QCF: Mina the Hollower

The halcyon days of a development house being propped up entirely through the popularity and success of its flagship mascot are long gone, yet Yacht Club Games has managed to do it for a little over twelve years thanks to the charismatic and strong back of the spaded squire, Shovel Knight. After seven games and nearly fifty cameos later, however, Yacht Club has arguably toured the azure star around the block more than Nintendo has with its iconic plumber in that amount of time, and has now set its sights on delivering another larger-than-life world to pour its creative juices into—producing a new hero to support the Yacht Club Games’ masthead.

Following an eight-year development run funded by a million-dollar Kickstarter Campaign, Mina the Hollower is Yacht Club Games’ sophomore release, and another retro-inspired experience that’s engineered around the juxtaposition of multiple gameplay conventions. Like Shovel Knight before it, the Zelda-like, Game Boy Color-minded formula is a zesty melting pot of familiar yet fresh tastes that successfully results in Mina the Hollower delivering a signature flavor in its own right. More importantly, it already feels like the kind of follow-up that proves Yacht Club still knows how to build a standout world around a new hero.

Just because Mina the Hollower is an inventive blend of familiar concepts doesn’t mean it’s good, though, right? I mean, that line of thinking has also led to a slew of disasters like Spaghetti Tacos and whatever the hell that Magnum PI/Murder, She Wrote crossover was. Fortunately, not only does Mina the Hollower deliver a fusion that’s on par with Avacado Toast, it may just be the best damn game to have released in 2026 so far.

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PPR 169

It’s funny how we all used to talk about the summer being the perfect reason to catch up on our backlogs, with the notable drought of marquee game releases until the winter season, when publishers and developers arguably carpet-bomb the quarter with hundreds of game releases aimed at competing for those coveted holiday dollars. Well—that’s not so much the case anymore because the summer is also reserved for some hype-level marketing and promotion towards those aforementioned holiday releases, and we’ve now arrived at the point where players can put their anticipation to the test with interactive previews in the form of public demos they can try out.

While there are sprinkles of shadow-dropped slices of games to pick out from their respective studios, Valve has taken it upon themselves to make a whole-ass spectacle called Next Fest, a limited-time event designed to court studios to publish their demos on their platform so that excitable players can, in turn, download and play them on their platform.

What makes Steam Next Fest so rad is that it helps bring eyes to games both big and small, and as such, Press Pause Radio got around to playing a giant wave of Next Fest demos, and decided “Hey, we should like, talk, about these right?”

So talk they indeed done DID. Join Andrew, George, and Sean as they talk about flavored Seltzer water, Echoes of Aincrad, Magical Blush, Pizza Kidd, the Steam Machine price reveal, ReStory Chill Electronics Repairs, Normal Golf Game, Duskfade, The United States Tick epidemic, and so much more! We've published every demo discussed on the show in our show notes, with links to their respective store pages so you can check them out. So please, go ham on that install button as we present you with another episode of Press Pause Radio!

Mail us at our new email Mailbag@presspauseradio.com, leave a voicemail at 42-GAMEZAP-4 (424-263-9274)‬, and be sure to stop by at our Forums if you haven’t already registered and post your thoughts about the show. Finally, make sure to rate and subscribe to us on iTunes and YouTube, follow us on our Twitch page and BlueSky, and finally take part in our Facebook and Steam group! This episode has been brought to you by our new friends at the SuperPod Network, be sure to check out all the other rad podcasts they host for Video Games and more! Finally, this episode was also brought to you by our new sponser, Dubby, a new, jitterless, friendlier energy drink made from a formula that contains a slew of vitamins, amino acids and nootropics including their patented NeuroFactor®. Click on the link listed or enter "PRESSPAUSERADIO" and get 10% off of your order right meow!

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PPR Presents Limelight: Mina the Hollower Weekend

While we strive to never play favorites at Press Pause Radio, we would be outright liars if we didn’t cop to the fact that Yacht Club games is one of our favorite independent game studios out there, so yeah—you could say we’re a little excited about Mina the Hollower going gold, and now that it’s here, it’s an experience that’s so much more than we could have ever hoped for.

Our review of Mina the Hollower will hopefully be out in the next week or so as we prep our pieces, videos, and podcast to start the month of June off, and we couldn’t think of a better stone to kill two GameBoy Color-inspired bats with than to stream the new release from Yacht Club for y’all this weekend!

Be sure to tune in to our Twitch or YouTube  at 7:45 PM PST on 05/29/2026, and again at 6:30 PM PST on 05/30/2026, to watch what may already be the biggest contender for the Golden Zonkies’ 2026 Game of Year award! You can check out the streams here or directly on our Twitch and YouTube channels, and vibe along with us as we work towards ushering in a new age of Limelight for y'all!

Late to the Party: Void Stranger

Memories of my youth in school certainly aren’t the most pleasant times from my childhood, because, surprising no one at all, I wasn’t exactly what you’d call an academic kid—some would say I was more of the opposite. Still, aside from all of the coming-of-age crap that public school pounds into you, there was a memory I had from an art assignment our English teacher gave us to complete (weird, I know, but stick with me.)  The guy was SUPER into Ernest Hemingway, like, he just loved the way that old drunk could mentally instill a scene with his stories using just carefully woven words and nothing more. So, naturally,  he wanted us to try and draw out a specific scene from one of his books, A Farewell To Arms, where we had to do an interpretative sketch drawing of the moment the main character, Frederic, was caught in the mayhem of the Italian army’s retreat during World War I.

The classroom sheet detailed the instruction in a blurb at the top, right below the usual heading where you would write out your name and the date, with the rest of the sheet being a blank canvas for you to use for the sketch. I don’t know what came over me, but I used ALL of the real estate the paper had to offer, which included me scribbling art over the instructions and header area, using every inch of the paper I could.  I mean, I too enjoyed the work of Hemingway, so I’m sure that helped my engagement with the work, but my teacher absolutely gushed over the paper after I turned it in (I promise you this humble brag is going to go somewhere, stick with me.) My English teacher praised that my vision wasn’t limited by the concept of margins, and that I went beyond these perceptions to complete my goal with the classwork.

I haven’t really thought about this dumb little moment for years, until just recently, when I decided to pick up where I left off on a little gem of an indie game that took over my life for a few weeks in 2023, System Erasure’s Void Stranger. As much as I had enjoyed the game, I eventually succumbed to the density of its challenge, and the availability of several other new games at the time, I decided that it was time to move on to something else to boot up on my screen.

So yeah, I started playing Void Stranger again, since I thought it was a natural fit for some bedtime gaming with my new ROG Xbox Ally X, and at some point, something just clicked, and it really has sunk its teeth into me this time around. I know I’m a sucker for the usual Avant-Garde gameplay designs that actively work to subvert the very conventions they’re built with, with stuff like Tunic and FEZ, but Void Stranger is just, in a whole different class of its own.  After, ahem, falling deeper into the void with my play through, I managed to tough out the game and make it to the credits.

Something that I’ve felt immensely proud of, and yet sickeningly anxious about, because I’d soon learn that I’ve only scratched the surface of this dumb little brain worm of a game.

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QCF: Night in the Woods

o matter how old you are, there’s always going to be this unspoken acceptance between you and the friends you makes; an acceptance of who’s going to stay for the long haul, and who’s going to be a memory, if anything at all. Some of the key elements that define the human condition are ones that’re fundamentally tied to the concept of loneliness and the effects that it has on people.

This leads to a misinterpretation that the relationships we form are done from out of mutual interests and similarities, glossing over the fact that mutual hatreds and fears have a lot to do with who interact with and trust on a daily basis.

There aren’t a lot of experiences that I can think of that have evoked these ugly truths quite like Night in the Woods by Finji. The tagline of the game tells its players that at the end of everything, you have to try to hold onto anything, setting a tone that consistently sticks it to you the further you dive in. The messages and themes offered in the adventure side-scroller are poignant in their relatability to the hardships of youth in modern Americana, and struggle with mental health issues that stem from the experience.

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PPR at GDC 16!

Incoming; we’ve got a late podcast from PPR, and for that; we sincerely apologize, but just know that we’re still here, we’re still kicking, and that’s never going to stop.

So GDC, George went there, and he played a TON of stuff; mostly shit that transported him to immersive worlds through the use of various gaudy headwear tech options that were strapped to his dumb dome. Stuff like Oculus Rift, PlayStation VR, HTC Vive, Idealswift, and more in this special GDC recap.

Tons of other game talk too, especially Nintendo, and the debut of their app, Miitomo, some Batman V Superman talk, and all those shitty NX leaks that we all had fun with dissecting. What are y’all waiting for? Give it a listen!

Mail us at our new email Mailbag@presspauseradio.com, leave a voicemail at 469-PPR-TALK, and be sure to stop by at our Forums if you haven’t already registered and post your thoughts about the show. Finally, make sure to rate and subscribe to us on iTunes and YouTube, follow us on our Twitch page and Twitter, and finally take part in our Facebook and Steam group!

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