The team behind one of 2024’s hidden gems is following it up with a stop-motion ‘relaxed digging and discovery’ game about a happy robot’s underground adventures beneath a lake of slime

One of last year’s biggest pleasant surprises was Judero, a surreal little adventure by a two-man team whose art consisted entirely of action figures and other handmade, physical objects digitized as sprites and textures or animated in stop-motion cutscenes. Developer Talha & Jack Co. is already working on what’s next: Mashina.

“A little robot digs to repair her world,” reads the topline sell on Mashina’s Kickstarter page. Dig, build, discover, and mend in a chill, stop-motion world.” Rather than the druidic, pastoral fantasy of Judero, Mashina takes place in a green, yellow, and grey industrial moonscape, and instead of Judero’s ugly-cute potato men, the world of Mashina is inhabited by greebly robot dudes of all shapes and sizes, but with many boasting the same “face” of a simple hand-drawn smiley on a blank screen.

It’s giving Wall-E, both superficially⁠—robots making a life in the aftermath of human society⁠—but also in the cheerfulness and sense of hope to it all. Talha & Jack Co. say they think of it as a positive game, one about nurturing and creation in the midst of its grim surroundings.

Gameplay looks to be divided between full 3D exploration of your semi-customizable robot village on the surface of the world, with 2D, side-scrolling exploration of the underground. Looking at the excavation gameplay, Mashina reminds me a bit of Terraria, but with more focus than the beloved sandbox game⁠, or maybe Dave the Diver, but substitute digging and minerals for swimming and fish. There will presumably be surprises and story beats to find down below, but your basic activity is chopping through the earth, gathering minerals to upgrade your aboveground village as well as a subterranean base camp.

That has me excited because I found Judero’s hack ‘n slash brawling to be the weakest part of the experience compared to its exploration, writing, and vibes⁠—a more experimental, novel core mechanic feels like a better fit for the team’s style and ambitions.

And even though Mashina is going for a whole different sort of thing from Judero, it looks like it will carry the same quirky, surreal sensibility and atmosphere I loved so much. Mashina currently has no release window, but it has already been fully funded on Kickstarter with 19 days to go. Mashina’s tactile nature has led to one of the better backer rewards I’ve seen on one of these: One of the handmade robot figures used for the game’s art, yours at the max-level £500 donation tier.