PAX West 2024: Shovel Knight Dig: Wicked Wishes and Mina the Hollower

If you haven’t heard of Shovel Knight, let me illuminate you. Developed by Yacht Club Games, Shovel Knight is a 2014 action platformer considered by many to be among the best platformers, and indeed among the best games ever made, full stop. In 2022, Yacht Club Games released a sequel of sorts in Shovel Knight Dig – a rogue-lite platforming game focused much more on digging and less on adventuring. While the structure of the game was inherently different from the original game, Shovel Knight Dig kept the core concepts and the soul of the original and created a new experience. It’s held in almost as high of a regard as the original, so I jumped at the ability to try out the unreleased DLC, known as Wicked Wishes. I was able to try it at Yacht Club's booth at PAX West 2024, as well as experiencing the prolific studio’s upcoming project Mina the Hollower. Unsurprisingly, both of these projects are absolutely fantastic. 

Wicked Wishes offers a pretty sizable chunk of content that starts in the Hoofman’s Guild Hall, a secret hideout where a guild of adventurers meets, located underneath Shovel Knight Dig’s original hub world. Your goal is to work your way up the ranks and ultimately unravel the mysteries of the Hoofman, a horse with a flawless sense of fashion, as you accept challenges and learn more about the world of the Guild Hall itself.  

Wicked Wishes offers a pretty sizable chunk of content that starts in the Hoofman’s Guild Hall, a secret hideout where a guild of adventurers meets, located underneath Shovel Knight Dig’s original hub world.

The DLC includes new Relics and buffs, new bosses and enemies, additional story to dig through, and new areas to explore. As expected, Shovel Knight Dig plays impeccably and the DLC is no exception. I was able to play around with some of the new buffs (they’re fantastic), and Yacht Club did a great job balancing the new challenges with the old gameplay to liven up something familiar. Even though I’m not particularly familiar with Shovel Knight Dig, I was able to grasp Wicked Wishes pretty quickly and actually had quite a few good runs. This is a testament to how well this game is designed – even newcomers can jump straight into a DLC and never feel like they’re up against something they can’t handle.

I don’t want to dig (get it?) too deep into what you can expect from Wicked Wishes as I don’t want to ruin any of the fun, wacky set pieces and characters seen throughout the DLC. Suffice it to say that the same quality Shovel Knight is known for shines through brightly with the new addition. I had a great time doing a few runs in the add-on, and if you enjoy Shovel Knight Dig, it will be a must-have when it releases later this year. 

This is a testament to how well this game is designed – even newcomers can jump straight into a DLC and never feel like they’re up against something they can’t handle.

I knew very little about Yacht Club Game’s newest IP, Mina the Hollower, going into our meeting at PAX. Within the first ten minutes of playing, I was floored at just how good the game was, and how great the full game could be. Mina the Hollower is a beautifully created ode to handheld dungeon crawlers of the past. It follows Mina, a mouse known as a “Hollower,” as she desperately attempts to complete her mission to rescue a cursed island. 

Everything about the game is a delectable homage to titles like The Legend of Zelda: Oracle of Ages and Oracle of Seasons, two of my favorite Zelda games, and I am absolutely here for it. The art style is a beautiful pixel rendition of isometric dungeon crawlers, while simultaneously exuding modern sensibilities with its scale and level design.

That modern sensibility continued through to the combat, being significantly more dynamic than the button-mashing of isometric RPGs of the past. You have multiple weapons at your disposal, each one working a bit differently than the last. Some weapons are slower with greater distance while others are faster with less range, and some land in the middle of the spectrum. There’s also a burrowing mechanic that allows you to dig underground as you move, lending tons of versatility to traversal and combat. Fighting enemies in Mina the Hollower feels a lot more like Dark Souls than any of the handheld Zelda games, and that is definitely something that works in its favor. 

Everything about the game is a delectable homage to titles like The Legend of Zelda: Oracle of Ages and Oracle of Seasons, two of my favorite Zelda games, and I am absolutely here for it.

Mina herself is very much a “fish out of water” type, and she’s impossible not to love. Her adorable design, along with her loving naivety of what’s going on in the world around her, make her a protagonist that’s easy to attach yourself to. I only got to read a few lines of dialogue from Mina, and even that minuscule exposure made me want her to succeed and to best the challenges ahead of her. 

Playing Mina the Hollower made me realize how much I missed the more traditional puzzle-based dungeon-centric Legend of Zelda games, and I was surprised at how expertly it filled that niche. Groundbreaking and fantastic as Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom are, they continue to distance themselves from the familiar Zelda formula of the past, for better and worse. Mina is shaping up to be a fantastic replacement for those experiences, blending the old and the new seamlessly to create a game that is at once familiar and also completely novel. You know the people who brought you Shovel Knight are only going to accept quality, and if you miss that old Zelda feel, keep an eye out for Mina the Hollower, releasing later this year for pretty much every platform imaginable.