Hello everyone it’s your guy Tophattem_dawg back again with HATDAWG REVIEWS. Miss me? well you should cool it then, it’s only been 10 hours since the last one and there’s definitely no way I can keep this rate of reviews up for long, I just wanted to get this one out so I can get ahead of the unpleasable allegations, I don’t want people thinking I’m a negative Nancy and such.
If you’ve seen me around these parts before you’ve probably heard of this game before, completely my bad, I just can’t seem to shut up about it, I hope with this review I’ll be able to channel all my love for the game so I can stop bothering people online with it. As usual I’ll be transparent and say that I’ve played the game for about 40 hours, beaten the game once and halfway through the first new game+ cycle (out of 7, mind you), unfortunately due to personal life stuff I’ve been completely unable to play any further due to some personal life stuff, but maybe that’s a good thing as I definitely see myself doing nothing but playing this game for about a month if given the opportunity to.
So what do I like about the game? well what don’t I! Let’s start with
THE GAMEPLAY
The gameplay is built on the basis of the original Zelda game principle of top down movement and 4 direction attacking, though in this game you get a BUNCH of different weapons to play around with. There’s also a ton of platforming which is very surprising for a top down Zelda like but surprisingly it really works, the game’s core mechanic is the burrow which allows you to go underground for a few seconds and move with massively increased speed, though you can’t just burrow away from danger because there’s a delay between burrows with you having to jump into the ground to be able to do it, the jump itself being your period of vulnerability (also you can’t actually deal any damage during a burrow except with a few trinkets so it won’t do you much good during the many bossfights to just spam it, on that note!). The game has up to 60 collectible trinkets for you to find and equip which all alter your base moveset in some way as well as 15 collectible temporary sidearms, they are not at all necessary to complete the base game but let’s be honest if you’re as bad at videogames as me you’ll definitely need them if you’re looking for the hundreds of hidden secrets (many of which are the aforementioned trinkets and sidearms) the game is positively packed with so many hidden discoveries and even rather obfuscated ways to get through to just the rest of the base game that you’ll be feeling like a genius with just the sheer density of eureka moments you’re in for, and it’s not even a puzzle game (allegedly). Admittedly with some of the intentionally clunky 4 way attacking mechanics, enemies that can attack from any direction and you having to deal with all of that through high speed predictive burrow dodging and repositioning, the game can be a little hard for some, certainly was for me, if you can stick it through I highly recommend going with the experience of the base game, it’s certainly the most polished and intentional, but if you want to make it a little easier on yourself you can go on down to the modifier menu and give yourself a little breathing room, or you can make the game even harder! Or weirded! It’s your game and you’re given all the tools to do as you please. On the topic of making the game even harder you can break intended progression in half and go all out of order, the game isn’t a traditional Zelda-like with powerups that you need to get otherwise you can’t enter particular areas, none of that, the game tends to lock you out of places you’re not supposed to be in just through sheer difficulty, but it’s certainly not impossible, again, it’s your game and the developers have utmost trust in your decision making and do not hold your hand. Oh crap i forgot to mention the vials, do you see how dense this game is mechanically?
THE MUSIC
The game soundtrack is nothing short of phenomenal and for sure some of the best I’ve heard out of a videogame in a long while, the composer Jake Kaufman manages to breathe more life into chiptune than i ever thought was possible for the genre, I guess that serves me right. Each individual track fits the place it plays in like a glove and is a groove to boot. I’m not that educated on music so i can’t lecture you about chords or time signature but do i need to? it’s just damn good music, you’ll have to hear it for yourself.
THE ART
The art despite being pixel art is by no means crude or limited, showing a great manor of designs and areas with as much life seeped into every detail as possible by any other more typical artstyle, and perhaps even more, the fact it’s all pixel art makes it even more impressive if anything. Throughout Tenebrous Isle you’ll be met with an incredible array of sights so gorgeous and awe inspiring that it’ll be easy to forget what game you’re playing. Even just visually the games numerous artists are able to take you on a journey with their blocky brush.
THE STORY
I am putting the entire story review section under a spoiler warning because obviously there’s no way for me to review the story, without spoiling the story, so only proceed if you’ve already finished the game or are ready to lose all sense of narrative discovery regarding the game
SPOILERS AFOOT
Unlike most reviewers who have already given the game it’s flowers for everything I have so far I see the story of the game as much more than the simple narrative set dressing to give you a reason to hit bad guys with a mace, hammer, twin daggers or whatever else is in your arsenal, I actually found the story to be rather interesting and perhaps a little thought provoking. Yes obviously Lionel was the bad guy and the guy who is a thinly veiled metaphor for a climate change activist is obviously the good guy, if that wasn’t the case Yacht Club games would be an actual yacht club and the developers would have been a bunch of yacht owning oil tycoons. What’s interesting about it is that throughout the game you keep second guessing yourself in regards to the pretty telegraphed twist, you keep seeing Lionel doing stereotypically nice things and Thorne seeming more and more unreasonable, until it all comes to a boiling point in the Astral Orrery where you watch Lionel toss Thorne into the spark generator and transmogrify him into a beast. Really Lionel is not a cartoonishly evil person, he is a really bad person but he has motivations beyond just being evil, he does seem to care about the people of Ossex atleast as long as they are under his rule, he’s more of an ultra nationalist if anything, willing to sacrifice every other region in the isle to the prosperity of himself and his people, which is all wrapped up narratively considering the lion is the national animal of the UK and the game is very stylistically inspired by Victorian England, so surprisingly Mina the Hollower has some pretty based politics. Another thing is the incredibly bittersweet ending, the isle is saved from the blight of spark corruption and will be able to thrive and not destroy the land henceforth but it was not without it’s bloodshed, Mina is forever cast out the island and one of her close friends is killed infront of her eyes, deposing Lionel was not enough to wrestle the island into shape, an empire is not a single leader and in its death throes it will try to take you down with it
CRITICISM
I’ve been singing the games praises for a rather long time but let’s face it, no game is perfect, and obviously as a reviewer I will have to adress the games issues no matter how little there are. The biggest issue I had is that, while I respect the dedication to no hands held game design it can be a little bit of an issue when you’re just starting out, the games abject revulsion at any sort of tutorial is very refreshing once you get the basic mechanics down but before you do you’ll really be wishing there was a bit of explanation with some areas (especially if you were like me and stuck for 30 minutes in the first area because you didn’t know the little vortex looking things on the ground were holes and you could burrow right above them to visit a seperate area). Also a small nitpick I have regarding the art is that while it is very beautiful when it comes to the enviornments and larger sprites such as bosses, it can be a little hard to make out what you’re looking at on some of the smaller sprites, since for most characters yacht club constricted themselves to classic Gameboy colour limitations to give the game that retro feel (16x16 sprites and only 4 colours). An example I have is that one of the NPCs overworld sprites looked to me like a crow but when talking to them their dialogue sprite actually showed them to be a sort of black Jaguar animal, obviously it’s not a big issue but I felt like I should mention it.
CONCLUSION
Mina the Hollower is an incredible 2d topdown action platformer brimming with action and secrets galore to ensure that no screen feels empty, masterful art and music direction and a story that many overlook despite it’s captivating complexities, and is my personal choice for game of the year 2026 (if I could figure out how to even vote in that atleast, eh we all know it’s rigged anyways. The winner is probably going to be some game from a Belgian studio called quest 34 that somehow sweeps the indie category despite being a direct subsidiary of Microsoft, I just hope the orchestra plays one of the songs) and for that my final rating is a 9.5/10
And with that as usual thank you for sifting through an even longer series of ramblings and I hope all of you have a wonderful rest of your day
I really like the game, but if I had any criticism it is that the difficulty curve is off. It felt most difficult in the beginning, then got generally easier until the end, where it gets more challenging as it throws the endgame stuff at you.
I think it is fundamentally down to the fact that the midgame is open to tackle in any order (there is an order the game nudges you in, but I certainly didn’t follow that exactly), but the game has RPG leveling mechanics.
The multiplicative effects of power creep are real, like by the end you have like ~10 times more health, but also 10 levels of defense. Idk how much more damage you can take exactly, but clearly defense and health multiply together. And you have 10 levels of offense, and you have trinkets, and you’ll just be better at the game. Thus your character gets way stronger while you go around beating areas and bosses in any order you please during the midgame. It’s impossible to balance.
It is true that the difficulty curve is a bit off, though I personally imagine it was moreso because I was still pretty mediocre at juggling the game mechanics, to me atleast if you go the intended progression route (the one that is basically pointed out to you via the newspapers) the difficulty curve is perfectly, well curved, it is true that it is basically impossible to accommodate balancing for the player choosing to go to the hardest area at the start of the game and that’s perfectly fine, it’s also impossible to ensure the game doesn’t get too easy if you plug in all the easy modifiers and too hard if you plug in all the hard modifiers, its your game and the devs trust you to deck it out to your desire but the base experience of going through all the areas in the suggested order would be the one most people prefer and obviously the one with the most even and balanced difficulty curve
Obviously that’s just my two cents though, I still hear and respect your experience on the matter
There are already enough Zelda clones, when is someone going to clone retro Ys? The world yearns for bump combat.
A clone? A CLONE? HOW DARE YOU! I’ll have you know the game is only tastefully inspired and has a wide range of mechanics from other games giving it an incredibly unique identity, infact the game is much better than anything Miyamotos grubby little hands have or could have created and my entire reviewer cohort believes this
