Mina the Hollower did what Yacht Club Games needed it to do, at least for the moment. Asked in a Reddit AMA whether the game secured the studio’s finances, founder Sean Velasco answered simply: “yes… for now!” Eurogamer reports.
Before launch, Yacht Club had described Mina as a “make-or-break” release. The Shovel Knight studio had been squeezed by the pandemic and by an attempt to run two projects at once. Mina sold more than 500,000 copies in its first two weeks, putting it on the path toward the million copies the team had hoped for.
Co-founder Nick Wozniak said splitting the studio had been a mistake. “I think we learned mostly that keeping the team tight and focused is what helped Mina land,” he wrote. “Splitting the team up to work on two games was something we could have corrected a long time ago but I’m glad to be where we are now.”
That focus is now on a new project. Asked about the 3D Shovel Knight game Velasco previously said was halfway done before the studio went all in on Mina, developer Alec Faulkner would not confirm it was Shovel Knight, but said “most of us are currently working on a 3D game, yes!” He added only that it is “gonna be soooooooo awesome.”
Mina is not finished either. Yacht Club says it is working on post-release features, including expanded randomizer options, enemy and boss randomization, more modifiers and speedrunner tools, but has nothing to announce on DLC. A physical edition is “absolutely still in progress,” Velasco told fans, with the studio looking for the right publishing and distribution partner, Nintendo Life reports. There is no date yet.
Mina the Hollower launched digitally in May and was one of the year’s standout indie releases, at a time when Nintendo’s Indie World showcases keep highlighting how much smaller studios matter to the Switch library.
The game is available on Switch, Switch 2, PlayStation, Xbox and PC.
