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.