Mina The Hollower's Composer Knows What He's Doing, And That's Why It Works

I've been sitting with the Mina The Hollower soundtrack for a few weeks now, and I keep circling back to the same thought: this isn't a composer who studied Castlevania and Final Fantasy. This is a composer who studied what made those games feel like those games, then built something new from the same materials.

The interview with composer Jake Kaufman (virt) on Nintendo Life makes it explicit — he name-checks both series as touchstones. But what's interesting isn't the admission. It's the execution. Because "Castlevania and Final Fantasy" is a description so broad it could mean almost anything. What Kaufman actually did with those influences tells you more about his process than any list of inspirations ever could.

Let's talk about the burrow mechanic. Not the gameplay one — the musical one.

In Mina The Hollower, the soundtrack doesn't just play. It responds. When you're above ground, the music is bright, open, with that signature Game Boy Color-era clarity Kaufman has spent years perfecting. When you burrow underground, the mix shifts. The high end drops. The bass comes forward. The melody stays recognizable but the feeling changes entirely. You're still in the same song, but you're not in the same place.

This is the part where I draw the thread nobody else is drawing: Kaufman learned this from The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening, but not the way you think.

Link's Awakening didn't have dynamic mixing. What it had was thematic consistency across drastically different contexts. The overworld theme and the dungeon theme share DNA. The Tal Tal Heights music builds from the same intervals as the mountain climb. The game taught a generation of composers that a melody could be a place, not just a loop you hear while walking. Kaufman took that lesson and applied it to a system that literally changes the mix in real time. It's the same philosophy — music as geography — executed with modern tools.

But back to the Castlevania and Final Fantasy thing, because that's what everyone wants to know about.

Castlevania's influence on Mina is obvious in the gothic horror aesthetic and the whip-crack percussion. What's less obvious is how Kaufman absorbed Castlevania's rhythmic storytelling. Symphony of the Night's soundtrack works because it gives each area a distinct pulse — the marble gallery feels like a waltz, the outer wall feels like a march. Mina does the same thing. The Laburnum Mines doesn't just sound different from the Thornwood Thicket; it moves differently. One is industrial and staccato. The other is organic and flowing. You could close your eyes and know where you are.

Final Fantasy's influence is even more interesting, because it's less about specific melodies and more about scope. Kaufman has said he wanted the music to feel "cinematic" — a word that usually makes me wince when applied to pixel art games. But here it works because he treats each screen like a scene. The boss themes don't just escalate in intensity; they tell a micro-story. The first phase is introduction. The second is escalation. The third is desperation. It's the Uematsu structure — build a melody, then break it, then rebuild it as something fiercer.

Who is this for? It's for the person who has played through Dracula's Castle and the Northern Cave enough times that they can hear the architecture in a new soundtrack. It's for the person who recognizes that the best homages aren't copies — they're translations of the original intent into a new language.

I'll say it plainly: this is the best soundtrack Yacht Club Games has produced, and it's not close. Shovel Knight's music was excellent — catchy, punchy, perfectly fitted to its action. But Mina The Hollower's score has depth. It rewards attention. It changes when you change the world. It's a game about burrowing, and the music burrows right alongside you.

Mina The Hollower sold 300,000 copies in three days. That's not just a game finding its audience. That's a composer finding his voice, and an audience recognizing that they've been waiting to hear it.