Developer Yacht Club Games has said it has reached a “make-or-break” point with the success of the company resting on its upcoming Mina the Hollower.
Speaking to Bloomberg, the studio says that its fate relies on the title, which was set to launch in October of this year. Three weeks before its intended release, Yacht Club delayed the project indefinitely (while emphasising it is in the “final hours” of development) to ensure the game releases with the highest possible chance of success.
“It’s make-or-break for sure,” Yacht Club Games’ co-founder and studio head Sean Velasco, admitted.
“If we sold 500,000 copies, then we would be golden. If we sold even 200,000, that would be really, really great. If we sold, like, 100,000, that’s not so good.”
If the game does not succeed, the studio would need to downsize its team and seek new funding sources, the article said.
Mina the Hollower, the studio’s second IP after the hugely successful Shovel Knight series, has been in the works for six years. Yacht Club raised $1.2 million in Kickstarter backing in 2022, with a planned launch in December 2023, but the game ballooned in scope. Bloomberg’s report attributes this to the inexperience of first-time team leader Alec Faulkner, who created the initial concept for Mina the Hollower and was both running the project and helming design. By his own admission, he isn’t suited to this position.
“I don’t think I excel super well in that kind of role,” he said.
In order to reduce its costs, Yacht Club is ditching its office to become a remote studio. The developer is set to focus on one project at a time, rather than dividing its time between multiple projects as it did with Mina the Hollower and an unannounced 3D Shovel Knight title which has been put on hold while the former game is finished.
“What we’re doing in the future is try to figure out ways to have a game come out every couple of years, instead of every five or six,” studio cofounder Nick Wozniak said.
“We haven’t released a game in so long.”
Yacht Club was founded in 2011 and is best known for the retro-themed platformer Shovel Knight. That game debuted in 2014 and yielded a number of expansions. Speaking to GamesIndustry.biz in 2019, the studio said it was bidding its cerulean mascot goodbye as it went on to focus on other projects. At that point, Shovel Knight had sold over 2.65 million copies.
