Mina the Hollower

神人游戏，开局过度缺少指引导致怎么玩都不舒服。

Call me Mina the way I be Hollowing out my cheeks under the desk at Yacht Club Games for creating this masterpiece. Post review

using the 1000° sounding rod is more fun than this game

muy weno

As a guy that played Link's Awakening DX at a formative age, this game hit home in so, so many ways. I felt at home. I felt warm and fuzzy. The top-down soulslike adjacent gameplay is a perfect evolution of something like Link's Awakening. The amount of stuff packed into this game is insane. Tons of items, tons of trinkets, tons of sidearms... Tons of secrets. I loved the level design of this game. There's secrets everywhere for eyes to see them. Everything is connected, and the flow is immaculate. After taking a couple week break, I came back to be completely lost in what I was doing, so I ended up looking up a map to get my bearings again, which I felt was a bit of a pain point in the game, but on the other hand, not relying on a map and finding my way around Tenebrous Isle felt sooooo good. Overall, though, I had an absolute blast-- and I was so surprised at how many modifiers you can apply to the game to change whatever you want. If I ever come back and do a NG+, I'll probably end up mirroring the map, just so everything feels a little more fresh. I had tons of fun, and the game is going to be on my mind for a while to come.

A love-letter to Castlevania and a Link to the Past. Difficult platforming, rewarding combat, great art, and intriguing story. Would recommend!

At a bit of an impasse here, because on paper, I should love this game. And to an extent, I really did enjoy quite a bit of it, especially the environments, variety, and sheer amount of things to discover. Some of the boss fights are genuinely great. The mechanics are almost immaculately designed, and hollowing in particular is a novel approach to adding a dodge that sidesteps the roll-slop accusations often leveled at games with any amount of soulslike DNA. Mina feels completely different to control than anything else I've played, and while many people (myself included, at the outset) bemoaned the mechanic, once you clear the learning curve, it becomes an exceptionally implemented glue for combat, platforming, and puzzles. I absolutely adore the aesthetic, particularly the Game Boy Color-inspired palette. It looks almost identical to the games it draws from, and while I played this on Steam Deck, I half-wish I'd found a way to run it on one of those handheld emulators shaped like a Game Boy. ♥♥♥♥ got me feeling like I’m in the backseat of my grandma's car on the way to her timeshare in Florida. Despite the widespread complaints about the lack of a traditional map, I never found one necessary. The world is designed well enough that nearly every section implants itself into your short-term memory. Late in the game, I needed to revisit the crypt to grab an upgrade for a weapon I'd started experimenting with (I started with the hammer, which kinda mogs the ♥♥♥♥ out of the rest of the sandbox but needed some variance), and there was almost no friction in getting back there. I easily found the exact room I needed. It felt like driving back through an old neighborhood you've visited a few times and remembering the turns as you go. What keeps me from loving this game in totality is just how ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ annoying it is. Yacht Club has, I think, intended to and succeeded in making the single most ass-hair-pulling game ever created. In a way, I almost commend that, because it's clear the game was designed to irritate players in the vein of a rage game. My perception here is bolstered by a handful of specifics: enemies can attack along 8 axes while Mina only has 4, the knockbacks constantly launch you into pits (a trinket can minimize this), and the way certain enemies look and sound is precision-engineered aggravation. The starting bat is a pushover that dies in one hit, but the stupid little face and noise it makes as it flies in diagonally and knocks you off a platform really makes me want to perform the most butthole-clinchingly tense Valsalva maneuver until I Lindsey Graham myself. That's not to say I found the game difficult. The hardest stretch is honestly the first hour or so, and as you progress and pick up trinkets, health upgrades, and the rest, it becomes remarkably forgiving. Even when you die, you aren't really at risk of losing any bones permanently, because you can hold (as far as I can tell) up to 5 sparks that give you additional chances to recover your currency. I only died 15 times across my playthrough (a lot of that credit goes to the Syrup trinket, which I picked up early and which makes you basically unkillable), and finished it without losing a single bone. I only say this to reinforce the idea that the fail state isn't what makes this game annoying. It's very forgiving the further you progress, even as it tries to ratchet up the challenge with beefier bosses and enemy threat levels. The problem is that the moment-to-moment gameplay in Mina can just become abrasive. Normally, as a friction enjoyer, I would take that as a feature. I like having something to overcome. But Mina's approach to microdosing frustration turns the experience into a slog, and it's pervasive enough to color the entire playthrough. Anyway, congrats to Yacht Club for finally getting Mina the Swallower out, and it seems like it's doing well enough to keep the studio afloat. There's a lot to love here, and just about as much to hate. Also, Rhene is my wife, and I hope nothing bad happened to her at the end of the game :(

我的评价从初玩2个多小时时想直接打差评 → 玩到中期转变为中评 → 玩到最后感觉挺好挺上头的 其实客观来讲游戏内容设计得不错，美术很不错，音乐也挺好，各种细节做得都很棒，值得一玩，初见约24小时100%通关，就游戏内容而言是绝对足量了 风格很有迷惑性，起初还以为是类似GBC ZELDA不可思议果实那样的玩法，实际除了画面看着很像外完全不是一回事，没有任何技能锁 经过深思熟虑后还是给个不推荐，因为这游戏最大的问题就是设计的恶意的带来的各种折磨感 [hr][/hr] 这游戏最致命的地方就是它的成长曲线做得太糟糕了： * 很显然设计者为了非线性闯关，只能将所有区域的怪物强度弄得差不多，而且越玩到后面就越觉得敌方强度实际上都是按玩家已经有一定升级的强度来设计的，这就导致前期体验非常糟糕，而且为了堆升级，可以看得出很多升级都是将原本设计好的能力拆了出去再让你解锁的，有的武器没升级前很不好用 * 前期钱本来就难赚了，死了没火花后会掉所有的钱而且无法回收 (基地里那个机器不是存钱而是把骨石转成会掉的骨头我是没看懂)，典型的魂LIKE糟粕，对于这样的设计我一向是建议直接CE改钱，然后你会发现一开始把属性等级升上去后才是正常的游戏体验，单纯就是削弱玩家水时长 另一个不好的地方就是糟糕的战斗体验： * 武器攻击距离又短又小，加上攻击会后退，小怪又各个超雄，无伤难就算了受击还会掉血槽，所以一些小怪反而是比BOSS还恶心的存在，这就是为什么能用的武器就那几个，安全秒怪才是硬道理 * 钻地躲避很有迷惑性，哪些攻击是能钻得过去哪些不行初见没法第一时间判断 (而且我是不理解为什么地面上的火能烧到地下的玩家)，钻地前还必须跳跃，这就导致后期要回避一些BOSS的时候必须打提前量 * 回血非常难受，不装饰品的情况下，硬直巨大被碰到就浪费一次机会+掉HP掉血槽，并且还需要血槽资源不然你连血都回不了. * 然后地图设计者还总是在一些很奇葩的地方给你塞一个副武器，导致手头的副武器被换掉甚至丢失，回基地拿备用的又会导致小怪机关全部刷新(垃圾魂LIKE篝火刷新机制) * 跟空洞一样，做了一大堆饰品但有用的基本就那么几个，很多饰品的效果感觉就是硬把玩家削弱然后做一个饰品给你补回去 * 副武器也是能用的就那么几个，剩下的几乎是凑数的，而且每次复活后基地的副武器能量补给是有限的，这意味着可能当你第3次回去挑战BOSS的时候就会面临副武器能量=0的困境 另外没有小地图(我不知道为什么设计者会不加这个)只能硬背，所幸地形也不是很复杂约等于是一本道，再加些许岔路藏宝 [hr][/hr] 一些碎碎念： * 其实你会发现我提到的很多问题其实都是空洞骑士式魂LIKE的问题，讲真我是不明白为什么现在很多做动作游戏的制作组会把空洞骑士那种手感和魂类折磨设计当成了宝贝，很多难受的地方光靠文字表述很难体会，要实际自己玩过才知道 * 战斗手感真的是纯僵硬的恶心，去玩玩不可思议果实，看看人家动作天尊卡婊是怎么设计动作游戏手感的 * 游戏难度高吗，我觉得的还好，再难的BOSS打多两次摸清规律就过了，但是小怪的话即使你非常熟悉他的行动模式也难保不受伤，其实越玩到后面能力全面后游戏体验飞速提升，成长梯度设计完全不合理