Mother Machine

Gremlins, Caves and a Robotic Mother

Mother Machine drops players into the role of small, strange gremlin-like creatures manufactured by an enormous artificial intelligence called, unsurprisingly, the Mother Machine. Deployed into procedurally generated alien caves in waves — and reprinted whenever they die, no harm done — these creatures exist to climb, jump, eat, fart, and fight their way through hazardous cave systems on behalf of their creator, gradually uncovering fragments of the planet's forgotten history along the way. One reviewer's detailed writeup frames the premise succinctly: "Each expedition is essentially an experiment carried out by the machine, sending its creations deeper into the planet's dangerous ecosystems," while the story itself stays deliberately in the background, doled out through occasional narrative beats between runs rather than driving the moment-to-moment gameplay.

That framing gives Mother Machine license to be as strange and playful as it wants to be, and the presentation leans into it — one reviewer describes the visuals as "the child of Oddworld and Creatures," while another calls out the influence of Little Big Planet and Deep Rock Galactic in the same breath. It's an unusual combination on paper, but reviewers consistently agree the tone lands: colourful, slightly grotesque, and genuinely funny.

Climbing and Movement Are the Real Stars

Where Mother Machine earns its strongest praise is in its core traversal mechanics. Multiple reviewers single out the climbing system specifically as the game's best feature, describing real depth beneath its surface simplicity. "My absolute favourite thing about the game is the movement, most of all the climbing," reads one extensive review, which goes on to note that the system "has a lot of little quirks that let you cancel and optimize for stamina efficiency in ways that makes all of the procedurally generated caves traversable quickly, alone and without special abilities." That's a meaningful compliment for a physics-driven platformer — it suggests a genuine skill ceiling rather than just charming animation dressing up a shallow system.

Other reviewers echo the sentiment in shorter form: "Runs smooth, has nice movement mechanics and can be challenging depending on the level/randomizer," and "Very smooth gameplay with great traversal, lovely graphics and delightful character customisation." Even reviewers who ultimately marked the game Not Recommended tend to carve out an exception for the climbing specifically, describing the exploring and traversal as "very enjoyable" even while criticising other systems around it. It's a rare and specific point of consensus across an otherwise fairly mixed sample.

Co-op Chaos, Role Specialisation and Shared Resources

Mother Machine supports one to four players, and the sample is consistent that it's built to be played with others rather than alone. The multiplayer design goes beyond simply letting friends explore the same cave — special abilities naturally push players into complementary roles, checkpoints and portals are shared to keep separated groups from falling too far behind, and certain gated sections deliberately require two players to open, nudging solo-feeling sessions back toward genuine cooperation. One especially detailed review breaks down how "one player might have a movement ability equipped or is good at climbing to get up a tall wall to then descend with a vine that the others can use to climb up more easily," describing a system that rewards teams figuring out their own division of labour rather than following a prescribed class structure.

The resource design backs this up with a deliberate mix of competition and sharing: crystals collected during a run stay individual, while checkpoints, respawns, and end-of-run rewards are pooled. Reviewers describe the resulting chaos fondly — "Very fun game with friends. Plays like a nice goofy Little Big Planet," and "the unpredictable interactions between players often produce entertaining moments that would not occur in solo play," as one longer review puts it. For groups looking for a co-op game built around genuine physical comedy rather than tightly scripted teamwork, this is clearly where Mother Machine delivers most consistently.

A Loop That Wears Thin, and a Combat System That Doesn't Quite Keep Up

The picture gets less rosy once the campaign's five story beats are exhausted. Several reviewers describe the mission variety thinning out noticeably at that point, with one writing plainly: "There really needed to be much more levels with a scripted story as without them there isn't that much to do, eventually it's the same thing over and over. Once you play the game for a bit you will notice the patterns in the layouts and obstacles being reused." Boss encounters draw a similar complaint — reviewers note that most fights reuse the same core "Sister" boss with only minor upgrades between appearances, rather than offering a genuinely varied roster.

Combat is the other recurring soft spot. Where the movement earns near-universal praise, the fighting layered on top of it draws the opposite reaction: "movement and combat feel both clunky and floaty," and more specifically, "getting stuck between enemies without a possibility to get out or being bombarded in a boss fight without relieve quickly becomes incredibly frustrating." It's a meaningful gap in quality within the same game — the traversal systems clearly received the most design attention, and combat reads as functional rather than polished by comparison.

Bugs, Performance and an Expensive DLC

The most serious recurring complaint in the sample is technical. Performance issues and connectivity bugs show up across reviews spanning launch in March 2025 through as recently as September 2025, suggesting these aren't teething problems that were fully resolved early on. One reviewer reported being unable to play at all: "there is currently a bug that makes it so when you try to go to the online lobby you simply get stuck with a loading screen forever," while a separate review from the same month describes repeated crashes immediately after a boss fight costing the whole team their progress. Others report frame drops on capable hardware and sluggish, floaty-feeling controls that one reviewer directly compared to expectations for "an Early Access title, not a full release."

A second, more specific frustration concerns the paid Misty Grove DLC, which adds one additional biome and a set of new abilities. Multiple reviewers flag its price as disproportionate to what it adds — "the DLC... is priced at nearly 2/3 of the base game, and it only adds one new biome, a few mutations, and a couple new mobs/hazards" — and at least one reviewer explicitly changed their recommendation from positive to negative over the pricing decision rather than the base game itself, writing that the developers "care more about releasing overpriced DLC than fixing the base game." That's a strong reaction worth taking seriously, even if it reflects a minority of the sample.

Verdict: A Charming, Uneven Co-op Cave Crawl

Mother Machine gets the hardest part of a physics-based platformer right: the actual feeling of moving through its world is inventive, skill-rewarding, and genuinely fun to master, and its gremlin cast gives that movement real personality. Played with a group of friends willing to fall off the same ledges together, it's easy to see why reviewers describe getting hooked for dozens of hours.

But the game asks a fair bit of patience outside of that sweet spot. Combat lags noticeably behind the traversal in polish, the mission structure runs out of fresh ideas once the story concludes, and a persistent thread of crashes and connectivity issues stretching well past launch suggests the technical foundation still needs work. Add a DLC that a meaningful portion of the sample considers overpriced for what it delivers, and Mother Machine ends up as a game that's easy to recommend to the right co-op group and considerably harder to recommend without those caveats attached.