Review: Meet Your Maker [PC]

There’s a lot to be said for the premise of Meet Your Maker. Developer Behavior Interactive envisioned an asynchronous multiplayer experience unlike any other. Have the players build bases with deathtraps and guards, and simultaneously send them out into other players’ bases to harvest rewards.

It’s an ingenious idea for a game, and if done right, it has the makings for a top-tier multiplayer experience. It’s hard to say in the early days of its full launch whether or not it will reach those heights.

Here’s what’s for certain. Meet Your Maker is pretty damn fun. Despite a couple of hiccups in the game flow and a few design issues that could be smoothed out, the game’s core gameplay loop is immensely enjoyable. It’s a brilliant concept executed pretty well, and I firmly believe that it could be a major success if Behavior Interactive irons out a few kinks. (And, of course, updates it with content.)

It’s a desert out there

The world of Meet Your Maker is a harsh and uncompromising place to live. Set after an apocalypse has ravaged the planet, the only ones brave enough to venture out into the wastelands are Custodians. These warriors are responsible for feeding the Chimera, a being who claims to have the key to salvation and who totally, definitely isn’t evil.

As a Custodian, you’re responsible for maintaining a series of deathtrap-laden bases to harvest genetic material, or GenMat. This not only gains you valuable resources for upgrading yourself and your fortresses, but also helps you upgrade your Chimera. However, the best way to gain GenMat is by raiding other bases. Infiltrating the buildings other players have created and surviving their deadly mechanisms nets you plenty of GenMat.

As you might have expected from a multiplayer-focused game, Meet Your Maker barely pays any attention to its story. All the narrative you get is there to provide a reason for building and raiding bases. What sort of apocalypse happened, and how far-spread is it? Who are the Custodians, really? What is the Chimera’s end goal?

You don’t get any answers to that, or at least, not yet. If Behavior Interactive is planning a full-fledged storyline through updates, as it has with Dead by Daylight, we aren’t aware of that yet. For now, you’ve got a number of throwaway lines that hint at something larger, but ultimately leave you in the dark.

The better the builder, the better the base

Let’s talk about one of the most critical aspects of Meet Your Maker: base-building. Every Custodian can purchase plots of land using materials they’ve gathered and build their dream fortress of destruction on each one. You can run up to ten at a time, but every plot has its own minimum and maximum building requirements.

Then, it’s simple a matter of assembling your base through the block-based construction tool. In my write-up of the game’s demo build, I complained about the controls during the construction phase. Behavior Interactive seems to have tightened the controls up considerably, however, and I can now see just how intuitive the system is.

Like a lot of block-based building games, your only real limitations are the 3D grid and your surrounding environments. Your plot of land has different pre-built terrain and the location of your GenMat generator set. So it’s only a matter of figuring out the best kind of base for your parameters.

There are a lot of different directions for building bases. You can go full-on artistic and sculpt a building so that people will appreciate its beauty. You can construct a brutal, almost impossible-to-escape room of death that requires almost unattainable amounts of luck to survive. Or you can go plain and simple.

It’s all in the player’s hands, and that kind of freedom is extremely refreshing. Not only is the builder intuitive, but with an easy-to-memorize checklist and simple regulations, it’s easy to fit what you want to make into the game. There are some limitations, such as leaving a path for your Harvester to reach the generator, but I didn’t find that they hampered creativity too much.

Even with the building being much more fun than it was back in the demo, I wasn’t able to fully explore its limitations with the short time I had to play Meet Your Maker. I can see the power it gives you, but I settled for just building a few basic bases and calling it a day. I’ve already seen some really inspired designs already, however — both from an artistic and technical standpoint.

Speaking of which…

Invaders must die

The flipside to Meet Your Maker is raiding the bases other players have constructed. You’re able to play bases that anyone on any console has created. However, cross play isn’t yet an option — though you can venture out into the wastelands and raid with a buddy, if you want.

Anyways, raiding a building is simple in practice. You’ve got two available weapons slots, some grenade slots, and a grappling hook at your disposal. Your weapons have a very limited amount of ammo, but you can recollect spent bullets to fire again. There’s only a small handful of weapons to cycle through, but ranged and melee options are available, and most can handle any threat you encounter in the wasteland.

Movement is fairly solid, and it feels great to kill your target in Meet Your Maker. Whether you’re firing at a trap to disable it or an enemy who’s got you in its sights, hitting your mark is incredibly satisfying. I also found the grappling hook to be an invaluable tool in the field, letting you zip across the terrain with ease.

It’s all good stuff, though I’ve heard reports from some players (particularly on PC) of poor performance. My experience has been very clean, but it’s something to keep in mind if you decide to pick this game up.

In Meet Your Maker, death is the name of the game

Any game with an apocalyptic setting is bound to have its fair share of death. In Meet Your Maker, death is just one way you learn how to deal with the obstacles in your path.

The fact that those obstacles are determined entirely by another player’s whims means that your Meet Your Maker experience will vary heavily. If you’re just into base-building, you’ll be reasonably accommodated even if you have to raid bases eventually.

However, the game will define your base’s difficulty based on the number of traps set, how large it is, and other factors. There are three difficulty settings: Normal, Dangerous, and Brutal — all self-explanatory, one would hope, and when raiding, you’ll have a few in each to choose from.

For a game like Meet Your Maker where killing players is the name of the game, you’d think that the Brutal map category would get the most attention. Sadly, this is where most of the game’s most disappointing maps were (at least, in my experience.)

Here’s the issue. You know how in Super Mario Maker, you’re only allowed to share your course online if you’ve beaten it? That system is there to prevent impossible levels from preventing a player’s progression. Meet Your Maker (currently) doesn’t have this feature. You can build an inescapable trap room and set it loose without even so much as a questioning glance.

Needless to say, if you’re looking for a challenge, this game is going to deliver way too much. The best rewards come from killing raiders, so it’s far easier and more fulfilling for a player to just fill a room with traps and enemies than it is to be creative. Brutal levels are disappointing here because there’s almost no forethought put into them.

That’s not a problem with Normal and Dangerous levels, thankfully. I found levels assigned to these categories to be appropriate, even if the balance between levels can feel off.

Rinse and repeat

If there’s one big complaint, I have about Meet Your Maker, it’s the scant content. Given that the game is driven entirely by player content, that’s not exactly surprising. But you’ve experienced just about everything the game currently offers by building and raiding one base.

We live in an era where games are never truly finished at launch, however. Behavior Interactive has already unveiled the initial plans for its post-launch content for Meet Your Maker.

So far, it isn’t anything to write home about. The upcoming Dreadshore content pack features new weapons and armor plus a new environment for building bases. No new story content (at least, none that’s been revealed), but a decent way to entice players to experiment with the new tech.

I’m really hoping that Behavior Interactive introduces some story-based content along the way, though. Major content updates will go a long way in keeping the game feeling fresh. Considering it’s centered around an inherently repetitive gameplay loop, that’s extra important.

Meet Your Maker flouts its solid foundation

Despite the issues with its optionally impossible difficulty and some design quirks, Meet Your Maker is still fun and engaging. The base-building is intuitive, and venturing off into other player’s creations is a good time. It needs more content down the line to sustain player interest, though. It’s a great foundation for something spectacular, but as it stands, I still had a solid ride with this one.

Meet Your Maker is developed and published by Behavior Interactive. It is available now for the PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S, and PC via Steam.

What do you think of Meet Your Maker? What kind of bases have you built so far? Let us know!