New Zelda & Dark Souls-Inspired Game Leads 2026 GOTY Race

You can’t get much more influential than The Legend of Zelda and Dark Souls. The former even inspired the latter, but both have now exerted their influence on 2026’s new Game of the Year frontrunner, an indie project from the developers of Shovel Knight. An independent project won GOTY at The Game Awards 2025, Sandfall Interactive’s beloved Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, but this year’s new critical darling still has Grand Theft Auto 6 to contend with.

Yacht Club Games’ Mina the Hollower has just released on May 29, and is currently the highest rated game of 2026 according to review aggregate Metacritic. Its score of 92 makes it a certifiable Must-Play according to the Metacritic scale, and puts it a single point ahead of Forza Horizon 6. Pokémon Pokopia (89), Resident Evil Requiem (89), and Mewgenics (88) round out the top five. Mina the Hollower is a retro-styled action-adventure game playable on Nintendo Switch, Switch 2, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, PC, Mac, and even Linux.

Mina the Hollower‘s 3/4 isometric view and gameplay are most reminiscent of The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening (the art style is quite similar as well), but it seems to also take a significant amount of inspiration from Zelda 2: The Adventure of Link for its progression system. Mina collects Bones, which are used to level up three attributes, just like in Zelda 2, and also to purchase items, like in Dark Souls… or Elden Ring or Bloodborne.

Certain items, which are not lost upon death, can be converted into Bones, just like similar items in FromSoftware games. Mina the Hollower is a bit more forgiving, though, letting you die once before your Bones are on the line with a second subsequent death. Yacht Club’s latest also has the soulslike genre’s trademark difficulty. Combat is technically challenging and bosses are punishing. But again, there are concessions; a handful of settings will let you ease the difficulty significantly.

Mina rides a boat through the bayou while two large frog enemies attempt an attack in Mina the Hollower

Metacritic isn’t the end-all-be-all of the Game of the Year race. It’s notably a strong year for indies, with other small titles making an impression like Mina the Hollower‘s retro action-adventure perfection. Mewgenics is rated highly, but Slay the Spire 2, Cairn, and Esoteric Ebb are other independent projects that have made very strong impressions. They will all have to go up against GTA 6, though, which Fable, another promising title, was just delayed to avoid.

Regardless of what awards Mina the Hollower goes on to win or not, it would appear Yacht Club Games have delivered another instant classic. Shovel Knight is equally acclaimed and similarly retro-inspired, specifically by NES games. Mina the Hollower has taken the same fondness for old-school Nintendo up a couple of generations to the Game Boy Color, and is once again being enthusiastically welcomed. Mina the Hollower may be at the front of the pack for 2026 Game of the Year, and it’s not necessarily surprising considering its developer’s credentials and inspirations like The Legend of Zelda and Dark Souls.