Preview: Build and raid and build again in Meet Your Maker [PC]

Raid. Destroy. Survive. Build. The cycle of the upcoming PvP raid-and-build game Meet Your Maker is apparent within the first few minutes, even in its preview state. You’re tasked with entering one of the numerous player-built deathtrap fortresses to steal the valuables within. You’re also responsible for building some of your own.

Developer Behaviour Interactive previously made waves with Dead By Daylight, the massive hit game that put asynchronous multiplayer at the center and eschewed everything else. Now, they’re back with a new kind of multiplayer game: one driven purely by player creation and sadism.

Meet your Maker is inherently repetitive, simplistic to its core, and borderline addictive. The open beta we played during Steam Next Fest this February has given us a satisfying, if not perfect, taste of what’s to come.

Invaders must die

I called Meet Your Maker a PvP game earlier, but that might give you the wrong idea. You’re not fighting against other players in real-time, but rather dealing with deadly machinations of their own design. Every single map in Meet Your Maker is created by the community,

The basic gameplay loop involves gearing up, selecting a map, reaching the Genmat core, and getting the hell out of there alive. Think of yourself as the one trapped inside the labyrinth of a devious player, armed with only a handful of weapons against the traps and enemies within. (And perhaps a buddy, if you want to go co-op.)

Thanks to building limitations, levels are never very long. However, I found myself dying fairly frequently in most of them, thanks to some ingenious trap placement and misdirection. The gameplay loop of Meet Your Maker, as presented in this preview build, is certainly a good time, frustrations aside.

However, it is also apparent that the longevity of this game is going to depend entirely on maintaining player interest. I’ve seen some pretty creative maps already, including one person who constructed the outside of their base like a church. I’ve also already noticed that it’s easy for raiding levels to feel repetitive, even if the rewards are worth plundering. You’ve always got a selection of maps to pick from, though, with numerous difficulty levels to choose from if you’re looking for a challenge.

If you build it, they will come

The world of Meet Your Maker is a bleak place. Natural resources have been virtually wiped dry, and the only way to survive is to invade enemy fortresses. Yet it’s also crucial to build your own.

Designing maps is done with a block-based creation system, where you can lay down materials and hazards brick by brick. You’ve only got a limited number of materials to work with per map, but there are plenty of ways to spice up your maps with hidden objects, destruction, and misleading your opponents.

That’s if you can deal with the admittedly infuriating building controls. It reminds me a lot of how building bases worked in Fallout 4 (get your “it just works” jokes away from me). I didn’t care that much about the gameplay in that game, and it certainly doesn’t impress me much here, either.

For the record, actually building your bases is responsive. It’s just hard to get the right perspective when the camera controls are so poor and irritating. You fly around with the grace of a plane crash, and the worst part is that adjusting your height in the free-fly camera is tied to the same button as deactivating the free-fly mode. I can’t count how many times I dropped off the face of my structure while trying to adjust myself.

The Meet Your Maker preview reveals a solid foundation

With the preview period of Meet Your Maker done and dusted, I’ve already halfway fallen for the game. The raiding gameplay is extremely solid, and the gameplay loop was enough to tithe me over for the few hours I put into it already. Yet the building side of Meet Your Maker needs a little bit more attention before the game launches.

The open beta period may be over, but Meet Your Maker will be available in full on April 4 for the PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S, and PC via Steam.

What do you think of Meet Your Maker if you’ve played it? Let us know!