Shovel Knight Developer Announces a Brand New Game, Mina the Hollower [Updated]

Update 02/02/22: Mina the Hollower has already met its initial Kickstarter goal, just hours after the campaign launched.

At time of writing, the game has accrued more than $370,000 USD, comfortably passing its original $311,000 goal. No stretch goals have been announced as yet but, judging by Shovel Knight’s campaign, we can likely expect some to pop up along the way.

The developer of Shovel Knight has announced a brand new game called Mina the Hollower, a top-down action adventure in a Game Boy Colour style.

At its Yacht Club Games Presents event, the developer launched a Kickstarter campaign to help fund the new project, promising a “bone-chilling action adventure” with an 8-bit aesthetic redefined for the modern era.

The studio’s release of Shovel Knight in 2014 hurtled it into mainstream success and spawned several spin-offs, but it hasn’t revealed a new franchise until today (Yacht Club has published non-Shovel Knight games, but never developed one itself).

Mina the Hollower will, like Shovel Knight before it, combine classic and modern styles – and will feature 60 frames per second combat in a world of mystery and horror.

Yacht Club Games director and designer Alec Faulkner said the studio was returning to Kickstarter to recreate the feeling of Shovel Knight’s development, which was also funded through the crowdfunding service.

“We want your feedback, collaboration, and support in making Mina the Hollower the best game it can possibly be,” he said. “That’s why we’re returning to our roots and kicking off Mina the Hollower’s development as a Kickstarter campaign.

“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.”

Yacht Club Games didn’t mention a release window for Mina the Hollower, but Shovel Knight launched 14 months after its Kickstarter campaign ended, after accruing over $300,000 in one month. PC (via Steam) was the only platform this game has been confirmed for, but Switch, PlayStation, and Xbox platforms were all mentioned as possible destinations for Mina the Hollower.

Updates on Shovel Knight’s spin-offs were also shared at Yacht Club Games Presents, such as a new character called Random Knight coming to its block-falling puzzle game Shovel Knight Pocket Dungeon. Random Knight will appear after players have already recruited a handful of different knights and will become one at random upon the start of a new adventure.

Three further DLC packs are also on their way for Pocket Dungeon that will include an online versus mode, new playable characters, relics, and secrets, and mod support on PC.

Yacht Club Games also revealed that its upcoming SNES-style Shovel Knight Dig is in its final stages of development and showed new gameplay from its bug-infested Grub Pit level.

IGN called Shovel Knight “amazing” when it was released in 2014, saying its real beauty “isn’t that it’s a clearly worded love letter to the storied NES era; it’s that it drew inspiration from nothing but great NES games.”

We said Pocket Dungeon was “a wonderful spin-off that combines block-falling puzzle and roguelite mechanics in remarkably clever ways.”