Mina the Hollower Sells 300K Copies in 3 Days and Tops Metacritic, But Yacht Club Games Still Chasing the 'Golden' Threshold

The model was Hollow Knight: Silksong, which launched at the same $20 price point in 2025 and has since racked up more than seven million sales. Team Cherry could almost certainly have charged more given the hype, but held firm—and Yacht Club took notes. "Among the reasons given for this was the huge success of Hollow Knight Silksong," PCGamesN reported, citing the seven-million-sales figure as direct inspiration .

The approach prioritizes volume and accessibility over per-unit margin, betting that a low barrier to entry will build a larger long-term audience. Early Steam data supports the logic: the game sold 55,000 copies on that platform alone before noon on launch day, briefly landing at #9 on Steam's global top sellers chart between Subnautica 2 and Apex Legends . It also crossed 1,000 Steam reviews within the first 24 hours—a pace that, by standard review-to-sales ratios, aligned with the reported figures .

Critical reception: a 93 Metascore and the year's top spot

The industry's response has been near-universal praise. The PC version of Mina the Hollower holds a 93 Metascore on Metacritic based on approximately 40 critic reviews, making it the highest-rated game of 2026 so far . It unseated Forza Horizon 6, which sits at 91, and outranks other major releases including Pokémon Pokopia (89), Resident Evil Requiem (89), and Mewgenics (88) .

Platform splits show strong consistency: the PS5 version scored 92, while the Switch 2 version landed at 85 . OpenCritic aggregated a similarly strong 92 based on roughly 30 reviews .

Critics have described the game as a Zelda-like action-adventure with Game Boy Color-inspired pixel art, wrapped in a gothic Victorian atmosphere frequently compared to Bloodborne . Its influences also draw from Castlevania and the top-down dungeon-crawling of Link's Awakening .

300,000 copies in three days: good, but not golden

The headline figure—300,000 units sold across all platforms in 72 hours—was confirmed by Yacht Club Games to Bloomberg . That number handily beat Velasco's previously stated benchmark: he had told PC Gamer six months earlier that 200,000 copies "would be really, really great" .

But the celebration has an asterisk. Velasco's true target is what he calls the "golden" threshold: 500,000 units . At 300,000, the studio has secured breathing room—but not a definitive long-term guarantee.

Context matters. The game's development cost is reportedly around $5 million, though that figure comes from games.gg and hasn't been independently corroborated by Yacht Club . Meanwhile, fellow 2026 indie standout Mewgenics sold one million copies in its first week, illustrating the gap between a strong launch and a phenomenon-level hit .

Yacht Club had paused development on a 3D Shovel Knight project to focus entirely on Mina the Hollower . The studio's future—and whether it can resume that work—depends on the long tail of sales that strong reviews are meant to drive.

The Kickstarter foundation

Mina the Hollower originally sought $300,000 on Kickstarter in early 2022. The campaign was fully funded within hours and closed at over $1.2 million from approximately 21,000 backers—roughly 297% of the initial goal . That community investment gave Yacht Club the headroom to expand the game's scope over its six-year development cycle, but it also raised expectations among the backers who had been waiting since 2022.

What happens next: survival, not salvation

Multiple outlets have framed the launch outcome carefully. Headlines use phrases like "breathing room" and "saved for now" rather than declaring a decisive rescue . That caution reflects Velasco's own public ambivalence: he told Bloomberg he was pleased with the critical response but had hoped for higher sales numbers .

The studio has already discussed a potential sequel—Velasco told Kotaku the team has "talked a lot about Mina 2"—but whether that materializes depends on the game's sales trajectory over the coming months . For now, Yacht Club Games has earned something rare in the indie space: a critically adored new IP that launched into a fiercely competitive market and sold well enough to keep the lights on.

Whether it sells well enough to do much more than that remains the open question of 2026's most acclaimed game.

Mina the Hollower is available now on Nintendo Switch, Nintendo Switch 2, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, and PC via Steam, GOG, and the Humble Store for $19.99 .