Mina the Hollower

The player character is Mina, a genius inventor and mouse who has created advances in Spark Technology. She is a Hollower, a member of a guild dedicated to studying the Earth. She can pick between three different weapons in the beginning of the game. They include a whip (Nightstar), dual daggers (Whisper and Vesper), and a hammer (Blaststrike Maul) that allows her to attack in four directions. Mina can unlock two additional weapons later in the game, and hold one at a time.

Additionally, Mina can take advantage of a technique known as "Hollowing". This grants her the ability to burrow underground for a short time as a way to traverse short distances quickly and cross gaps, while being invincible.

Mina the Hollower takes place on Tenebrous Isle, a landmass inhabited by humans and anthropomorphic animals that contains seven "Spark Generators" which power the island and its capital city of Ossex. Mina, a mouse and inventor who helped build the Spark Generators, is invited back to the island by the Marshal of Ossex, who tells her that conditions have worsened over her ten-year absence. Along the way, her ship is wrecked by a monster and she learns that the city is under attack by numerous turncoat soldiers. She meets with Baron Lionel, the island's ruler, who helped her build the Spark Generators years before.

Lionel informs her that six of the seven generators have been damaged and shut down, requesting her assistance in reactivating them. Thorne, a bat acting as leader of the turncoat soldiers, attacks Mina after she leaves Lionel’s manor but flees before he can be captured.

Mina the Hollower originally began as a side project by Yacht Club Games employee Alec Faulkner to hone his coding and artistic capabilities, and was not originally intended for commercial release. Development on the solo affair, then under the name Gothic, caught the attention of Yacht Club management, who viewed the title as a favorable pairing to the studio's flagship Shovel Knight series. On February 2, 2022, a Kickstarter campaign was launched to support development, which raised USD$1,239,584 from 21,439 backers. When including other sources of crowdfunding, the game raised over USD$1,400,000 for the studio.

Originally scheduled for release on October 31, 2025, the game was later delayed to May 29, 2026. On June 1, 2026, programmer David D'Angelo told GameSpot that failed play testing is what led to the game being delayed.

Will Greenwald of PCMag called the game ambitious in a preview, comparing it to "Castlevania meets Zelda" and describing the presentation as "charming". Stating that he was "very impressed" with the game's demo, he called the mechanic of diving into the ground "unusual", but stated that he quickly got used to it as a natural part of gameplay. Thomas Whitehead of Nintendo Life stated that he was ultimately "left excited" by the game after playing the demo, calling it an "excellent return" for the studio after making numerous spin-offs. Alex Stadnik of Game Informer called it a "gorgeous homage".

Mina the Hollower received "universal acclaim", according to the review aggregator website Metacritic. On review aggregator OpenCritic, 98% of critics recommended the game. The main praise comes from its gameplay, story, and presentation.