I’m not sure if I even got what Judero is actually about, but I can really dig its vibes. So, I’m probably on board for whatever gets put out by Jack King-Spooner and Talha Kaya. The things they make, it’s like they aren’t made to be sold, but rather because it’s just fun making them. Something we should all aspire to, especially now that a paycheque seems impossible.

Mashina is a lot easier to get, thematically. Well, no, actually, I lied. For most of my time playing it, I was asking what the point really was. I got the game’s objective, but I wasn’t sure what it meant, you know? I figured it out eventually. As it turns out, it’s mostly vibes. And you’re supposed to dig them.

DON’T YOU DIG THESE VIBES?

Mashina casts you as Mashina, an orbular robot who digs. The planet is covered with garbage. It might be a Wall-E style trash apocalypse, but it’s neither defined nor important. It’s not really about how humans fuck up everything we touch. It’s just about robots who really like living on a trash planet.

That’s also the story. Robots love trash.

So, you’re driven forward by the goal, which is to help the robots and progress through a sequence of islands. Essentially, you accomplish objectives until you can progress. To do this, you go into the mine and dig around to reach exclamation marks. Hm.

You can decorate by dropping sprites of stuff in specific spots, but this is usually only practical when their placement is an objective. You can also build devices like conveyor belts and ziplines, but while automation is a hot thing in games these days, Mashina isn’t about that life, and their usage is rather limited. It’s a simple game, from top to bottom.

GOT A HUNDRED DOLLAR BILL

But while I do find the straightforward simplicity to be to its detriment, I get that there’s focus beyond just digging holes.

The art-style continues the team’s dedication to creating graphics through physical means. All the characters and textures are hand-crafted. Sometimes they’re assembled through spare parts (garbage) and other times, from clay. They’re often shot in front of a green screen and hastily cropped in a way where you can still see the rough edges, and the stop-motion animation can be a little off, but that, in its own way, gives it a pretty captivating look. It’s ugly, but it’s so unique that it’s hard not to love it.

What I loved most about Mashina is its music. There’s a character that gives you quests to find radio stations that get added to your list. There are quite a few of them, but I first got hooked on the guitar station before I found the “Heartache” channel. It gives you about five or six songs that are vaguely sad and mournful. I like them all, but there’s one in particular that hits a part where he sings:

Single ladies, I can’t hear you.
Single ladies, big noise.
Got a hundred dollar bill, get your hands up.

Which are lyrics by Fatman Scoop, but when they’re sung slowly and plaintively here, they come across as both sad and hilarious.

Oh, I found it!

DECORATING WITH BAKED POTATOES

As I mentioned earlier, I was having difficulty getting the real point of Mashina. The gameplay just kind of feels there. There’s a tonne of games where you dig around for junk, and Mashina isn’t exactly ambitious or deep (heh) in its approach.

It hit me maybe halfway through. Like Judero, it’s mainly about vibes. But in Mashina, it’s just unfettered positivity. Heartache radio channel aside, it’s bereft of sadness or anger. The robots, er, bobots, just think everything is the greatest. Chums, yeah! Trash, yeah!

And it’s like, we’re bombarded by negativity every day. I’m not saying negativity is something you need to absolutely avoid, but in the age of social media, we get hit with so damned much of it. Garbage and trash, essentially. And I guess you can still be positive about it? But if I relate social media to garbage and trash, you probably shouldn’t be positive about it. Social media is addicting and harmful to your mental health. I think the trash is just supposed to be the bad things going on in the world.

You get into Mashina, and the bobots just don’t have any real problems. They don’t have high expectations for you. The game itself doesn’t have high expectations, it’s just giving you something that only you can do. It’s nice, honestly.

THE CHUNKOMATIC

It’s worth noting that Maximum Utmost’s own Jonathan “Remote Control” Holmes voices a character in Mashina. Tungsten. That would be why I’m reviewing it instead of him. And while his presence doesn’t affect my opinion of the game, I am biased about Tungsten. The way he says “Chunk-o-matic?” Fantastic. Sublime. Transcendental.

I’ve sort of lost my taste for the whole “cozy” wave of games that are pervading the low-budget sphere of games these days. That’s because they usually don’t offer much. They’re often bereft of challenge, as though that’s a barrier for comfort. They’re often without character, because rough edges aren’t cozy. Mashina tracks with the former; there is no real challenge to the game. However, it’s waist deep in character.

Yet, having completed the game, I can’t say I feel anything very strong about it. Certainly, I appreciate that it’s about robots surrounded by literal garbage who still find positivity in life. The art style and music is fab. But I don’t feel calmed, I don’t feel entertained, I don’t feel inspired.  It’s clear that a lot of love went into it, and it kind of sucks to look at that and a bunch of bright-eyed robots and shrug. But, that’s what I have to do. It’s a positive shrug, though. It does a lot of cool stuff. So, if you were to play it, it would still be a net positive.

6/10

This review was performed using a digital Steam version of the game. The developer provided it to Holmes who bumped it over to the author.