After 6 years, Zelda-like Mina the Hollower gets May release date in "make-or-break" moment for Shovel Knight devs

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Mina the Hollower will release on May 29 for $19.99, Shovel Knight developer Yacht Club Games announced.

"TRUE FINAL RELEASE DATE!!" says Yacht Club Games on Bluesky, with an appropriate number of exclamation points, considering hopeful fans have been waiting to get their paws on Mina the Hollower since the project made over $1 million on Kickstarter in 2022. "Prepare yourself for one of the greatest top-down adventures ever to be delivered directly to your soul for less than 20 bucks."

"Mark your calendars. Tell your friends," the developer continues. You can wishlist Mina the Hollower – an eerie 2D platformer inspired by the Game Boy Color – on Yacht Club Games' website. It'll be available on PS5, Xbox Series X|S, Nintendo Switch, Nintendo Switch 2, and PC (including Mac and Linux). So you have many ways to take control of mouse protagonist Mina, a "Hollower" tasked with smacking ungodly enemies away with her whip and protecting what's left of a cursed, Victorian Gothic island.

Article continues below Mina the Hollower Announcement Trailer - YouTube Watch On

The game is a spooky-cute combination of Castlevania, dungeon-crawling Zelda, and Hollow Knight: Silksong (especially with that price tag!) that Yacht Club Games described earlier this year as "our most ambitious game ever," with a "massive, densely interconnected world" that's the fruit of over 6 years of development. In a press release shared around the same time, the studio said players should expect to battle "more than 25 bosses and mini-bosses, discover 60 Trinkets, upgrade their weapons, grow stronger through a full level-up system, explore New Game Plus, and experiment with hundreds of gameplay modifiers."

Beneath the bluster, Yacht Club Games is anxious for success. Its hit platformer Shovel Knight from 2014 failed to live on in subsequent spinoff games, and the developer's co-founder Sean Velasco said explicitly in 2025 that Mina the Hollower was "make-or-break for sure."

Mina the Hollower creator Alex Faulkner spoke about the game even more tremulously, calling it "just cursed." It was originally scheduled for a Halloween release in 2025, but Yacht Club Games made the split-second decision to delay it and "apply some final polish."

Nearly a year later, I imagine Mina the Hollower is sparkling. You'll find out soon.

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Ashley BardhanSenior Writer

Ashley is a Senior Writer at GamesRadar+. She's been a staff writer at Kotaku and Inverse, too, and she's written freelance pieces about horror and women in games for sites like Rolling Stone, Vulture, IGN, and Polygon. When she's not covering gaming news, she's usually working on expanding her doll collection while watching Saw movies one through 11.

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