Mina the Hollower is the kind of game critics tend to over-explain, mostly because the shorthand is too easy. Say "Game Boy Color Zelda with Castlevania and Soulslike teeth" and you are not wrong, exactly. You are also not done. The interesting part of Mina the Hollower is how much disagreement can live inside a score that looks almost settled.
As of this writing, Metacritic lists Mina the Hollower at 90 on PC, with 71 critic reviews counted: 64 positive, 4 mixed, and no negative reviews. That is not a divided reception in the usual sense. The top line is loud and clean. But read the reviews and a more useful split appears. Critics broadly agree that Yacht Club Games has made one of the strongest retro action adventures of the year. They disagree on whether its old-school stubbornness is the point, or the thing that occasionally gets in its own way.
That makes it a good Perthro game, honestly. Not because everyone should land on the same rating, but because it is the sort of thing worth logging with a few sentences attached. A five-star score says one thing. "I loved this, except the map made me furious" says something better.
Mina the Hollower critic scores in brief
Mina the Hollower is developed and published by Yacht Club Games, the studio best known for Shovel Knight. Steam lists the PC release date as May 28, 2026, while several reviews published on May 27 around embargo. The Steam page lists Windows, macOS, and SteamOS/Linux system requirements. The official Yacht Club page describes it as an action-adventure about Mina, a Hollower sent to rescue a cursed island, with burrowing, whip combat, sidearms, trinkets, secrets, bosses, and pixel art built in the style of Game Boy Color.
The score picture is unusually strong. Metacritic's 90 metascore puts it in universal acclaim, and the spread matters: not just a few ecstatic reviews dragging up the average, but a broad field of praise with only a small mixed edge. IGN gave Mina the Hollower a 10. RPG Site, The Outerhaven, Player 2, Shacknews, SteamDeckHQ, Cubed3, TheGamer, Screen Rant, and DualShockers also show 100 scores in Metacritic's review feed. The mixed side sits around 70 from outlets including GameSpew, TheSixthAxis, Edge, and ZTGD.
That is the shape of the consensus: near-masterpiece for people who want exploration, secrets, and friction. Merely good, sometimes irritating, for people who want clearer signposting and smoother navigation.
Why IGN went all the way to 10
IGN's Samuel Claiborn frames Mina the Hollower as a small-looking game with a much larger interior. The review opens with the feeling of being dropped into a hostile world with "no obviously correct path" and enemies that can kill Mina in a few hits. That could be a warning. For IGN, it becomes the hook.
The pull quote Metacritic surfaces is the one that probably sells the game best: "Mina the Hollower will burrow into your brain and set up a cozy little house there." Claiborn writes about unsolved puzzles appearing in his mind before bed, unreachable corners nagging at him during routine trips through town, and the arithmetic of grinding out enough attack power to take down a secret boss. That is a very specific kind of praise. It is not just "the game is polished." It is "the game keeps living in your head after you close it."
IGN also likes the way Mina handles influence. Claiborn points to Link's Awakening, the Oracle games, Castlevania, and FromSoft, but argues that Yacht Club does more than stack references. The world is open in a way the handheld Zelda comparison does not fully capture. There are no simple item gates telling you where to go next. Skill, curiosity, upgrades, and stubbornness all blur together.
That is probably why the 10 feels defensible rather than inflated. IGN is not saying Mina is frictionless. The friction is part of the pitch. Combat is tough. The world is strange. The puzzle structure trusts the player to remember things, write things down, and return later with a better idea. If that sounds exhausting, the score will look wild. If that sounds like exactly what you miss, it will make immediate sense.
Eurogamer hears the same music, but with more caution
Eurogamer's Christian Donlan is also clearly taken with the game. His review calls it an adventure that took six years to build and feels like it. He sees Zelda and Bloodborne in it, but he spends more time on the density of the island: newspapers, towns, side paths, haunted houses, cursed farms, loose ends, and secrets that may not resolve for hours.
The most useful line in Eurogamer's review is not a neat score quote. It is the admission that the game "should all be overwhelming," and often is, while the basics stay simple. That is Mina in one sentence. You are a little mouse with a whip, a burrow move, and a few weapons. Around that, the game builds a knot of places, clues, locked-off possibilities, and half-understood problems.
Eurogamer's review also makes the best case for playing with a notebook nearby. Donlan writes that the most crucial thing he took with him was "a piece of paper and a pen." That detail says more than a feature list. Mina the Hollower is not only asking for reflexes. It is asking you to notice. A book on a high shelf, a blocked bridge, a train station you cannot reach, a beach that lets you see somewhere you cannot yet enter. These are not just collectibles on a checklist. They are little promises the game expects you to keep in mind.
That is lovely design when you are in the mood for it. It can also be a lot. Eurogamer's praise carries a warning inside it: the same density that makes Mina feel hand-built can make it feel crowded, cryptic, or slow to untangle.
The mixed reviews are not outliers. They are boundary markers
The mixed reviews on Metacritic are useful because they do not sound like they are reviewing a different game. GameSpew says there is a lot to like if you do not mind a challenge, but calls out unforgiving combat, accessibility options that lock out achievements, and a lack of guidance. TheSixthAxis praises the retro aesthetic, world, boss fights, and secrets, but says poor navigation pulled some enjoyment away and that the game wanted a better map. Edge's criticism is sharper: Mina is best when it channels Zelda, less so when it leans into Soulslike territory or becomes too severe about early-90s design. ZTGD lands in the middle with the cleanest summary of the mixed camp, calling it a good game that "cannot get out of its own way."
None of that cancels the 90 metascore. It explains it. Mina the Hollower is not polarizing because some critics see quality and others do not. It is polarizing because the quality is tied to choices that cost something. The game wants mystery, so it risks confusion. It wants danger, so it risks frustration. It wants to honor old games, so it risks inheriting habits some players were happy to leave behind.
That is a healthier kind of critical disagreement than the usual score fight. The question is not whether Yacht Club made the game well. The question is whether the game it made is the one you want right now.
What reviewers agree on
The agreement is surprisingly clear. Critics like the art, the music, the density of the world, and the confidence of the design. Even the mixed reviews tend to acknowledge the craft. SteamDeckHQ's Metacritic excerpt says Mina feels "effortlessly confident" and praises Yacht Club for understanding that old games worked because of bold design, not just old pixels. Player 2 calls it a masterclass in how constraints can fuel creativity. Screen Rant argues that it is not nostalgia bait, but a creative adventure that works even without old-school Zelda baggage.
The praise keeps returning to the same idea: Mina the Hollower understands the texture of the games it is invoking. It is not just lower resolution art and chiptune mood. It is the pleasure of peering at a screen and wondering what matters. It is the fear of going one room too far with too little health. It is the satisfaction of realizing that the weird clue you ignored two hours ago was not flavor text.
The criticism returns to one idea too: a game can be intentionally obscure and still need better support. A better map would not necessarily make Mina less mysterious. More humane achievement rules around accessibility modifiers would not make the combat less serious. Some of the mixed reviews are not asking Yacht Club to sand the game flat. They are asking it to distinguish between meaningful friction and busywork.
Why it matters
Mina the Hollower matters because it is a reminder that retro-inspired games have moved past homage. This is not a small studio copying a beloved template because nostalgia sells. Yacht Club already proved with Shovel Knight that it can turn memory into something sturdy. Mina feels like the harder second act: a game that borrows the visual grammar of handheld adventures, then stuffs it with modern expectations around build variety, combat pressure, secrets, and long-tail completion.
That ambition is why the high scores feel earned. It is also why the 70s are worth listening to. When a game tries to be dense, dangerous, cute, gothic, open, and old-fashioned at once, some seams will show. For one player, those seams are texture. For another, they are the reason to stop.
So the practical critic-score read is simple. If you like games that tell you exactly where to go next, Mina the Hollower may test your patience. If you like writing down odd clues, getting lost with intent, and letting a game occupy the quiet part of your brain for a week, the 90 metascore is probably pointing at something real.
I would not treat Mina the Hollower as a universal recommendation. That sounds strange for a game sitting at 90, but it feels honest. Treat it as a strong signal for a particular kind of player. The one who sees a blocked bridge, a high shelf, and a suspicious line in the town paper, then thinks: good, I have something to do later.