Meet Your Maker review: Fun times with theft and construction

When the world ends and humanity is gone, what is left to do on the dead Earth? Build bases filled with elaborate traps and raid your friends, what else! Meet Your Maker is an asymmetrical multiplayer game from renowned asymmetrical multiplayer game developer, Behaviour Interactive, and even in its early stages feels like it has heaps of potential.

While not without its issues, the game offers something unique and is well worth checking out for competitive base-builders and lair-raiders.

Apocalypse, Gross

As we said in our hands-on preview, Meet Your Maker takes the asymmetry and obfuscation to another level, having players build their strongholds, and then invade the bases of others. Your character seeks genetic material, in the hopes of gathering enough to restart humanity. The story behind your actions says you are building a base to protect your GenMat, while also heading out and stealing the material of others from their bases.

The plot may only exist to explain why you do what you do, but it still manages to paint an effective picture of a world long past its end. You play as a Custodian, an otherwise nameless clone created by the Chimera, an entity that lives within a large glass tube. The Chimera seeks to save what can be saved of humanity, hence why you must go out and steal as much human genetic material as you can for it.

A thief in the irradiated night

Story reasons aside, Meet Your Maker has two modes of play. As mentioned, you either construct your base to defend against other players, or go out and attack the bases created by others. The invasion mode plays like a first-person shooter, you have an impressive amount of movement but not a lot of damage output.

You have a double jump and a nearly limitless grapple hook. Your primary weapon is a rifle with very limited ammo, and you have a sword for melee combat. The focus is on movement and traversal, not combat. You are a thief, not a killer. Your gun is a tool, you will have some enemies to shoot at, but you will not be mowing them down en masse.

You begin each invasion standing in front of the fortress, and what shape it takes can be completely different from any other. There is a lot of freedom in the base building, as we will discuss. You can follow a robot which will lead you directly to the genetic material. However, The creator will also have seen that path and will likely have orchestrated their traps to catch you if you follow blindly. It isn't always possible, but you can look for other ways in.

Triggering traps will give you a danger notification, giving you a chance to react and get out of the way. As such, moving carefully and taking your time is a good way to avoid traps in the first place. However, the builder can also place AI enemies which will attack on sight. The combination of these enemies and the traps varies the gameplay; you can't run in, guns blazing, but you can also only be careful for so long.

Invasion gameplay has just enough variety to keep it fresh, allowing the layout of the different bases you invade to take precedence. Once you have successfully raided a few bases, you will have the resources to purchase a plot of land, build a base, and let out your inner Kevin McCallister.

The Wet Bandits' worst nightmare

Base building is a grid-based system, in which items you place each have a point value. Structural items like walls and floors cost very few points, as most of your point-limited budget will be eaten up by the much more expensive traps. You have to build your base within the point limit assigned.

To keep the base fair and doable, the game shows you the path that the robot will take. It always takes the shortest path, and provided you don't leave any glaring holes in your defence, it should also be the way that invaders will go.

Not only are invaders inevitable, but they are also welcomed. Invaders attempting to raid your fortress are a source of resources for you as well. Players dying in your base grants you bonuses, and you lose nothing should they successfully steal the genetic material. Making invasions welcome, rather than something to combat, is a masterstroke that keeps this side of the game from being frustrating.

After your base is built and it goes live, you can revisit it to see how it fares. You can see how many players have visited you, and where they died along the way. This is an excellent tool for figuring out the strengths and weaknesses of your base, allowing you to rework it anywhere it is lacking.

Reasons to continue

So this is the loop- first, you go out and invade other players' bases. You likely die a few times, but you can quickly restart and try again. You grab the GenMat, and you get out. You can focus on invading, or you can work on your base. Build it up, watch how it does, and improve it where necessary.

All the while, you are gathering resources which you can spend on improvements for your character, or for your base. You can buy new weapons and new abilities. You can also purchase new traps and items for your base. As you play you will level up, and more items will be unlocked. The more you play, the higher levels of bases will become available to you, both to invade and to construct.

The multiplayer aspects we have discussed so far is so asymmetrical it may as well be a single-player game, which does fit well with the apocalyptic theme of the game. However, you can indeed join up with friends and invade bases as a team. You can also invade your friends' bases, and invite them to invade yours. The game is an entire platform for fun times with theft and construction.

The Verdict

Meet Your Maker is a really fun game. It is a new and intriguing concept, one that is executed excellently. Invasion gameplay is fun, building gives plenty of room for creativity. There is a concerted effort here to make sure neither mode is ever frustrating, whether you are robbing or being robbed, you are never losing out.

3.5/5

Reviewed on PC. Code provided by the publisher.