognisable pixel-art sensibility and the same attention to game feel.
Is Mina the Hollower worth buying in 2026?
At $19.99 for a 20-hour campaign with a 93 Metascore, it is the clearest value proposition in gaming this year. The only reason to skip it is if you actively dislike difficult combat, because that is not an optional layer here — it is the whole game.
The Verdict
Mina the Hollower earns its 93. It is a small game that is completely finished, which in 2026 is close to a novelty.
Buy it if you want combat that demands something from you and a dungeon crawl with no padding. Skip it if you want a relaxing exploration game, because the marketing's pixel-art charm undersells how hard this thing hits in the opening hours.
For more in this weight class, our RPG games on PS Vita roundup covers the handheld-scale action-RPG lineage Mina descends from, and games similar to Gears of War sits at the opposite end if you want something louder. If you would rather look forward, Marvel's Wolverine arrives September 15 and Fire Emblem: Fortune's Weave two days after it.
Screenshots and key art courtesy of Yacht Club Games, used for editorial coverage. Mina the Hollower is a trademark of Yacht Club Games.
Sources
- Metacritic, Mina the Hollower reviews, retrieved 2026-07-26, https://www.metacritic.com/game/mina-the-hollower/
- Yacht Club Games, Mina the Hollower — Opening Weekend Review Roundup, retrieved 2026-07-26, https://www.yachtclubgames.com/blog/mina-the-hollower-opening-weekend-review-roundup/
- Forbes, The Highest Metacritic Review-Scored Game Of 2026 Is 'Mina The Hollower', retrieved 2026-07-26, https://www.forbes.com/sites/paultassi/2026/05/27/the-highest-metacritic-scored-game-of-2026-has-just-arrived/
- GameSpot, Mina The Hollower Finally Has A Release Date, At Long Last, retrieved 2026-07-26, https://www.gamespot.com/articles/mina-the-hollower-finally-has-a-release-date-at-long-last/1100-6539818/
- Metacritic, The Best Video Games of 2026 So Far (at Midyear), retrieved 2026-07-26, https://www.metacritic.com/pictures/best-video-games-of-2026-at-midyear/
