"No free DLC": After accidentally promising 4 entire new games during their Shovel Knight Kickstarter, the devs behind 2026's top-rated game have learned their lesson

The title character of Mina the Hollower looks over a note.

Mina the Hollower is a natural follow-up to Yacht Club Games' previous hit, Shovel Knight, in many ways – not least of which is its excellent pastiche of a wide array of retro influences. But, even as Mina secures its position as the best-rated game of 2026, the devs are absolutely certain that they don't want to repeat one major part of Shovel Knight's legacy: all that DLC.

"No free DLC", programmer David D'Angelo tells Kotaku. That lesson applied to Mina the Hollower's original Kickstarter which, unlike the crowdfunding campaign for Shovel Knight, didn't offer stretch goals before major post-launch content. "Basically, we're not promising anything that – Whatever we promise is what we want to do for sure, without question. We came up with a plan for what the game was. And that's what we put on Kickstarter. And that's what we delivered at the end of the day."

Shovel Knight's Kickstarter included a wide array of vaguely defined stretch goals, notably including three playable boss characters and a 4-player battle mode. The developers imagined these goals being fulfilled with simple minigames and lightly remixed levels. Instead, they snowballed into extensive, all-new campaigns and spin-offs that effectively served as entire new games in their own right.

Those DLC expansions were far, far more extensive than what they'd pictured when they added those goals to the Kickstarter, which is why Mina the Hollower's stretch goals were a lot more specific – and deliverable. "So, yeah, it was just like, no empty…or I don't know what you even call that, like a promise that you're not really sure what it is," D'Angelo explains.

That's not to say that DLC is entirely off the table for Mina, but D'Angelo says the team has "literally never talked about" a major expansion. But they do have some "pretty clear ideas" for a potential sequel. "We think of Mina like Shovel Knight," he says. "It’s a tentpole game of our studio that we [want to] keep going." Just maybe don't expect every boss to get its own unique campaign around this particular tentpole.

Saving the studio, Mina the Hollower sells 300,000 copies in 3 days as head wonders "how come the best-reviewed game of 2026 is not the fastest-selling game."