A $20 Indie Just Beat Forza and Resident Evil on Metacritic

Forza Horizon 6 had the budget. Resident Evil Requiem had the brand recognition. 007 First Light had the cultural moment. None of them are sitting at the top of Metacritic's 2026 rankings right now. That spot belongs to Mina the Hollower, a $20 pixel-art adventure from the seven-person studio behind Shovel Knight.

As of publishing, Mina the Hollower holds a 92 on Metacritic for its PC version, with a 93 on OpenCritic. Forza Horizon 6 trails at 91. Pokémon Pokopia and Resident Evil Requiem are tied at 89. A Game Boy Color-inspired action game about a mouse is the best-reviewed release of a year that has already included multiple blockbusters. I love this industry sometimes.

The $20 Bet

Yacht Club Games co-founder and director Sean Velasco told Bloomberg's Jason Schreier that the price point wasn't even a debate internally. "Everyone came in ready to say, 'I want the game to be $20,'" Velasco said. The team expected a long meeting to hash out pricing. Instead, everyone agreed immediately. "We don't want the price to be something that anyone is even going to question."

Velasco cited Hollow Knight Silksong's success in 2025 as a direct influence. Team Cherry's long-awaited sequel has sold more than seven million copies at that same $20 price, proving that a lower barrier to entry can drive volume that more than compensates. Yacht Club was also conscious that rising costs globally have made $70 games a harder sell for a lot of people. When your competition is charging three or four times your price and scoring lower, that pricing decision starts looking less like generosity and more like a calculated power move.

But there's real pressure behind the confidence. Velasco has been blunt about the stakes, calling Mina the Hollower a "make-or-break" release for the studio. Development reportedly cost around $5 million, and this is Yacht Club's first entirely new game in 12 years. In a Bloomberg interview this week, Velasco set an ambitious target of one million copies sold. Early Steam data suggests around 55,000 copies have already moved on PC alone, with console sales data still incoming. For comparison, Shovel Knight took about a week to sell 75,000 copies across Steam, Wii U, and 3DS combined.

What strikes me about this story isn't just that a small game scored well. It's that the pricing conversation in this industry keeps getting proven wrong by the studios brave enough to ignore it. Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 launched at $50 last year and became a phenomenon partly because it felt like a fair deal. Silksong held at $20 and sold seven million. Now Mina the Hollower is doing the same thing. Meanwhile, AAA publishers keep inching toward $80 and wondering why player goodwill evaporates. The pattern is not subtle.

Mina the Hollower isn't alone at the top of the indie pile, either. Schrödinger's Call, a visual novel from small Japanese studio Acrobatic Chirimenjako about the final moments before the end of the world, also holds a 93 on OpenCritic. Two indie games, both under $20, both outscoring every AAA release this year. The full 96-track soundtrack for Mina the Hollower is even available as a name-your-price download on Bandcamp, composed primarily by Jake Kaufman with two tracks from Yuzo Koshiro.

Velasco's million-copy target is aggressive for a studio this size, but the critical reception gives Mina the Hollower the kind of long tail that review scores alone can't buy. Shovel Knight sold millions over years, not weeks. If the console numbers come in strong and word of mouth keeps building, Yacht Club might get there. The game is available now on Steam, GOG, Switch, Switch 2, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X for $19.99.