The best part of Mina the Hollower is how it randomizes the Zelda formula | The VergeSkip to main contentThe homepageThe VergeThe Verge logo.The VergeThe Verge logo.TechReviewsScienceEntertainmentAIPolicyNotificationsNotificationsHamburger Navigation ButtonThe homepageThe VergeThe Verge logo.NotificationsNotificationsHamburger Navigation ButtonNavigation DrawerThe VergeThe Verge logo.Login / Sign UpcloseCloseSearchTechExpandAmazonAppleFacebookGoogleMicrosoftSamsungBusinessSee all techReviewsExpandSmart Home ReviewsPhone ReviewsTablet ReviewsHeadphone ReviewsSee all reviewsScienceExpandSpaceEnergyEnvironmentHealthSee all scienceEntertainmentExpandTV ShowsMoviesAudioSee all entertainmentAIExpandOpenAIAnthropicSee all AIPolicyExpandAntitrustPoliticsLawSecuritySee all policyGadgetsExpandLaptopsPhonesTVsHeadphonesSpeakersWearablesSee all gadgetsVerge ShoppingExpandBuying GuidesDealsGift GuidesSee all shoppingGamingExpandXboxPlayStationNintendoSee all gamingStreamingExpandDisneyHBONetflixYouTubeCreatorsSee all streamingTransportationExpandElectric CarsAutonomous CarsRide-sharingScootersSee all transportationFeaturesVerge VideoExpandTikTokYouTubeInstagramPodcastsExpandDecoderThe VergecastVersion HistoryNewslettersArchivesStoreVerge Product UpdatesSubscribeFacebookThreadsInstagramYoutubeRSSThe VergeThe Verge logo.The best part of Mina the Hollower is how it randomizes the Zelda formulaNotificationsNotificationsComments DrawerNotificationsCommentsLoading commentsGetting the conversation ready...GamingCloseGamingPosts from this topic will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed.FollowFollowSee All GamingEntertainmentCloseEntertainmentPosts from this topic will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed.FollowFollowSee All EntertainmentThe best part of Mina the Hollower is how it randomizes the Zelda formulaIt finally made me feel comfortable trying a randomizer.It finally made me feel comfortable trying a randomizer.by Jay PetersCloseJay PetersSenior ReporterPosts from this author will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed.FollowFollowSee All by Jay PetersMay 27, 2026, 1:00 PM UTCLinkShareGiftImage: Yacht Club GamesPart OfThe best indie games we’re playing right nowsee all updates Jay PetersCloseJay PetersPosts from this author will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed.FollowFollowSee All by Jay Peters is a senior reporter covering technology, gaming, and more. He joined The Verge in 2019 after nearly two years at Techmeme.After rolling credits on Mina the Hollower, I did something unusual for me and immediately started a new file. I’m not typically one to replay games right after I beat them. But Mina, a new action-adventure title from Shovel Knight creators Yacht Club Games, offers something that got me to jump right back into a brand-new adventure: a built-in randomizer.Randomizers shuffle things like items and enemies so that players can experience games they might be very familiar with in a whole new way. Imagine tackling The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, but not finding the Kokiri Sword in the chest it’s supposed to be in. A randomizer forces players to adapt on the fly, which can breathe new life into familiar games — and they can be extremely entertaining to watch, especially in races. I’ve always wanted to try one myself, but I haven’t because they’re typically mods for classic games that require a bit of tinkering to set up; having one baked into Mina could open them up to a broader audience.“I have really gotten into randomizers in the fan community over the past few years,” Sean Velasco, Yacht Club Games cofounder and director on Mina the Hollower, tells The Verge, mentioning randomizers for Super Metroid, A Link to the Past, and one that mixes them together as inspirations. Early on in development, Yacht Club thought adding a randomizer would be fun but also too difficult — basically like making an entire other game, Velasco recalls. However, after building Mina’s saving system for all of the items, “it was easy to track the position of every single item and that meant that we could move them around,” Velasco says. That made it possible to get the randomizer in place.Image: Yacht Club GamesMina the Hollower blends elements of retro Zelda adventures like Link’s Awakening with more modern games like Elden Ring, and randomizing things in Mina’s world provides some thorny challenges right from the start. In a normal playthrough, your first consequential decision is to pick from one of three weapons: a whip, a hammer, or two daggers. With the randomizer, however, you’re presented with three random weapons from the total pool of five in the game, so if you had become adept with the whip in your initial run, you might not be able to rely on it early on in your randomizer run.In a typical playthrough, you also get a health-filling vial shortly after picking your weapon. In the randomizer run, though, you might get a different type of item at that point instead, which makes the beginning of the game much more difficult. In testing, the team had to work out “a lot of kinks,” like making sure you get a key early on to pass through a locked block you’ll encounter. But besides those sorts of potential progression blockers, “we just let it ride,” Velasco says.I’ve been playing a fresh file of the game with randomizers turned on for the locations of both items and sidearms. I’ve already suffered through situations like not getting a vial at that early point and picking up a nearly useless fishing rod as my first sidearm. I also have a trinket that increases the amount of “bones” that enemies drop — which you can put toward upgrades — but the bones bounce around and often fall into holes, where they disappear.It might sound like a nightmare, but it’s been a blast. I have to put everything I learned after my initial 20-hour playthrough to the test in interesting ways, including hunting down every hidden treasure that I can remember in hopes that it turns out to be something good.The randomizer doesn’t always reward these hunts. On more than one occasion, I’ve opened a chest to just get a fishing trophy. But when randomizer gods do smile upon you, it can feel like winning a jackpot. One example: With my trinket that turns on the extra bouncing bones, I knew from my first playthrough that it would pair well with another trinket that magnetized bones toward you. In the back of my head, I hoped I’d stumble upon it on my randomizer run, and through sheer luck, I found it outside the first dungeon I tried.This is a small selection of the many modifiers available in Mina the Hollower. Image: Yacht Club GamesThanks to Mina the Hollower’s extensive modifiers system, you can tweak your game, randomized or not, in many other ways, too. You can change Mina’s stats, like her starting attack and defense levels and her HP. At any point, you can turn on modifiers to increase or decrease the game’s difficulty, like giving Mina infinite jumps or forcing her to take triple damage. There are even “weird” modifiers for things like reversing the game’s controls and making the screen spin continuously. (That last one is nauseating.) “Anything that was modifiable, we put it in as a modifier that you could just debug,” Velasco says. “Most of this is debug stuff that we could change as the developers anyway.”To compete with friends under a certain set of rules, you can share a seed code that lets you each tackle the same world state and see who fares best. And in a post-launch patch, Yacht Club plans to add a modifier that shuffles “warps” — things like doors and holes that let you move from one screen to another — adding even more variety. I have dabbled with the warp randomizer in a beta patch, and it’s just as mind-boggling as you might expect.And while Yacht Club made three additional campaigns for the main Shovel Knight game, for Mina the Hollower, with the exception of that post-launch patch, the studio isn’t planning to add more. “It’s done,” Velasco says. “We don’t need to keep adding to it.” That means that players who want more Mina will have to make that experience for themselves. Thanks to the randomizer and modifiers, there will be a lot of ways to do that.Follow topics and authors from this story to see more like this in your personalized homepage feed and to receive email updates.Jay PetersCloseJay PetersSenior ReporterPosts from this author will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed.FollowFollowSee All by Jay PetersEntertainmentCloseEntertainmentPosts from this topic will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed.FollowFollowSee All EntertainmentGamingCloseGamingPosts from this topic will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed.FollowFollowSee All GamingMore in: The best indie games we’re playing right nowHanging out in my favorite virtual coffee shop in TokyoAndrew WebsterMay 23You can now print your Cairn ascent on a T-shirt.Jay PetersMay 20Mixtape is a musical portrait of teenage lifeJay PetersMay 16Most PopularMost PopularJony Ive’s Ferrari looks nothing like a FerrariUber president says AI spending is getting ‘harder to justify’Google Health is here, but a lot of people want their Fitbit app back insteadNvidia has retired its GeForce Control Panel app after 20 yearsYou’re about to feel the AI money squeezeThe Verge DailyA free daily digest of the news that matters most.Email (required)Sign UpBy submitting your email, you agree to our Terms and Privacy Notice. 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The core appeal of Mina the Hollower lies in its implementation of a randomization mechanic that alters the established elements of the Zelda formula, offering players novel experiences while retaining familiarity. This feature encourages players to adapt dynamically to unpredictable circumstances, injecting fresh vitality into familiar game structures, particularly when observed during competitive play. The creators, Yacht Club Games, initially found incorporating randomization challenging, but this was resolved after successfully developing Mina's item-saving system, which allowed for the tracking and manipulation of item positions, enabling the introduction of the randomizer.

The randomization impacts consequential decisions from the outset of the gameplay. Instead of fixed choices, players must contend with randomized selections for essential game components, such as weapons, health-filling vials, and sidearms. For instance, the initial decision regarding weaponry is shuffled from a pool of five items, meaning a player may face unexpected constraints, such as starting with a less desirable weapon, which significantly alters the early strategic landscape. Furthermore, the randomization can introduce progression blockers, exemplified by players potentially not acquiring necessary items like a health vial early on, forcing them to navigate inherent difficulties rather than relying on conventional progression.

Beyond item placement, the system allows for complex interactions through numerous modifiers. These modifiers enable extensive tweaking of the game's parameters, allowing players to adjust difficulty dynamically, such as granting Mina infinite jumps or imposing triple damage penalties. The system also permits more abstract modifications, including reversing game controls or inducing screen spin, which serve as debugging tools and offer unconventional gameplay possibilities. Moreover, the developers have implemented a competitive layer, allowing players to share seed codes to test different world states against one another. Future plans indicate further development, including a proposed modifier to shuffle game warps, further enhancing the variety available to players.

Although the development of Mina the Hollower has concluded and the studio is not planning further campaign additions, the combination of randomization and the extensive modifier system ensures enduring replayability. This design choice provides a framework where players can experiment with existing content by altering rules and circumstances, fostering a high degree of engagement with the game's mechanics outside of a standard playthrough.