Before Mina the Hollower, Yacht Club paused a 3D Shovel Knight game that's 'not far from being showable' and a possible next project
Overview & Key Takeaways
Shovel Knight 64. Shovel Knight Solid.
In a new interview with Bloomberg, Yacht Club Games co-founder Sean Velasco talked about Mina the Hollower's $20 price tag and the game's "make or break" status for the indie institution. Along the way, he talked about Mina's development challenges, one of which might just be the studio's next game.
The immediate future is still Mina-shaped, including support and marketing for the top-down Zelda homage. After that, though? It sounds like a return to Shovel Knight is in the cards, specifically a 3D game the studio was initially developing alongside Mina the Hollower before consolidating all of its resources behind the 2D adventure game.
Velasco characterized the new Shovel Knight as having been halfway through development and "not far from being showable" when Yacht Club pressed pause. From what Velasco said, it sounds like Mina the Hollower was actually the more troubled project, lacking some of the studio's more experienced developers at first and needing some areas to be completely rebuilt.
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Splitting the studio into multiple teams, a move that has worked out well for other companies like Obsidian, sounds like it wasn't the right fit for Yacht Club. "We're going to want to stick together, no matter what we do," Velasco said of the studio's future.
Even though that means making games one at a time, he still sounded optimistic about Yacht Club's future pace of releases. “At the end of Mina we were cooking, and it was great,” said Velasco. “If we could just be doing that in perpetuity, that’s all we would need. Then the games wouldn’t take so long.”
I would definitely agree that they were cooking: I backed Mina the Hollower on Kickstarter before I was even full time at PC Gamer, and I've been loving it on my Steam Deck. PCG contributor Kerry Brunskill also adored the game, awarding it a 90% score in their review.
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