October was gonna be quite a special month, y’know. Yacht Club Games, the folks behind Shovel Knight, were all set to drop a brand spankin’ new game for the first time in over ten years. And get this, it had nothin’ to do with their famous 8-bit platformer. This new game, called Mina the Hollower, was gonna be a Link’s Awakening-sized adventure. Exciting stuff, right? But hold your horses, ’cause now it’s been delayed indefinitely.
In a recent blog post on Monday, the studio spilled the beans about the tough decision they had to make. Turns out, the entire crew had been bustin’ their butts day in and day out to get the game ready for an Oct 31st release. But alas, they just ain’t quite there yet. According to the post, it ain’t a major delay or nothin’, just a little extra time to add some final polish and balance to make the game really shine.
Unlike its 2D side-scrolling predecessor, Mina the Hollower is a top-down action game that leans more towards puzzles and combat. Picture Castlevania mixed with a Zelda-inspired interconnected map. Sounds pretty rad, huh? If Yacht Club can pull it off, it’s gonna be another clever, charming retro homage. But hey, it seems like it still needs a bit more time in the oven. No new release date has been announced yet, but that don’t mean it’s gonna take forever to finally hit the shelves.
“We ain’t ready to announce another release date until it’s submitted to platforms, so just hang tight as we get closer to the finish line,” Yacht Club mentioned in a recent update. “The game is so close to bein’ done- we’re playin’ it from start to finish every day.” In the meantime, the devs are workin’ on finalizing design, art, sound, game balance, localization, and QA. Mina the Hollower is the third notable game to bow out of the jam-packed October release calendar. Moonlighter 2 and Kingmakers have also shifted their release dates, with the latter not even havin’ a new date yet. But out of all these games, Mina the Hollower is the one that had me all hyped up. I was ready to spend my holiday season glued to my Switch like it’s 1998 and the Game Boy Color just dropped. Let’s see if it ends up makin’ it in time for the festivities.
