Digging Up The Spirit Of A Bygone Era
Described as a mix of Zelda and Bloodborne, Mina the Hollower is a retro inspired 8-bit platformer that features tons of enemies and tough as nails bosses. The art style looks like it was pulled straight from the Game Boy Color, and comes with a massive burst of nostalgia for anyone that grew up on games from that era of gaming.
The game begins with Mina, a renowned Hollower and inventor. Hollowers are members of a guild that study the earth, and Mina was responsible for the invention of Spark Generators, towers that harness an energy known as spark to bring power to the continent. These towers are in need of repair though, and the game begins with Mina on a voyage to the continent to make the essential repairs.
On her way though, her ship is attacked by a sea monster. Below deck, Mina must take up arms and fight off the beast before her adventure can truly begin. Regardless of the outcome of this initial battle, the ship is wrecked, and Mina must make her way to the town of Ossex on foot. The path into town is marred with raging fires and aggressive enemies that serve as a literal trial by fire for Mina.
Beneath The Surface Lies The Real Adventure
The defining characteristic of Mina the Hollower is the unique burrowing mechanic. Mina can jump and burrow into the ground to navigate under enemies and obstacles, leaping into the air as she emerges from the ground. Hidden passageways, moving platforms, spikes, and more are scattered throughout the world to explore.
Players will learn how to interact with these mechanics as they make their way through the crumbling town and fight off enemies. Many obstacles need to be jumped over or burrowed under. When Mina emerges from the ground she also launches herself an additional square of distance, allowing her to clear greater distances. She also can’t remain underground indefinitely, so learning the proper timing to get past enemies and obstacles is essential to mastering the movement mechanics.
Every Burrow Is A Breather, Not A Safe Haven
There are burrows spaced throughout the areas as well, these serve as checkpoints for Mina, and can be dived into to provide a respite from the dangers of the world. Here Mina can heal and restock on plasma vials; the latter which serve as Mina’s healing items. Whenever Mina deals damage, her health bar will fill with a yellow bar – this is plasma. Using a plasma vial will heal the amount of health shown on Mina’s health bar, but if she is attacked while healing, it will stop refilling the bar and also remove stored plasma.
This encourages aggressive approaches, and forces players to stay on the offensive even when low on health if they want to heal. But Mina doesn’t just have her main weapon at her disposal as secondary weapons can be picked up and used to give Mina an edge in battle. These include things like throwing daggers, tamed monsters, special movement abilities, and so on.
Building A Hollower Your Own Way
While there is a learning curve, Mina’s movement and combat are incredibly fun and satisfying, once you get used to them. There are also trinkets scattered throughout the world that can drastically change how players engage with the game. Some of these trinkets are basic enough and increase attack or defense stats, while others allow Mina to burrow on walls or affect how damage is applied to her health bar.
Based on my time with the game, much of the difficulty is front loaded in Mina the Hollower. As players become more familiar with the mechanics and enemy attack patterns, things of course become easier. But there are plenty of health upgrades, and Mina goes through the game picking up bones that can be used to shop as well as level up stats. More plasma vials are unlocked throughout the game as well, and there is also a spark mechanic which determines if Mina loses bones upon death.
The way this works is that Mina will have a number of sparks. When she dies she will drop one and if it was an enemy that killed her, then that enemy will pick up that spark and must be defeated to reclaim it. Dying without any sparks causes Mina to lose all her bones, and then she respawns with all her sparks returned to her. Some bones are also collected as Bonestones which are saved in the burrow for use later, and any carried bones are converted into Bonestones whenever a generator is repaired.
The game has a lot of mechanics and features, that all interact with each other to provide players with a variety of playstyles and approaches to most encounters.
Where The Difficulty Curve Bites Back
However, Mina the Hollower isn’t a game without flaws, and each player’s experience might be predetermined early on by simply choosing the wrong starter weapon. Out of the three weapons that Mina can choose from at the beginning of the game, the Whisper and Vesper (daggers) and the Blaststrike Maul are shorter range and slower to use, while the Nightstar (a mace on chain) has a longer range and still does good damage.
Enemies are hyper aggressive and the first hours require players to focus on learning how to properly engage with the platforming mechanics of the game. So choosing the wrong one of these three weapons for your play style can make the first hours of the game incredibly frustrating. There are also a few frustrating design choices, chief among them are the flying enemies – specifically the flying bosses – along with the entire ice level which modifies how Mina’s movement works.
Flying enemies can be frustrating to target, especially for players that prefer to use weapons like the daggers that have a very short attack distance. And this is especially true for flying bosses that have massive pools of health to chip down.
But these criticisms only constitute a relatively small portion of the game. Other criticisms could include the lack of mini map and the fact that sidearm weapons must be picked up after every death. This is frustrating early on, but there is actually a Hollower guild in the town of Ossex that has a side quest attached to it, which once completed allows the player to upgrade the burrow. These burrow upgrades add several quality of life upgrades for the game. While the mini map is still fairly basic, the rest of the upgrades do quite a bit to address any other criticisms I had.
More Than A Nostalgia Trip
Ultimately, how much a player enjoys Mina the Hollower is going to come down to how they feel about top-down 8-bit adventure games that come with an initially steep difficulty curve. If that sounds like something you’d like, then Mina the Hollower is bound to be a hit, affordably priced with around 20 hours of playtime for a single playthrough.
If it resonates with you, Mina the Hollower is a fantastic addition to your game library.
Important Links
Mina The Hollower Is Now Available! – https://www.thexboxhub.com/mina-the-hollower-is-now-available/
Buy from the Xbox Store – https://www.xbox.com/en-GB/games/store/mina-the-hollower/9NZTGLVS99X3/0010
