I beat Mina the Hollower, and I did it without turning on any modifiers. I say this not as a brag, because it’s not really a bragging occasion; that’s just the specific kind of experience I wanted to have. No, I’m telling you this to contrast it with what I’m doing now, which is turning on as many modifiers as possible just to see what happens.
If you’re unfamiliar, Mina the Hollower has a robust set of “modifiers” that you can turn on and off in the menu to change how the game plays. Using certain modifiers (specifically ones that make the game easier) will make you ineligible for achievements, which is why I recommend that you copy your existing save file into a second slot, as I did, and mess around with them there unless you intend to play the whole game that way. There are 65 modifiers available prior to beating the game, and over 200 after, and they range from mundane color palette swaps to straight-up making Mina invincible, and you can turn any of them on and off literally any time you’re able to pause the game. You can also view sorted lists of modifiers to help you choose: there’s a list of modifiers that make the game easier, a list for harder modifiers, and another one just labeled “Weird.”
It is extremely fun to use these, especially if you’ve already beaten the game in its unmodified form, and the “Weird” ones are especially neat. After all the frustrating platforming, I had an unreasonably good time going to the modifiers menu, turning on everything that made the game easier or weirder, and just running around. You can make it so you can burrow underground infinitely and move significantly faster than before. You can just disable falling into pits entirely and walk around in the sky. You can make it so enemies won’t attack you unless you attack first. You can have floatier jumps, or jump higher than usual, or make the whole screen shake every time you hit an enemy. You can make the whole game neon colors, or have the screen palette change every single time you change rooms.
My favorite modifier by far is the one that makes Mina 1.5x her usual size. Why is this in here? No reason. I’m sure it confers some sort of advantage or disadvantage—it seems both easier to hit enemies this way and easier to get hit—but mostly it’s just funny. Look at me! I’m a giant invincible Mina! Fear me!
What’s great is that you can get even more ridiculous in New Game+, once you’ve beaten the game once. I didn’t include any gifs in here because I don’t want to spoil it, but the “Weird” modifiers in New Game+ are out of control. You can make bones bounce all over the place whenever they drop, give Mina a dance idle animation, put enemies in candles for some reason, reverse the controls, turn your morning star into a grappling hook, make enemies 1.5x bigger, make the screen spin constantly (hell), and all sorts of other things. There’s one modifier that turns on a feature called “Pranks,” but there’s no further explanation and I’ve been afraid to experiment with it thus far.
It’s great that Mina the Hollower has so many options for players who want to experience it in different ways, whether those tweaks make the experience easier and thus more accessible to them, or make it harder and thus more exciting. But even if you’re just an average player like me, consider making a copy of your save file and just goofing off with modifiers on one slot for a bit, just to see what kinds of ridiculous things the game can do. More games should have more modifiers, and more games should let me play in a “Weird” mode after I’ve beaten them once. Life is short, who cares if I’m 1.5x the normal size in a video game!