The Shovel Knight developer is in deep financial trouble if the next game isn't closed

In 2014, Yacht Club Games had significant commercial success and cultivated a lot of community goodwill with Shovel Knight. An early Kickstarter adopter, the 2D platformer received support above and beyond what Yacht Club had promised during the crowdfunding campaign.

However, it's been over a decade since Shovel Knight was released, and subsequent games from Yacht Club Games haven't had the same success. The studio has released several spin-offs of Shovel Knight, none of which have reached the same acclaim as the original. For the past six years, the yacht club has been working on a retro-style dungeon crawler called Mina the Hollow. However, three weeks from the game's intended release date, Mina the Hollowar was delayed indefinitely.

Make it or break it

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According to a Bloomberg report, the yacht club sports serious financial difficulties. If the studio wants to stay independent, Mina the Hollower has to be a big hit after its last release.

“It's definitely make or break,” studio founder Sean Velasco told Bloomberg. “If we sell 500,000 copies, we'll be golden. If we sell even 200,000, that'll be really good. If we sell, say, 100,000, that's not so good.”

Development of Mina the Hollowar began shortly before the COVID-19 pandemic, and the sudden onset of that seminal multi-year event caused the studio a lot of trouble in terms of developing and ramping up their Zelda-like dungeon crawler. The studio released a Kickstarter for the project in 2022, raising $1.2 million from fans who were excited about what the studio was capable of doing with Shovel Knight.

However, internal management conflicts created development obstacles, which halted Mina the Holover's progress. Velasco was forced to act as game director last year, and much of the game was redone to bring it up to standard.

If Mina the Hollow were to flop, Velasco said, “We'd still be around,” though he stressed that “we'd need more money.” Mina the Holer certainly seems like an exciting project, but will the yacht club be able to pull off the landing before it runs out of resources completely? It's a stressful time for the studio, and everything is riding on an anthropomorphic mouse.