SEATTLE – Last week’s busy, fun PAX West 2022 expo was very different from the ghost town of the 2021 edition, meaning Ars Technica got to spend time with some of our favorite video game makers. You may have already seen our PAX West chat with the co-creators of the Monkey Island series, which we took a look at Return to Monkey Island‘s new puzzles, jokes and delightful animations. But that wasn’t the only interview we had.
Below are two additional interviews based on highlights from our time at the four-day expo. Each comes from indie studios where previous games have impressed: Yacht Club Games (Kick Knight) and Squanch games (Trover saves the universe). The interviews were conducted after I played each studio’s new game, and I’ll be back tomorrow to report on other gameplay highlights from the expo.
Mina de Hollower
(Release date to be determined, platforms to be determined | Official site)
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The deeper you go Mina de Hollowerthe more gothic and Castlevania-ey it is Zelda-inspired top-down adventure look and feel.
Yacht Club Games
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This dialogue helps reinforce the idea that the game’s titular hero, Mina, is indeed a “hollower”.
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Unlike most video games, the water level is in Mina de Hollower actually looks cool.
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You can equip some, but not all, of Mina’s trinkets to add useful perks to your standard skills. Being able to explode out of a cave sounds pretty sick, based on what we’ve already played.
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Mina, I’ve seen here that she has a bone to pick with someone.
My favorite discovery at PAX West 2022 wasn’t entirely surprising, as it touched on many of my personal gameplay biases: a Game Boy Color aesthetic; a top-down adventure that recalls the three Game Boy exclusives Legend of Zelda spell; and the development of a studio like Yacht Club Games, best known as the creator of the incredible platform game Kick Knight.
Still, Mina de HollowerThe world premiere of gameplay at PAX West contained an element I didn’t suspect: a healthy dose of NES era Castlevania. As a result, Yacht Club design philosophies diverge from: Link’s Awakening to make this new game more of an action-centric exploration and less of an adventure with lots of backtrack action.
The basic concept sounds pretty Zelda-esque: start from a central “hub” as a simple, average adventurer (in this case, a timid mouse named Mina), then explore about eight zones in 2D, top-down fashion; each contains “overworld” and “dungeon” elements. Beat all these levels to complete one final challenge as you get stronger as you play.
But Mina de Hollower eschews the idea of an inventory that allows the hero to solve puzzles and explore new zones along the way. Instead, progress is more so in Zelda II: Link’s Adventure, where players choose which base meters (damage, health, armor, etc.) they want to expand as they accumulate experience points. (Also, as in Zelda IIeach time you upgrade a meter, the next upgrade is more expensive, which can slow your progress if you want to go all in on, say, attack power.)
A handy GIF demonstration of Mina’s basic moves. She trades special weapons Castlevaniastyle, then uses a whip for her standard attack, which has a mild wind-up before letting go.
Yacht Club Games
Equipping items meanwhile works just like in classic Castlevania Games: Find the secondary weapon you want by smashing pots or lanterns and keep it equipped until you come across the next weapon you might want to use. (If you accidentally pick up a weapon you don’t want, you’ll have plenty of time to grab the last weapon you had equipped.)
These weapon options blatantly rise from the Castlevania series and include exploding bottles, throwable axes (which go up and down in an arc), and throwing daggers, along with the more Zelda-like ability to attack and take on bad guys. As in Castlevania, their ammo count is based on a mana meter that must be restored by scouting and killing enemies. The game’s primary weapon is also a whip, and Mina has a slight delay when she returns her little mouse wrist before jumping forward and hitting.
Mina’s signature maneuver is a burrow, which allows her to sneak under the earth, move a little faster and emerge for an extra long jump. And this maneuver is certainly the secret feel-good sauce of the game. In combat, it makes Mina cunningly dodge enemies and traps, while she can also dig during explorations of the overworld to excavate treasure, dig underneath and lift larger rocks, or sneak into hidden rooms.
Mina also gets a jump move by default (no item needed), meaning that the level design generally forces Mina to hop around in both combat and puzzle solving. After only a few minutes of play, I devised a higher-speed maneuver that required digging and jumping diagonally over holes or stairs. It didn’t take me long to appreciate the new game’s combat timing, and I quickly learned how to manipulate or trick several tricky bad guys into attacking them before they could affect my limited health.
“That’s been a secret for the past 5-6 years: our unannounced 3D game.”
Mina de HollowerThe director, Alec Faulkner, confirmed in an interview with Ars Technica that he started working on a Mina-style prototype early 2019 as Yacht Club put the finishing touches on the Shovel Knight: King of Hearts expansion pack. He was inspired by a recent retro-tech project.
“I bought a new Game Boy Color, hacked it, added a backlit screen, and played games on a Flash cart all the time,” he said. “I thought, ‘This one’ Zelda games are cool for sure, but why aren’t there any other 2D Zeldas?’ Nintendo won’t make new 2D Zelda nowadays, and no one else has tried [during that era]. That’s what I find so bizarre: there are a billion platformers trying to be Mario.”
