After what feels like an eternity, Mina the Hollower is finally nearly here. The anticipation among gamers is reaching a boiling point, and not much is going to be achieved in real life come May 29th, as we will all be locked into experiencing Mina’s journey.
While I have been checking trailers and the demo in the long wait, one thing has stood out to me, and that is the chiptune music featured. Although other chiptune soundtracks have hit high points, this one in particular has hung around long after. With that in mind, when I had the chance to question the composer, Jake Kaufman, I didn’t hesitate. Jake is a veteran of composing music, and he’s created some fantastic soundtracks in his time, so it was a pleasure to ask him about how he goes about creating his music and how challenging the Mina the Hollower soundtrack was for him.
Hi! I’m Jake! I make music and sound effects, and I play keyboards, bass, and guitar. I’ve been writing music for 40+ years (since I was a little kid), but only professionally for 25. I’m self-taught in music and computer science and started out making hobbyist and fan music. If you’ve ever heard of the PC Demoscene and OverClocked ReMix, those are the communities that shaped me.
Are you specifically a chiptune composer, or do you branch out to other genres of music?
I work in a wide range of styles, including orchestral, electronic, rock/metal, R&B/soul/pop, and jazz music. You can check out games such as Shantae: Half-Genie Hero and BloodRayne: Betrayal and TV shows like O.K. KO – Let’s Be Heroes to get an idea of my non-chiptune work! If you go to virt.bandcamp.com, you can download (for free!) 25+ of my soundtracks and albums.
What do you usually use to create your chiptune music?
Although I use Digital Audio Workstations (Ableton, Cubase, etc.) frequently for other stuff, my chip work is almost entirely made in trackers, which resemble musical spreadsheets that scroll up and down. Trackers offer very precise and direct control over samples and synths, just a step above machine code, so they’re ideal for chip music. Many trackers are made to work with a specific console, so for Shovel Knight, I used FamiTracker (NES); Shovel Knight Dig was done in BambooTracker (OPNA/PC-98); and Mina the Hollower was done in Furnace Tracker (multi-system, but Game Boy + MSX-SCC in this case). They’re all open-source software, which you can freely download and play with.
When you go to create a new track, what’s usually the first thing you do?
I mostly just close my eyes and daydream about a future where the song is already finished, essentially prompting my internal neural net model. Sometimes the first result that pops into my head is “the one”; other times I have to re-roll a few times. Or a few hundred. Then, it’s just a matter of copying down what I’m “hearing” into the music software, arbitrarily choosing which instrument to start with, before I forget it! Often it doesn’t sound as cool as it did in my head, in which case I either improvise fixes on the spot or take a break to mull it over.
Have you picked up any tricks along the way that have made it easier for you to create certain sounds in chiptune music?
I learned about everything from optimizing memory usage to emulating the sounds of specific developers (Konami, Sunsoft, Tim Follin, etc.) from my fellow chiptuners as we obsessively analyzed different approaches to cramming as much sound as possible into tiny spaces. I consider myself of average technical skill in the crowd of chiptune wizards, and every time I talk to them, I learn something new about a chip’s idiosyncrasies or a novel technique used in some obscure game.
What is it about chiptune music that can still inspire an emotional response?
Well, since not everyone grew up with these sounds, I think it works on a deeper level than just nostalgia. I think it’s a little bit like hearing J.S. Bach arranged for guitar. Like, how is it even possible to do all that with only 6 strings, some wood, and a few fingers? Chip sounds lack the human performance aspect but are similarly rendered unadorned and direct, and I think that seems to poke something in our brains. I think, in some way, minimalist sounds force our minds to “fill in the blanks” with our own memories and feelings. Kind of like how you can see a line drawing and imagine a whole picture.
What other chiptune music do you admire?
I’m a big fan of both classic game music (80s-90s Konami music, Hip Tanaka, Koichi Sugiyama, Yuzo Koshiro, Tim Follin) and hobbyist chip music (Radix, Bit Shifter, Chibi-Tech, FearofDark, CosmicGem). It gives me comfort to listen to all this stuff and feel like a complete noob, in utter awe of how easy they make it look. It’s reassuring that there’s always room to grow and learn.
Did you approach Mina the Hollower’s soundtrack in a different way than previous soundtracks?
Nope, my approach is always the same. Play the game, talk to the team, look at all the artwork, get immersed in the world, fantasize about people playing the finished game and loving it… When I think of all of those factors at once, the music practically writes itself! The only difference here was the long development cycle, so there was plenty of time for me to evolve the sound from its initial simplicity to its complex final form, while with Shovel Knight that happened over the course of developing each playable boss campaign.
It’s been stated there are more than 100 tracks for the game. How was that process for you? Did you suffer any burnout from creating so much music?
You bet there was burnout, just like for the rest of the team. Additionally, I went through some personal events before and during development that made it really hard to keep writing music at all. But the team never lost faith in me and was there for me when I needed them most. In a way, the long development cycle was a blessing in disguise, as I actually had all the time I needed to recover and never felt like I was holding others back. In the end, I was able to complete my entire wishlist / backlog. That never happens—I always have to cut something! Not this time; it’s all there.
Was it more of a challenge composing for a Game Boy game instead of an NES game?
Yep! As soon as I heard the graphics were Game Boy Color-style, I felt a sense of dread, as I’d struggled through the Game Boy’s audio limitations in the beginning of my career and really didn’t want to return to them. Using the Game Boy by itself, just the 4 voices, would have been a massive downgrade from Shovel Knight with its VRC VI expansion chip. But things turned around when I learned from a homebrew expert that the Game Boy actually did support expansion chips and that it was merely never seen in a commercial game, likely for cost reasons. Thus, I could use Furnace Tracker to combine the Game Boy with an expansion chip and have it be plausible on a technical level. That gave me a big boost of confidence, and I’m extremely happy with Mina’s final soundscape. But in those first few months, I was definitely sweating.
Was there a particular area of Mina that you struggled to create music for?
The title screen! Originally it was just silence with thunderclaps, and the first song was heard when you hit the file select menu. This was by design—think of Mega Man X (after the intro) or Sunset Riders—silent title screens with a sound effect when you hit start; it’s a whole vibe! But enough people interpreted the lack of music as a “bug” that I couldn’t just leave it that way. So I made a pipe organ prelude that actually follows the exact structure of the file select music and crossfades seamlessly into that when you advance the menu. That took a while to sort out, but I like where it landed.
Did you include any new elements in your music for Mina the Hollower?
Two of the areas (Septemburg and Nox’s Bayou) were inspired by some of the musical tastes of my Dad and Mom respectively. My Dad is a veteran fingerstyle folk guitarist, and my Mom loved Zydeco (Louisiana blues-rock). So I grew up listening to a whole bunch of both, and these influences rarely show up in my own music. But the opportunity came up in Mina—across the western regions of Tenebrous Isle, there’s a whole lot of fingerpickin’ and a whole lot of accordion and country-fiddle going on.
Do you have a standout track from the Mina the Hollower soundtrack?
Gator Gallop (Nox’s Bayou). It’s one of the aforementioned “Cajunvania” tracks, and it’s my own teenage kid’s favorite song on the OST. Generational warm fuzzies.
Mina the Hollower is due to be released on May 29th, 2026, on PC and consoles. Please take a look at the Yacht Club Games website for more information.
If you are after more Mina the Hollower, then we spoke with director Sean Velasco and game designer Alec Faulkner on the latest episode of The So Many Games Podcast. You can find it on our homepage if you’d like to listen in!
