Link’s Awakening is still the best 2D Zelda game. (Don’t at me.) Yacht Club Games, the studio behind the megahit indie game Shovel Knight, clearly has strong feelings about it too, as their next game keeps the spirit of Game Boy Zelda alive. Mina the Hollower is a top-down action-adventure game with a cartoonish gothic horror aesthetic, and it already looks fantastic.
The titular Mina is an anthropomorphic mouse equipped with a whip and able to quickly burrow underground. Those are your two primary actions, mimicking the two-button restrictions of a proper Game Boy. (Even the colour choices are built to imitate the palette restrictions of the GBC.) You’ll also pick up Castlevania-style side weapons, like a throwable ax or boomerang. There’s also a levelling system that will let you increase various stats over time.
The devs say that the game’s still early in production and that ideas are still “taking form”, so they’re soliciting feedback as part of a newly-launched Kickstarter. The final game is estimated for delivery in December 2023.
You can check out the announcement trailer below.
Yacht Club also provided a longer gameplay demo on the G4 Twitch channel.