Published on: 03/02/2022
Shovel Knight developer’s new IP, Mina the Hollower
Yacht Club Games, the developer of fan-favorite platformer game Shovel Knight has made an announcement of its new IP titled “Mina the Hollower”.
Yacht Club Games made it official through their Twitter account on February 2, 2022 and announced that the Kickstarter for their new IP is now live.
The studio is best known for releasing Shovel Knight in 2014. The game saw mainstream success and released many spin-offs.
More details about Mina the Hollower
The developer has provided more details about their new IP, calling it “a bone-chilling action-adventure” and revealing that it offers classic gameplay with an 8-bit aesthetic for players to enjoy.
The theme of Mina the Hollower is inspired by Gothic Horror and set in a world filled with bizarre monsters. While the overall style of the game is similar to the retro Game Boy Color (GBC), Mina the Hollower has been polished to suit the modern era of video games, that is 60fps action combat.
Development and funding for Mina the Hollower
Mina the Hollower is a partially crowdfunded project through a campaign on Kickstarter. The developer decided to go in this direction and wanted to build a community out of Kickstarter while getting feedback from its backers, just like Shovel Knight.
“Though we’re financing a majority of this project ourselves, we hope we can create a more expansive game this way. More importantly, we want to build a community around Kickstarter, much like we did with Shovel Knight,” said Alec Faulkner, Yacht Club Games director and designer, saying that the Kickstarter campaign is their own way to recreate the feeling of developing Shovel Knight.
“That’s why we’re returning to our roots and kicking off Mina the Hollower’s development as a Kickstarter campaign,” he added.
Additionally, similar to Shovel Knight, the new IP has crushed its project funding goals at full tilt. Gamerant reports that the new IP has surpassed its Kickstarter goal in less than 24 hours.
Reportedly, Mina the Hollower launched its project on Kickstarter on Tuesday afternoon requesting help for the amount of $311,503 from any interested donors. By the end of Tuesday, the project had collected more than $250,000 and it continues beyond its initial goals with $400,000 on early Wednesday morning gathering support from over 7,000 backers.
The project’s amount has been going on with no signs of stopping.
Inside the game
In Mina the Hollower, the player is playing a mouse navigating its ways through dungeons and equipped with a whip to whip down enemies. The dungeons are not made for easy navigation as there are traps, hidden secrets, and the player may evade the attacks through the ability to burrow underground and avoid obstacles.
The developers did not provide any information regarding which platform Mina the Hollower is set to be released since the game is considerably still in early development, however, it was revealed that a tentative release date is set to December 2023. Mina the Hollower has also been listed on Steam with minimum system requirements for PC users to check.
