TITLE
Creator of Hit Game Shovel Knight Is at a ‘Make or Break’ Moment
AUTHOR
Jason Schreier
PUBLICATION
Bloomberg
YEAR
2025
ARTICLE TYPE
Article
FROM THE ARTICLE
The fate of Sean Velasco’s company depends on the success of its next project, a video game called Mina the Hollower. Things aren’t going smoothly. Despite the game being in production for almost six years, Yacht Club Games LLC announced in October—three weeks before the release date—that it’s delaying the title indefinitely.The next day, Velasco and his team are hosting a reporter from Bloomberg Businessweek at their Los Angeles office to show off their progress. Suddenly the conference room’s television begins smoking, filling the air with the acrid stench of burnt machinery. Reporters usually have to search harder for a metaphor.
After ensuring the office won’t burn down, Velasco moves to a colleague’s computer, where he boots up the latest version of Mina the Hollower and shows me why they felt they had to delay it. It’s a gorgeous game, with graphics harking back to the Game Boy’s chunky pixelated art and a top-down perspective reminiscent of the Nintendo Co. classic The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening. Only in the past few weeks has the game coalesced to the point where the developers could play through all the content from start to finish, and they’ve found lots of elements they want to improve. This delay, Velasco says, is a good one. They’re done identifying problems; they just need time to fix them.
COMPANIES MENTIONED
Yacht Club Games
GAMES MENTIONED
Mina the Hollower
Shovel Knight
Shovel Knight 3D
PEOPLE MENTIONED
David D’Angelo
Alec Faulkner
Sandy Gordon
Celia Schilling
Sean Velasco
Nick Wozniak