Small miracle Mina the Hollower is currently the top-rated game of 2026 with a 92 score on Metacritic, meaning indie developer Yacht Club Games squashed everyone, including Goliath publisher Xbox and its Forza Horizon 6 (which has a 91 score), under its little fist. Yacht Club's $20 plan is working.
Soulslike, Castlevania half-breed Mina the Hollower joins Team Cherry's Hollow Knight: Silksong in sporting a $20 price tag for its, by all accounts, premium game experience starring a tiny lady in a red coat – making the industry standard for $70 games look immodest in comparison. In a new interview with Bloomberg, Yacht Club Games director and co-founder Sean Velasco says he hoped making Mina $20 would boost its appeal like this, since Yacht Club couldn't waste any time in convincing people to play its gothic adventure.
"Everyone came in ready to say, 'I want the game to be $20,'" Velasco says about the meeting where Yacht Club devs discussed pricing Mina, which they'd been sweating over for six years.
Yacht Club's success from beloved 2014 platformer Shovel Knight had been starting to atrophy, and staff was motivated to create another hit; previously, Velasco told Bloomberg the developer would have to thin its numbers and consider external investors if its "make-or-break" opportunity with Mina went the wrong way.
It doesn't help that game development costs are starting to look ridiculous, but Silksong's millions of sales in 2025 proved that new release prices don't have to be – maybe they shouldn't be. So Yacht Club devs ultimately decided, "We don't want the price to be something that anyone is even going to question" for its newest attempt at a hit, according to Velasco.
The director adds, "We don't want people to wait" for a discount, since "we only get one chance at this" – making a good impression and turning a profit.
"If we don't sell a million copies, I'm going to be disappointed," Velasco adds.
Mina the Hollower might still be miles away from reaching this magic number prancing behind Velasco's eyelids – though he says the game sold 55,000 copies on Steam in a day, which is still huge. But I wouldn't be surprised if word-of-mouth gets it there eventually.
Like I mentioned, the creaky, retro-inspired mouse adventure is the best-rated game of 2026 so far, and those who have played it are eager to tell you why. Dustin Bailey writes in our four-and-a-half star Mina the Hollower review, "Mina the Hollower is one of the best indie games I've played in a long, long time. [...] It's an uncommon tribute to classic games that often surpasses the quality of the titles that inspired it."
Even better, it's only $20.
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