While Mina the Hollower has been very well-received critically, it’s still up in the air as to whether the game will be enough of a financial success to keep Yacht Club Games going. Certainly, fans of retro games, especially people who were around for the Game Boy Color, are appreciating everything Yacht Club Games has done with it, but we just might not be a large enough audience. Yacht Club Games co-founder Sean Velasco has even said that selling fewer than a million copies would be disappointing, so it seems there’s a lot riding on its performance.

This is all to say that the studio has not yet committed to any additional development for Mina the Hollower or a potential sequel. According to Mr. Velasco, as came out in a recent interview with GameSpot, the team over at Yacht Club Games is very interested in both DLC and a potential Mina 2, but it seems that it really does all hinge on whether Mina the Hollower does well enough. DLC especially might be a tough call, since DLC by its very nature is pretty much limited to customers who’ve already bought the game.

Mina the Hollower has reportedly already gotten north of 500k copies sold, which is a good sign but not the goal. I sincerely hope they get there because I really enjoyed my time with the game too, but I guess hoping is all any of us can do after buying the game and recommending it to everyone we can. The games industry is a tough place to thrive in, and that’s probably something that Yacht Club Games realizes.

The indie space especially has changed in the 15 years or so since Yacht Club Games first came into the spotlight with Shovel Knight. The space was smaller. Development tools were harder to come by, and truly high-quality indie games were rare enough that all you really had to do to get attention for your game was to just give it a polished art style and make it fun to play. Now, unfortunately for smaller developers, it takes more than that. You’ve gotta get it out across social media and get organic word of mouth going. Anything less means likely missing sales expectations.

While the indie space is booming more than ever before, it’s becoming increasingly apparent that these companies are bound by the same limitations as their larger AAA counterparts. Company size matters. And, the larger and more successful your company becomes, the more you need to get out of each game you make. I don’t say this as a defense of AAA business practices (heck no!), but rather to point out that growth isn’t always the best thing when it comes to making games. Rather than expanding your options, it puts increasing limitations on them instead.

---

What’s your take on Mina the Hollower and Yacht Club Games? Do you think they’ll be able to make the follow-ups they want?

Image from the Steam page