Smooth movement, compelling combat, and tons of secrets make for an innovative throwback.
Old-school graphics meets new-school sprite processing limits. Credit: Yacht Club Games
Old-school graphics meets new-school sprite processing limits. Credit: Yacht Club Games
Modern Legend of Zelda games like Breath of the Wild are built around Link’s ability to run, climb, and jump with the best of them. In old-school, top-down Zelda titles, though, the ability to increase Link’s sad starting mobility was a banner event. Finding items like the speed-enhancing Pegasus Boots in Link to the Past or the jump-granting Roc’s Feather in Link’s Awakening made the methodical exploration in these games feel that much more kinetic and akin to a top-down platform game.
This kind of kinetic feeling is built into Mina the Hollower from the start. As the titular, mouse-like Hollower, you’re armed with the ability to jump up and burrow into soft soil, zipping under obstacles and past enemies with satisfying pep as you do. After a short sojourn underground, you pop out with an extended jump that quickly becomes second nature.
The sense of energy and verve built in to this simple movement system makes Mina a joy to control. You feel that joy when you burrow away from an enemy attack only to quickly circle back to pop out for a quick counter. You feel it burrowing underneath the scenery through a small hole to uncover a labyrinthine secret corridor. You feel it hopping and bouncing across a series of gaps on inflatable, balloon-like pads.
Navigating maze-like rooms like this is sheer joy thanks to the game’s smooth control scheme.
Credit: Yacht Club Games
Navigating maze-like rooms like this is sheer joy thanks to the game’s smooth control scheme. Credit: Yacht Club Games
Add in an intricate upgrade system, a sprawling, well-designed map, compelling combat, and a huge variety of secrets to uncover, and you’ve got one of the best homages to and expansions on the classic Zelda formula that I’ve ever played (with elements of games like Castlevania thrown in for good measure). Mina the Hollower stands out from the crowded field of Zelda clones to be an instant contender for one of the best games of 2026.
Characters and combat
The core narrative of Mina the Hollower focuses on Mina’s efforts to restore six broken, towering spark generators across the island that she designed to bring electricity and prosperity to the world of Tenebrous Isle. As the game progresses, Mina slowly becomes aware of some negative side effects from these generators and the sinister actions being taken to cover up those effects. What starts as a relatively straightforward and predictable climate change allegory leads up to a touching and surprisingly (though not entirely) bleak ending that I’m wary to say too much about.
Plotting aside, Mina the Hollower is full of colorful NPCs that shine through in some efficient and fun writing. While half of the characters simply act as signposts to some objective or other, the other half will pop up with non-sequiturs and turns of phrase that had me grinning all evening. And you never know when an ostensible friend might turn into a pickpocket that you need to chase down, or when that hard luck case you’re rescuing might transform into a terrifying mini-boss.
Unlike real-life snowmen, these guys don’t just stand still and take your abuse.
Credit: Yacht Club Games
Unlike real-life snowmen, these guys don’t just stand still and take your abuse. Credit: Yacht Club Games
While the imposing, varied bosses are a highlight, even basic enemies rarely feel perfunctory in Mina the Hollower. They seem to take pains to stay just out of range of your weapons before darting in for their own attacks. This is a game that rewards careful positioning and patience in waiting for your own counterattack openings, and it is quick to punish players who get too mindlessly aggressive.
But it’s also a forgiving game, offering a pack full of refillable potions to restore your health (and which require landing your own attacks to get the most out of). Using those potions leaves you immobile and vulnerable for a couple of crucial seconds, though, adding a sense of risk even to a simple health restore.
If you do run into trouble with the more reflex-oriented portions of the game, Mina the Hollower is conducive to grinding through weaker enemies to earn enough in-game bones to buy a bevy of offensive and defensive upgrades. If that’s too much work, though, the options menu includes a ton of inventive modifiers to tweak the difficulty in easier, harder, or simply weirder ways.
Mapping it out
From a vibrant central town hub, Mina the Hollower’s sprawling map splits off to six highly varied dungeons, each culminating in a thrilling climb up a generator tower. Just getting to these dungeons feels like half the challenge at points, with each route requiring some intricate positional puzzle-solving to clear a path. You might find yourself escorting bombs across a swampy marsh, intentionally falling between floors, or digging under transparent, impermeable panels to find the right way through these mazes.
Unlike a lot of other Zelda-inspired action-adventure games, though, there’s no set order to the dungeons you take on. While the game will gently nudge you toward the challenges it thinks you’re ready for, nothing is gated behind an item or ability you have to earn from an earlier challenge.
You’d be forgiven for thinking this was a scene from some sort of old-school Castlevania reboot.
Credit: Yacht Club Games
You’d be forgiven for thinking this was a scene from some sort of old-school Castlevania reboot. Credit: Yacht Club Games
That said, there are dozens of helpful trinkets hidden throughout the landscape that can make certain challenges much simpler, such as improving your movement, aiding your attacks, or increasing your resilience. I felt like I was constantly getting sidetracked from the main path to find a hidden challenge room or platform pathway behind some random bush that inevitably led to one of these helpful items. By the time I rolled the credits after about 20 hours, though, I had only found 54 percent of the items the game had to offer.
Throughout the overworld and each dungeon, these intricately designed maps loop gently back around and on top of themselves, with plenty of unlockable shortcuts to prevent the need for a ton of backtracking. And despite the retro top-down visual style, the maps make use of a surprising amount of verticality. You’ll frequently find yourself walking under an elevated bridge or by a seemingly inaccessible nook, only to find the entrance hours later when exploring an unrelated, far-off area. It all comes together to create a real sense of place and makes you want to keep coming back to explore every inch.
I could go on about the imposing, screen-filling boss designs, the wide variety of primary and secondary weapon options, the masterful pixel art, and the rocking chiptune soundtrack, but those just feel like table stakes for a game of this caliber. Mina the Hollower is a triumph of the genre that I’d recommend even to people who don’t think they’re fans of Zelda-style games.
Kyle Orland has been the Senior Gaming Editor at Ars Technica since 2012, writing primarily about the business, tech, and culture behind video games. He has journalism and computer science degrees from University of Maryland. He once wrote a whole book about Minesweeper.
