Jack King-Spooner and Talha Kaya, the developers behind the critically-acclaimed Judero, are back with a brand-new stop motion game – Mashina – which is now looking for funding on Kickstarter.
Jack appeared on BBC Scotland recently to describe the game and his approach to game design and creation.
Mashina is described as a ‘digging adventure’. Players take the role of Mashina, a friendly mining robot tasked with finding minerals to help mend, build and nurture her quirky robot community.
Since it launched, a little over 24 hours ago, the game is already over 80% funded, with over £11,000 of the initial target of £12,000 pledged.
Gameplay
The Gameplay in Mashina is divided into two distinct sections; a deep, mysterious underground full of trinkets and minerals and a vibrant, fully explorable 3D overground.
Underground
A lot of the game will be spent exploring, discovering and reclaiming the underground world.
- Use your radar to scope out objects of interest
- Dig to excavate rare minerals
- Store the rare minerals safely in Mashina’s backpack
- Turn those minerals into cash
- Build helpful machines to aid your excavations
- Find robot pals, treasures, trinkets and more!
Overground
The overground is where your pals hang out. It is here where you will find ways to enhance Mashina’s digging and broaden her horizons.
- Meet the locals and get missions
- Upgrade your equipment
- Decorate your surroundings
- Explore and find collectables and secrets
Art Style
Everything in Mashina is handmade out of various materials and animated using traditional stop-motion techniques. The developer then turn the animations into textures and sprites they can use in game, adding normal maps which let them have dynamic lighting and shadows.
The art style follows on from Judero which is currently nominated for Excellence in Visual Arts in the 2025 IGF Awards. Jack and Talla are building on everything they learned in Judero and aim to make an even more visually compelling stop-motion game.
Music & Sound
Music is an important part of our work. For Mashina the developers are making the extensive soundtrack using retro synths to make a sublime soundscape to chill out and dig to. All of the sound effects are made using old synths too, in keeping with the score.
Mashina will feature an exciting voice cast. Jack will be returning after his confident work in Judero. Joining him will be some of the coolest people in games such as twitch streamers BlondePizza, Vinny Vinesauce, WretchedMorgan and TheOtherFrost plus gaming connoisseurs Mechagamezilla and Jonathan Holmes.
Pledges
Funding is open until Wednesday the 12th of February 2025. Pledges start from as little as one pound, with additional tiers opening up copies of the game, soundtrack and opportunities to have items in the game – or even own one of the Mashina robots.
If you’d like to support Jack and Talha, you can find and follow the Kickstarter campaign here.