Although video games have come a long way from their 8-bit heritage, classic titles still enjoy a loyal fanbase today. That enduring appeal was somethingYacht Club Gamesaimed to capture in their forthcoming releaseMina the Hollower, which the studio says is a homage to the handheld games of old.
AlthoughMinawas inspired by nostalgia for the Game Boy era, Yacht Club was aware of classic handheld games’ limitations. Game Rant spoke with the studio’s marketing lead Celia Schilling about the title’s key gameplay mechanics, and how the developers struck a careful balance between a retro aesthetic and contemporary features.
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Mina the Hollower Borrows from Classic RPGs and Platformers
Minais set in a Gothic universe, inspired largelyby 1986’sCastlevania, Schilling said. Some of the game’s features also take notes from both classic and contemporary titles likeThe Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening, and evenBloodborne.
“[T]he game also took inspirations from Gothic-era writings likeThe Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde,DraculaandFrankenstein,” Schilling said. The devs liked those worlds in particular, since they center around “a horrific descent from normality into something dark and spooky.” Yacht Club’s writers are leaning into those darker tones, Schilling said.
Gamers got apreview of that spooky vibeinMina’sdemo. The player meets a character called the Duke who enlists them to help find his lover, the Duchess. At the end of the quest, it’s revealed that the player has been leading the Duke to a coffin and that the Duchess has actually been dead the whole time. “At first it seems like a fun fetch quest,” Schilling said, “but it becomes sad.”
Meanwhile, players who take control ofMina’snamesake protagonist will have some tried-and-true RPG mechanics at their disposal. The devs arehuge fans of RPG games, Schilling said, and that shows through in some gameplay features. Skills and health are upgradeable, and there’s a leveling system. Players can also match their particular play style by upgrading certain skills. Even asMinanears completion, Yacht Club may still add more RPG features, Schilling said.
“We have a hard time putting down the creative pen.”
The devs builtMina’s around the concept of a “top-downCastlevania,” Schilling said. That, combined with combat-heavy mechanics and “open-ended, top-down exploration,” forms the basis of the title’s core gameplay. Exploration in particular will play a major focus inMina, Schilling said. “It’s blending everything that we loved about certain genres of games, and truly writing a love letter to the Game Boy.”
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Mina the Hollower Blends Classic Visuals with Modern Technology
Yacht Club has often billedMinaas a “love letter” to classic handheld games. A lot of its art style is inspiredby retro Game Boy titles. Even so, the studio wasn’t aiming for a perfect carbon copy, Schilling said.
“To paraphrase a colleague: because we wrote the game as a love letter to Game Boy, does that mean that we’re being truly faithful to the genre? Well, we’re making it for the modern era.”
The devs are staying faithful to classic handheld games’ color palette and the Game Boy’s requisite four colors per character sprite, Schilling said. They’re also using an eight by eight per pixel tile scheme, and matching the Game Boy’s four colors per sprite. Despite that, there were a lot of limitations to Game Boy games, she said, and in some cases the devs had to update some features for modern audiences.
One example whereMina’sfeatures differfrom its handheld predecessorswas the game’s screen size. “Game Boy screens were very small, and TVs don’t use that aspect ratio anymore,” Schilling said. “It would be pretty difficult to stay faithful to that, so we did make it a little bit larger.“
Combining classic and current game mechanics “can feel like we’re reinventing the wheel,” she said. The devs would take a feature from the Game Boy era and tweak it to make sense inMina’scontext. “It’s a lot of thinking about what you remember about games and love about them, and combining the two to make an experience that is reminiscent.”
