Digging For Gems

“I’m, like, so incredibly heads down on everything that I'm really just focused completely on the game. Except for you! Now is the time we can chat about everything.”

These are the exasperated yet enthusiastic words of Sean Velasco, founder of Yacht Club Games, as we begin a video call where he will walk me through new gameplay of the studio’s next title, Mina the Hollower, likely for the final time before its October 31 release. Though Velasco appears mildly frazzled in the way I’ve grown accustomed to seeing game designers during the busy final weeks of development, his excitement radiates through the screen as he fires up the game and hurriedly sifts through various debug menus to showcase the retro-inspired adventure.

Mina the Hollower is the first wholly original game for Yacht Club in more than a decade, a studio famed for its 2014 classic, Shovel Knight. Conceived initially as a side passion project by studio designer Alec Falknur – a story we chronicled in a 2022 behind-the-scenes documentary – the classic Zelda-inspired game was successfully crowdfunded via Kickstarter and has spent over five years in development. With mere weeks until release, Velasco reveals new details about the game while sharing both hopes and fears of its potential reception.