Despite the overwhelming success of Shovel Knight and the ubiquity the character has received from gamers, it looks as if developer Yacht Club Games has a lot more riding on its next title, Mina the Hollower, than anticipated. In a recent interview with Bloomberg, Yacht Club co-founder Sean Velasco was asked a ton of questions regarding the studio’s anticipated followup to Shovel Knight. In a rather telling quote, Velasco said
“It’s make-or-break for sure.”
The article paints a portrait of a studio expanding a little too fast for the scope of the games it wants to create. At the same time, the ambitions for Mina the Hollower grew much wider than even its creator, Alec Faulkner, originally envisioned. Having joined Yacht Club in 2016 as an intern after impressing the company with his fan art, Faulkner would help design the Shovel Knight expansions while also working on a side project that he hoped could become a new IP for the company. Made concurrently with a 3D version of Shovel Knight (which has yet to be properly announced), Mina’s early prototypes wound up getting an entire team dedicated to them at the start of 2020, which necessitated hiring more employees.
That seems to be the point where things started to break down. Mina was originally planned to release within a few years, but has now been gestating for nearly six. That 3D Shovel Knight has also been put on hold to get everyone hands on with Mina so it can cross the finish line. The added cost of extra employees seems to have run through the reserves of money Yacht Club made from Shovel Knight, which was sold a staggering three million+ copies since 2014.
When talking what kind of sales Mina will need, Velasco says, “If we sold 500,000 copies, then we would be golden. If we sold even 200,000, that would be really, really great. If we sold, like, 100,000, that’s not so good.” The fear isn’t that Yacht Club will disappear if Mina is a bomb. The problem is that the company will need to seek external funding and will no longer be indie. Being bought out by a major publisher could spell the end of the creative freedom Yacht Club has had since it started operations.
Hopefully, that won’t be the result. The Nintendo Switch 2 demo released for Mina has had extremely positive reception, so it’s looking like Yacht Club will have another hit on its hands. Only time will tell.
Check out more Yacht Club Games content
Mina the Hollower is getting a native Switch 2 port, release set for October
Shovel Knight returns with a shinier outfit in Yooka-Re-Playlee
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Written by Peter Glagowski
Peter has been a freelance gaming and film critic for over seven years. His passion for Nintendo is only matched by the size of his collection.
