Mina the Hollower Release Date, Platforms & What's Confirmed

If you backed this thing on Kickstarter in 2022 and quietly assumed you'd forget what it was before it ever shipped, congratulations: Mina the Hollower is real, it's out, and it turned out to be very good. After a couple of delays that pushed it out of its original window, Yacht Club's gothic little action-adventure finally has a hard date instead of a vibe.

Here's every fact that's actually confirmed, straight from Yacht Club and the storefront listings, with none of the guessing.

The Short Answer

Mina the Hollower released on May 29, 2026. It's developed and published by Yacht Club Games, the studio behind Shovel Knight. If you're reading this after that date: yes, it's out, you can go buy it right now.

That date is the one that stuck after the game slipped from its earlier target into a Spring 2026 window, then locked to the end of May. If you've been sitting on a wishlist notification, it already fired.

Every Platform Mina Launched On

This is a genuine day-one everywhere release. No timed exclusivity, no "coming later to other systems" asterisk. The confirmed platform list is:

• Nintendo Switch
• Nintendo Switch 2
• PlayStation 5
• Xbox Series X/S
• Windows (PC) via Steam
• macOS
• Linux

That's the full spread. A dedicated Switch 2 version alongside the original Switch build is the notable detail here, so you're not stuck running a backward-compatible port if you've upgraded. Mac and Linux getting native day-one builds is also more generous than most launches of this size bother with.

Which Version Should You Buy?

Since it's on everything, the pick comes down to how you like to play. This is a game built to evoke a handheld, so there's a real case for the Switch or Switch 2 version if you want to play it the way its Game Boy Color inspiration was meant to be held. If you care about the crispest presentation and the deepest options, PC is PC. There's no confirmed "definitive edition" split in the features, so buy it wherever you actually sit down to play.

What Mina the Hollower Actually Is

If the name is all you know, here's the confirmed pitch. It's a top-down action-adventure starring Mina, an inventor who travels to a place called Tenebrous Isle to repair the power generators that have gone haywire. The world is a 19th-century setting where mythical creatures and anthropomorphic animals live alongside humans, which is a fancy way of saying you're a sword-and-whip-swinging mouse in a gothic monster-movie backdrop.

The obvious touchstone is the classic top-down Zelda template, specifically the Link's Awakening lineage, filtered through the studio's own sensibilities. The signature verb is burrowing underground to dodge, reposition, and cross gaps, which is the mechanic that gives the whole thing its own identity instead of being a straight homage.

The Game Boy Color Conceit

The headline hook is the presentation. Mina the Hollower is deliberately designed to look like a Game Boy Color game, and Yacht Club committed to the bit hard: no 3D assets, and pixel design constrained to a limited palette per tile in the spirit of the original hardware. This is the same discipline that made Shovel Knight read as a "lost" NES game, aimed one console generation forward.

The distinction worth making is that this is a stylistic constraint, not literal 1998 hardware. The game runs modern lighting, effects, and a soundtrack that no actual Game Boy Color could produce. It looks like your memory of the era rather than the real, more limited thing, which is exactly the trick these throwbacks are supposed to pull.

Who Made It, and Why That Matters

Yacht Club Games is a known quantity, and that's most of the reason this project cleared its funding in a heartbeat. The studio's calling card is Shovel Knight, one of the defining indie games of the 2010s and a genuine crossover success that spun out multiple standalone campaigns. Mina is directed by Sean Velasco, a core Shovel Knight creative, so this isn't a random side project. It's the studio's first fully new original property since Shovel Knight put them on the map.

That pedigree is the single most useful fact for deciding whether to care. If Shovel Knight's tight, readable action and retro-with-modern-polish design worked for you, that's the exact muscle memory this team is flexing again.

The Long Road From Kickstarter

The wait was real, so it's worth putting a number on it. Mina the Hollower ran a Kickstarter that launched on February 2, 2022, and it was a monster: it pulled in over 1.2 million dollars from more than 21,000 backers, with total crowdfunding climbing past 1.4 million once you fold in the extras. That's not a "will this get made" campaign, that's a mandate.

From there it took until 2026 to actually ship, with the release sliding out of its earlier targets into the spring. Delays like that are frustrating in the moment, but the finished product is the argument for them. This is a studio that has, historically, chosen to hold rather than push something out half-baked, and the reviews suggest that instinct paid off again here.

How It Landed

You don't have to take the hype on faith. On release, Mina the Hollower reviewed extremely well across the board and moved fast commercially, reportedly selling more than half a million copies within its first two weeks. For a single-player, no-live-service, pay-once retro action game, that's a strong opening.

The short read on the critical response: the burrow mechanic and moment-to-moment combat are the standouts, the presentation delivers on the Game Boy Color promise, and it's a meaty, secret-stuffed adventure rather than a quick weekend novelty. It landed as the real follow-up to Shovel Knight's legacy that backers were hoping for, not a nostalgia cash-in.

The Bottom Line

The confirmed facts, one more time, clean:

• Release date: May 29, 2026
• Platforms: Switch, Switch 2, PS5, Xbox Series X/S, Windows, macOS, Linux
• Developer/publisher: Yacht Club Games (Shovel Knight)
• Director: Sean Velasco
• Genre: Top-down action-adventure with a signature burrowing mechanic
• Style: Deliberate Game Boy Color presentation, no 3D assets
• Origin: Kickstarter, launched February 2022, over 1.2 million dollars funded

If you're new to it and want to know how the actual moment-to-moment plays before you commit, start with the Mina the Hollower beginner guide, which breaks down the burrow, Bones, and the core loop. When you're deeper in, the weapons guide and sidearms and trinkets guide cover how the build actually comes together.