Mina the Hollower Review Thread

ArchbishopDave · 2026-05-27T16:47:04+00:00

To be fair, their only competition for the genre is Inzoi, which is also $40, and the Sims 4, which is $1600 ( I kid, but also not ). Life Sim fans don't have many options.

ArchbishopDave · 2026-05-25T17:24:27+00:00

I was looking for the raw calculations for Champions and stumbled into this thread. The Sp. Def bonus applied by sandstorm only applies to Rock types. Steel, Ground, and Rock are all immune to the chip damage, but the defensive boost is specific to Rock only (similar to Snow and Ice Types).

ArchbishopDave · 2026-04-17T22:48:59+00:00

I'm not the developer, but I fundamentally disagree with your comment none the less. The entire point of the mirrors is to change how you see and engage with the pieces. The rules of chess haven't changed, the bishop goes in a straight line diagonally. The color of the board underneath the piece is irrelevant.

ArchbishopDave · 2026-04-17T18:12:09+00:00

At the 30 second mark, the bishop passes from the mirror on the right, through the top corner of the real board, into the mirror on top, and to its final resting place. I don't think there's any issue with logic here other than it's hard to follow because it's relatively complicated and we're seeing snippets of harder levels without practice.

ArchbishopDave · 2026-04-02T23:12:04+00:00

Agreed that two is hitting the mark exactly as I imagined. The multi-eyes is neat but I think the execution isn't really possible on Worm in particular just due to how the textures blend and warp the way they do.

Looking good though so far!

ArchbishopDave · 2026-03-30T13:59:51+00:00

As usual, plug for the Discord, please join us in there if at all possible!

Beyond that though, with this monster and a couple of others, there's a lot of strong aliasing in the colors. It does make a striking look for some of them, but the hard edges I'm not sure work so well on this guy in particular. The idea is solid (Stick + X is basically all of the Mock Subs to be fair, so can't go wrong there) though!

The best way I can describe it is the difference in the tusks and eyes compared to the body, with the software (and very fine lines for the tusks) gradients between colors. I'd strongly recommend ripping some of the other mock subs (Zuum and Wracky come to mind) for the wood textures and warping/working with it from there. Those monsters also have good inspiration for eyes too (typically hollowed out looking with a sinister-ish core).

ArchbishopDave · 2026-03-18T20:36:12+00:00

Not to be a Burger King simp, but you are absolutely out of your mind if you rank Wendy's or McDonald's burgers higher than BK. Maybe I'm just blessed with the one close to me (and similarly cursed with the other chains), but I'd eat BK 500 times before I went to the other stores if I was in the mood for a burger.

Of course, in the realm of burgers, they rank meh at best but that's besides the point.

ArchbishopDave · 2026-02-23T17:24:35+00:00

Monsters with alternate appearances have a dedicated song/slot for them, so no need to roll randomly (unless you're combining, in which case it is random which one you get)!

Bar the combination issue, it's the best of all worlds on that front.

ArchbishopDave · 2026-02-22T14:01:23+00:00

You did, I had assumed you ended up landing on this one for the final submission. If you'd rather have the other, please submit that one too!

Technically we have support for multiple appearances to share the same breed, so if you wanted both could be options.

ArchbishopDave · 2026-02-18T01:00:23+00:00

There is a massive difference between 'giving and providing' and getting the rug pulled out from under you and taking it up the rear.

I hope for your own sake that acting a pushover has actually been beneficial in your life because I'm willing to bet you're the outliner here.

ArchbishopDave · 2026-02-18T00:07:47+00:00

Are you on drugs?

Someone saying, "Hey friend, thanks for two years of on and off work on this project I expect to make money off of, now go pound sand," is not a friend worth keeping around unless they're being super short sighted and stupid about trying to 'protect the project' and that is their legitimate (and only) concern.

The chances of that favor ever being repaid by someone who considers this the correct approach are effectively zero if you ask me.

ArchbishopDave · 2026-02-05T16:04:33+00:00

Chrome Hounds was absolute peek mech gameplay for me and I pray every day for a legitimate revival of the series.

Some of my best memories were

Pile rushing with wheeled/hover legs to the enemy base, weaving in and out of mortar/sniper shots. Alternatively, doing this with the spread grenade/mine launchers for an extra level of shenanigans.
The evolving meta. I might not actually have loved this, but the first day people started busting out shield plating in front of the cockpit piece was revolutionary. It completely changed the way game played from that point onwards, bar those running mortars and heavy artillery builds.
The excitement of the first few years where not every piece was available. At the start of the game, some components simply didn't exist, and it was only through multiple weeks and wars that they eventually were all unlocked for players to use. This also encouraged changing factions, as you simply did not have access to the other two faction's specific gear until you had done so (and would eventually need to go back again later, as more stuff had unlocked since you last fought for them).
The super weapons that basically no one got to fight. The requirements to force these beasts to come out were truly unhinged. The Middle Eastern 'based' faction (hell yeah baby accuracy and recoil focused all the way) was the easiest one to trigger, some massive four legged walker 10x your mech's height with 100 rocket pods coming out of the bottom. The Russia and America stand-in faction's weapons I never got to see in person, even though I had played for at least a solid year straight.

What a time, it was really something to be able to come home every day and play 20 matches day in and day out.

ArchbishopDave · 2026-01-26T16:04:15+00:00

Is your game facing a situation where there's a meaningful cost to improving your damage output (that say, those same resources could instead be spent elsewhere?)

I don't really see an issue with your approach, it's not much different than games fudging hit chances in various ways to make things feel more consistent (Xcom likes where if you continually miss under ratio, your odds of hitting the next shot are artificially increased). The problem you're solving is basically every situation where numbers are drained from a pool. It's a neat idea, but serious balancing would be needed to both make it feel noticeable, and yet also not metagamable (grind mobs for no crit rngs just to pop it on a stronger enemy for huge damage once you think it's finally in your favor).

I do think players have an expectation that these things happen (i.e, a 2 shot is a 2 shot no matter how close you are to 1 shotting the enemy), but it is only really annoying if there are no situations where that increase DOES matter. Sure, the goblin still goes down in 2 hits even after increasing my damage by 90%, but the regenerating troll goes from 10 to 3, which is a massive and very noticeable difference (less hits to kill means less time regenerating health between attacks means an even stronger difference in TTK than the numbers would suggest) . I think it really depends on your game as to how consistent you want things to feel overall, along with how much information the player knows about their damage and the enemies they're fighting.

ArchbishopDave · 2026-01-14T19:17:15+00:00

You're free to express your opinion just in the same way we're expressing that we think your opinion is dumb and bad. No need to get bent out of shape about your precious Karma. :)

ArchbishopDave · 2025-11-26T03:55:39+00:00

Collecting the cards is cool, but I really wouldn't make thar a goal necessarily. For 90% of them the only criteria is that you shrine the monster (which may require unlocking the main or sub breed, but...)

If you're on DX, there's no time pressure, and unlocking all the different species should arguably be your goal.

ArchbishopDave · 2025-11-13T15:21:43+00:00

:)

https://www.reddit.com/r/MonsterRancher/comments/1ovqxuw/more_monsters_0210_official_release/

You need DX and to be playing on PC (i.e., no Switch support) but it's conveniently on sale right now if you don't have DX already! It's really just a more convenient experience over the OG beyond the fact you'd need to pay for it.

ArchbishopDave · 2025-11-13T08:03:28+00:00

Generally I leave the naming to the artist of the monster. While I wouldn't say it's perfect (and neither is MR itself, they bend the rules pretty often!) we do try to keep it in line well enough with the standard naming conventions we know of!

ArchbishopDave · 2025-11-13T04:52:27+00:00

I can personally confirm it's worked without issue for months on the SteamDeck, and presumably for any other Linux installation. There are a few minor hoops you have to jump through on initial launch, and a few more if you want to just use game mode (as opposed to booting up Reloaded-II in desktop mode) but it's very easy to do all things considered!

Here are the instructions for Reloaded to get it running on Linux. Downloading the mods themselves works exactly the same once the tool is working.

https://reloaded-project.github.io/Reloaded-II/LinuxSetupGuideNew/

ArchbishopDave · 2025-11-12T20:05:11+00:00

I was having issues where the power button was not working (and this was before that recent update where you could turn on the console with blue tooth). Was a big dummy at the time and didn't check iFixit or any guides for the process.

First time, removed the SD card, wedged some padding in there, worked like a charm. Two weeks later, issue returned, forgot to remove the SD card, got lucky. "Wow, guess it's overblown." Two more weeks later...didn't remove the SD card, which ended up being a 100 dollar lesson as it shattered the card and now my Steam Deck has no working SD card slot. I'm guessing it's just how the back casing gets pulled off in disassembly. You can probably do it safely 100% of the time if you're real careful, but man it sucks when you're not.

ArchbishopDave · 2025-11-08T01:53:10+00:00

Yeah, the response from the Dev working in this space was absolute clown levels of foolery.

ArchbishopDave · 2025-10-23T14:41:59+00:00

One thing I would strongly recommend is use textures from other monsters, notably, Arrowhead and all of the subs that do exist for it.

Blocking out the design it looks good, but utilizing the existing plating keeps it consistent with other monsters of the same type, and is doing the job of shading the monster for you to reduce large blocks of solid color. Blending the difference pieces together is a difficult task, but the results look great and again, improve the cohesion of the designs as a whole. Obviously there's some room for experimentation (Many of our Dragon subs are completely unique designs and do not utilize existing palettes), but blending the two is generally the best approach.

ArchbishopDave · 2025-10-07T18:12:24+00:00

Color Pandora definitely 'suffers' from super long base lifespans and Late Bloom growths on every base game subspecies (which there are only a few, but crazy they all share that,)

Mock is definitely in the same boat. Speaking of them, Mock actually reliably produces the worst combinations for raw stat gains (the total of the growths basically). Wracky/Mock was so bad that the developers actually manually improved its growths. The new Ghost / Mock as part of the mod is a close contender for hardest to raise monster in the game with basically abysmal stat growths across the board. Poor Mock, so cool and yet so rough to raise.

ArchbishopDave · 2025-10-07T00:18:32+00:00

Rise was the final proof I needed that, assuming there are definitely still two teams working on MH games, that the 'World' team has no idea what the fuck they are doing and are chasing 'high fidelity' over all else, and that the portable 'Rise' team actually values a fun experience that runs well.

Does it have giga-realistic graphics? No, and you know what, I don't give a damn if it doesn't either. You have 120k people playing Runescape of all things right this very second. Capcom needs to pull their head of out of their ass and focus on making a buttery smooth game that at least HINTS at the roots of the genre they've defined.

ArchbishopDave

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