Yacht Club Games has stretched itself thin after the success of their beloved indie platformer, Shovel Knight. Now, the studio is banking on its upcoming action-adventure game, Mina the Hollower, to make ends meet; otherwise, it might be time to call it quits.
In a recent interview with Jason Schreier at Bloomberg, Yacht Club Games hopes that Mina the Hollower would save the studio from imminent doom. Sean Velasco, developer and founder of the Shovel Knight studio, prays that if their upcoming game reaches 500,000 copies, “[we] would be golden,” but selling less than 100,000 copies would be “not so good.”
Of course, these sales numbers aren't something Yacht Club Games isn't capable of hitting. Their critically acclaimed Shovel Knight has sold over 3 million copies since its 2014 release, and it has received consistent support years after with beefy DLCs that add interesting twists to the platforming formula alongside new characters.
Shovel Knight received over $311,000 during its Kickstarter campaign, but Mina the Hollower has a whopping 1.2 million pledges from its 30-day funding period. It’s already a green flag for the company.
But despite the telltale signs of success, the studio is still facing new challenges, particularly with the gaming industry’s oversaturated market. Mina the Hollower didn’t have the smoothest development pipeline, as the game faced multiple delays. It was expected to drop in December 2023, but the developers clearly weren’t satisfied with the product, so they had to add more content, as stated in the Bloomberg interview. Its latest delay, which was supposed to be released on October 31st of this year, has been moved to an unspecified date. The last-minute decision was unexpected, but at least it dodged the bullet from Team Cherry’s massively popular Hollow Knight: Silksong.
Yacht Club Games is now making ends meet as it recovers from its 2014 layoffs. Now, its team of 15 talented developers is all burned out, hoping that things will finally pay off once their game comes out soon. There’s no release date announced yet, but we should expect an announcement at The Game Awards.
Mina the Hollower is an action-adventure inspired by the good ol’ days of classic videogames, specifically Nintendo’s Zelda franchise. It sees the protagonist, Mina, save an island from a gripping curse.
Yacht Club Games maintains its stylized 8-bit visuals in Mina’s adventures, but it comes with a far more refined animation style with attention to detail compared to their 2014 title.
At the moment, with no clear release on the horizon and with a studio hoping for the best, Mina the Hollower’s fate remains a blur. However, should the game turn out to be a success, we could expect more games from the studio. Maybe even a fully-fledged 3D game this time around?
For more like this, stick with us here at Gfinityesports.com, the best website for gaming news and features.