Last year, Team Cherry’s sudden September reveal of the Hollow Knight: Silksong release date sent developers into a panic. Several studios opted to delay their games after the surprise announcement, scrambling indies like Demonschool and Baby Steps to later in 2025. History has repeated itself this year thanks to Mina the Hollower, Yacht Club’s very long-awaited follow-up to Shovel Knight. While its May 29 release date wasn’t as big of a torpedo as Silksong, at least one studio decided to move out of its line of fire. Dark Scrolls, the latest game from Doinksoft, shifted its planned May 28 release date to June 22 to avoid a collision.
Thankfully, there’s no bad blood between two studios that share a love for retro games. In an email interview with Polygon, Doinksoft developer Cullen Dwyer explained why the team decided to clear the stage for Yacht Club. Although it threw a slight wrench into Doinksoft’s plan, the studio is thrilled to see more “modern retro” games that connect gaming’s past to its present, from Zelda to Dark Souls.
Doinksoft didn’t beat around the bush when announcing Dark Scrolls’ delay: “Originally we were going to release Dark Scrolls on May 28, but it turns out I’m going to be a little bit busy playing Mina the Hollower when it comes out on May 29,” one of the game’s developers said in a video announcing the delay. While it may sound like an overreaction to delay due to a niche retro game, Doinksoft was more worried about Mina than it would have been about Grand Theft Auto 6.
“Both games are in the same niche,” Dwyer explained. “If it was, say, GTA or something launching the same day, we might not have changed it. People who buy GTA who also like retro indie games are gonna buy both. Someone who likes retro indie games will probably have to choose between the two retro indie games that come out on the same day, and I’m not gonna lie, Mina is on my most anticipated list and a lot of other people’s as well. I think we would significantly lose sales if we launched on the same day.”
That point makes sense when you look at Dark Scrolls. Though the 2D platformer isn’t anything like Yacht Club’s ode to top-down Zelda, it has the same retro energy. Dwyer describes Dark Scrolls as an “auto-scrolling platformer” that borrows ideas from shoot-’em-ups and roguelikes to create something that feels both old and new. Dwyer said that it’s “more similar to something like Contra than it is to something like Balatro.” The genre-mashing project was born out of an abandoned prototype that was built to toy with the fundamentals of classic game genres, something that’s a guiding philosophy for Doinksoft games like Gato Roboto.
“We had played with a few other genre mash-up prototypes that just didn’t feel quite right for our next project and I was reminded of this old auto-scrolling, randomly generated platformer that we had worked on,” Dwyer said. “The codename for the project was Vladius, a portmanteau of Gradius and Vladimir, as it was originally intended to be a bit more vampire-hunting themed. Once Britt (art director) got involved, the style started to lean more goofy and it kinda spun into its own thing as we worked on it.”
We are kinda professional band name generators here at Doinksoft.
Despite what its punny title might imply, Dwyer said that the project doesn’t actually take any inspiration from Dark Souls. The name simply came from Dwyer making an offhand joke that stuck with the team when they were struggling to find a title that used the word “scrolls.” (“We are kinda professional band name generators here at Doinksoft,” he said.) If there’s any FromSoftware DNA in the platformer, Dwyer believes it’s purely subconscious.
“Insofar as the world and the way we talk about video games changed after Dark Souls was released, this game must in some way be inspired by it,” Dwyer said. “At the very least, Dark Souls has given a lot of developers the confidence to let games be a bit more difficult and has trained players to be a bit more accepting of death in games, so that’s something. There’s a campfire checkpoint in between levels, does that count?”
Though Dwyer brushes off the idea that Dark Scrolls is a Soulslike in any way, it’s very clear that he has thought about FromSoftware’s games quite a bit. He sees a “certain somethingness” to the world design of a Souls game that connects back to retro games like Metroid, and believes that the series’ knack for “checkmating” players isn’t all that far off from something like Mega Man 2. It’s less that Dark Scrolls was inspired by Dark Souls, and more that Dark Souls is an extension of the breed of retro game Doinksoft loves.
That’s a love shared by Yacht Club, too. One of the reasons that Doinksoft seems so chill about the delay is that the team is genuinely psyched about Mina the Hollower. Dwyer sees Dark Scrolls as being part of an ongoing conversation between modern retro games, and thinks Mina is making an even more explicit connection between classic games and modern Soulslikes than Dark Scrolls is.
“I love seeing the different ways that different developers interpret the limitations and aesthetics of older hardware and design movements, and what things they choose to value or reject about those older titles in their work,” Dwyer said. “It’s interesting to me that something like Mina applies the Game Boy Zelda aesthetics to something like Bloodborne. I won’t speak for Yacht Club’s intentions on this, but it suggests a very smart art history throughline from 2D Zelda to Soulslikes that is obvious in retrospect, but difficult to conceive in the first place let alone execute.”
In a competitive industry, it’s refreshing to see two developers with like-minded ideas about games engaging with one another’s work. Even if there’s not enough real estate for these two games this month, the hope is that games like Mina and Dark Scrolls can exist as part of the same design dialogue. That’s something that Dwyer loves about indie games, and a silver lining to a last-minute delay.
“Yacht Club reached out to us when they found out and were very sweet,” Dwyer said. “Nobody knew that we had scheduled them so close to one another. We all have worked in the indie spaces for a long time alongside each other, and as friends and peers, we are both very supportive of each other’s games.”
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