Yacht Club Games, known for Shovel Knight, took this into account with their next game, Mina the Hollower.

Parrying has become quite common these days. It has spread beyond character-based action games and spectacular fighters to roguelike, horror, JRPG, and FPS games, effectively taking the place of Soulslikes in the wake of Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice. If you’re nostalgic for simpler times when enemies were easily vanquished, Mina the Hollower—an adventure inspired by Castlevania and The Legend of Zelda—might be for you.

In an interview with Knowledge, Yacht Club co-founder Sean Velasco highlighted the game’s simple control scheme, aiming to reimagine something old. There are limitations, he admits, but those limits are what make it fun. “Every game has a parry now,” he said. He played DOOM: The Dark Ages and found Dark Souls-like elements even there. The team didn’t want to default to simple dodge-and-roll. Instead, they’re transforming something old into something interesting. Mina’s mobility is deliberately limited—she can jump and dig—and the rest is about creating neutral space so the game feels like Castlevania or Bloodborne, titles that, notably, don’t feature blocking.

Yacht Club appears to be balancing influences the way Shovel Knight did: paying homage to retro while bringing new ideas. Velasco calls this back-and-forth of mechanics a “great dialogue,” noting how systems tend to converge. Love or hate the ubiquity of parry mechanics, that dialogue has indirectly produced a game equally inspired by NES classics and modern Souls-likes.

The release date for Mina the Hollower is currently unknown, but the studio’s track record inspires confidence.

Source: PCGamer, GamesRadar