In 2014, Yacht Club Games found 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 released, and Yacht Club Games' subsequent games haven't found the same success. The studio has released numerous spin-offs of Shovel Knight, none of which reached the same acclaim as the original. For the past six years, Yacht Club has been working on a retro-style dungeon crawler called Mina the Hollower. However, three weeks from the game's intended release date, Mina the Hollower was delayed indefinitely.
According to reporting from Bloomberg, Yacht Club Games faces serious financial hardship. If the studio wants to remain independent, then Mina the Hollower has to become a massive hit following its eventual release.
"It's make-or-break for sure," studio founder Sean Velasco told Bloomberg. "If we sold 500,000 copies, then we would be golden. If we sold even 200,000, that would be really great. If we sold, like, 100,000, that's not so good."
Mina the Hollower's development began shortly before the COVID-19...
