As long-time readers know, I’m a pitiful target for strange little gamers. I’m currently trying to figure out what the titular mother machine is referring to in the upcoming machine-human co-op platformer from Curious Expedition studio. But if it’s a reference to forming a parental bond with what the game has remotely dubbed “chaos gremlins,” then I’m way ahead of you.
Ah, the press release speaks for itself! I probably should have read a bit more before I kept shouting “Chaos Gremlins!” There is an announcement trailer.
And here is the deep Gremlin lore:
Mother Machine is set thousands of years in the future on a distant planet once populated by humans but now abandoned. An artificial intelligence left behind by its creators faced a problem: without a purpose, it had to find a way to protect its digital mind from collapsing under the weight of eternal solitude. Its solution was to create a creature to care for. True rascals with a penchant for mischief and chaos, these little gremlins were genetically engineered by their mother to withstand and survive in a harsh alien environment. 3D printed from organic filament by their god-like mother machine, these creatures are tasked with collecting and exploring a vast cave system of a mysterious alien planet filled with biodiversity and peculiar lifeforms – but the further the gremlins go, the more they learn about the dark secrets of the planet’s history and the true ambitions of their mechanical mother.
They’re literally, canonically, chaos gremlins that provide emotional support. Awesome. Mother Machine lets you recruit up to three companions in drop-in co-op to help you. The more gremlins, the higher the levels of “both chaos and competition.” It also sounds like there will be a dynamic difficulty system: “Balanced co-op mechanics allow experienced players to team up with novices.” Platforming gameplay seems to be the main focus, but Machine Man also refers to Mother Machine as an action RPG. Sounds like this will manifest itself in mutation skill trees that let you change and upgrade your gremlin’s abilities.
The game also features “endlessly replayable generative levels,” though I’m not sure what that means in context. For all the fun in the trailer, I’m not sure how Mother Machine will be structured, or what goals your squad of disaster lizards will be trying to accomplish. The trailer above shows one Gremlin farting on another. I’d ask about the practical applications of such an ability, but I think that might be off topic. It looks good, though. Similar appeal to cooperative physics sandboxes, I think, just with a lot more intention and sinew holding it together – enough that I’d probably still be interested in playing it solo. It’s coming out sometime in 2025.
