Shovel Knight developers in dire financial straits if their next game isn't a success

In 2014, Yacht Club Games achieved significant commercial success and built a lot of community goodwill with Shovel Knight. An early adopter of Kickstarter, the 2D platformer has received more support than Yacht Club promised during its crowdfunding campaign.

But it's been over a decade since Shovel Knight was released, and Yacht Club Games' follow-up game hasn't achieved the same success. The studio has released numerous spinoffs of Shovel Knight, but none of them have received the same critical acclaim as the original. For the past six years, Yacht Club has been developing a retro-style dungeon crawler called Mina the Hollower. However, three weeks after the game's scheduled release date, Mina the Hollower was delayed indefinitely.

Make it or break it

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According to a report from Bloomberg, Yacht Club Games is facing serious financial difficulties. For the studio to remain independent, Mina the Hollower will need to be a huge hit upon its final release.

“It’s definitely a make-or-break thing,” studio founder Sean Velasco told Bloomberg. “If it sells 500,000 copies, it’s the icing on the cake. If it sells even 200,000 copies, that would be great. If it sells 100,000 copies, it’s not so good.”

Development on Mina the Hollower began shortly before the COVID-19 pandemic, and with that important multi-year event suddenly taking place, the studio faced many challenges in terms of onboarding and ramping up development of the Zelda-like dungeon crawler. The studio launched a Kickstarter for the project in 2022, raising $1.2 million from fans who knew what the studio could do with Shovel Knight.

However, internal management conflicts created a development bottleneck that delayed Mina The Hollower's progress. Velasco was forced into the role of game director last year, and has reworked many of the games to bring them up to standard.

If Mina the Hollower fails, Velasco insists “we’ll still be around,” but adds, “We’ll need more money.” Mina the Hollower certainly looks like an interesting project, but will the Yacht Club be able to keep it afloat before its resources are completely depleted? It's a stressful time in the studio and everything is riding an anthropomorphic mouse.