Love Donkey Kong Bananza? Discover This New Digging Game!

Alright, here we go. So, I was up to my elbows in Donkey Kong Bananza not too long ago, and I said to myself—“Hey, 2025? It’s the year of, well, digging holes.” I mean, it felt like every game I picked up—uh, four of them if we’re counting Rusty Rabbit from Netease which, duh, I totally forgot but remembered later—they all revolved around this childlike, sandbox digging mania. Enter Mashina, right on cue, pushing this trend further down the rabbit hole.

So there’s this new game, Mashina, coming hot on the heels of last year’s… was it Judero? Yeah, Judero. Anyway, Mashina is brought to life by Talha and Jack Co., doing their quirky stop-motion thing. The game? It’s about this egg-shaped robot on a quest to gather minerals to save her world. And how? Yep, you guessed it, by digging holes. It’s got this charming, lo-fi vibe—not like those flashy Nintendo titles. Definitely a palette cleanser after the chaos of Donkey Kong Bananza’s environmental roller coaster.

If I’m drawing comparisons—no, wait, I’m doing that—Mashina’s got a leg up on Steamworld Dig. You dive into this 2D underground maze, drill in hand, hunting for minerals. And your stash? You puzzle out how to fit it into your inventory, then haul it back up top. That’s where you trade them for skill points—get faster, drill better, all that jazz. Plus, you’re running errands for some friendly bots topside who toss more powerful tools your way. It’s that same dig-and-progress hook—it worked for A Game About Digging a Hole, so why not for a bunch of lovable robots?

Digging through Mashina feels real good—like, smack-your-lips satisfying. You’re weaving this maze of tunnels, but, ah, there’s bumps. That conveyor belt system? Clunky as heck. And Act 3? My attention span broke under the grind, but you know what? Mashina wears its scrappiness with pride. The landscapes, they’re all lumpy and the stop-motion scenes are primitive, endearingly so. There’s this gallery of characters that look like they popped right out of a Primus album cover—perfectly quirky.

See, that’s the magic of claymation for you. It’s all about those human touches—the thumbprints you can almost see where someone squished the clay just right. Mashina’s bursting with those little imperfections—totally embodies the handcrafted charm of its makers.

I suppose you could say it’s a blue-collar Bananza. The parts that stuck? I’m just digging away, this staticky radio blaring these trancey tunes, between DJs chatting ‘bout fixing a poisoned world—the chill vibes are real. I felt like a trucker on a forgotten highway at 3 a.m., just tuning into whatever FM could reach me, keeping me awake. True, Mashina doesn’t tug at your heartstrings like Judero did, but, you know, it has its pocket-sized epiphanies. It’s the kind of game for those night owls working the graveyard shift, the ones making sure the world’s still ticking when dawn breaks.