Mother Machine Preview – Funny little dudes in a new co-op roguelike!

When I got the invite to check out Mother Machine via Discord at a streamed preview and Q&A with the developers, I had no idea what to expect. The devs at Maschinen-Mensch are known for the Curious Expedition games which focused heavily on the character dialogue building up the world but Mother Machine is a bit different. What I witnessed was one of the silliest, most enjoyable looking games on the 2025 calendar, having the moment to moment experiences you and friends encounter to be part of the larger narrative. Mother Machine is a co-op roguelike platformer with some minor RPG elements so you and three online friends can play as these cute little critters, exploring randomly generated caverns for the titular Mother Machine. Using different equippable abilities to help one another get through these areas, aiming for different objectives, collectibles, and more. Currently planned for a PC release in 2025 with console ports possibly coming down the line, I will definitely have this game on my wishlist.

To set the stage: Mother Machine takes place in the far future, on a planet abandoned by humans. The character, Mother Machine, is starting to malfunction and needs to find a purpose. So she creates these little, unnamed creatures, essentially 3D-printing organic life and tasking them with the goal to explore the long forgotten planet where the local fauna and wildlife have more or less taken over. What it lacks in dialogue, it makes up for in environmental storytelling with the dreary, dark caverns of the planet where as you make progress, you unlock more areas to explore along with more abilities and mechanics. The caves have tons of traversable terrain as you can spend in-game stamina to climb walls and find caves and hidden pathways to in-game currencies and powers.

The art direction had me thoroughly impressed since we got to see a few different layouts but always with the same cavern theming as the game is still early in development. I also confirmed with the developers that there will be other areas but generally you will still be in some kind of cave systems but with different environmental biomes, though no specific ones were mentioned. But seeing the different wild animals, both friendly and not, as well as the gorgeous plant life and terrain, was a sight for sore eyes. A hub world was also mentioned but not shown. The hub will of course be a fixed design and you can spend in-game currency to unlock new abilities and it’s also where Mother Machine gives objectives to the playable critters.

Those abilities are called “mutations” and they’re vast and varied. They can be swapped around freely before going on runs. Mutations are where some of the silliness comes in and range from things like a fart cloud that can heal you and allies, a sticky coating that lets you spread a special goo on that wall that lets allies climb for no stamina, and more combat focused mutations like a multi-directional spike shot. Watching the three developers work together to take out enemies was super engaging as they scrambled to make sure everyone survived. We did witness a death though and that’s not the end of the road you might think! You’re able to spend some energy to summon a portal that either the summoner or allies can use to hop between points for easy traversal should a partner die. It’s not spammable so you can’t die too much, but it’s a convenience that’s very smart as it helps keep the co-op flow going.

While this was only a taste of what was to come, I’m very excited to see more from, and hopefully play, Mother Machine as we get closer to launch in 2025. The numerous abilities, randomized environments, the humor, and focus on chaos+competition with my friends looks to be much more up my alley over other, more standard co-op experiences. What we got to see was pretty early but very promising. No single playthrough looks to be the same and I think that’s where Mother Machine will excel. Inspired by Spelunky 2 and the Oddworld series, Maschinen-Mensch looks to be delivering an experience unlike others.

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