Meet Your Maker

Meet Your Maker is a post-apocalyptic action-strategy game where players alternate between building deadly outposts and raiding others’ creations. Set in a dystopian world, the game blends first-person shooting with base-building mechanics, allowing players to craft intricate traps and defenses to thwart invaders or infiltrate enemy strongholds to steal resources. Developed by Behaviour Interactive, the game emphasizes creativity, tactical combat, and competitive multiplayer elements.

Meet Your Maker: A Post-Apocalyptic Playground of Creation and Destruction

Introduction

In the crowded landscape of post-apocalyptic shooters, Meet Your Maker carves out a niche that is as brutal as it is brilliant. Developed by Behaviour Interactive—the studio behind Dead by Daylight—this game merges the visceral thrill of first-person combat with the cerebral satisfaction of level design, creating a symbiotic ecosystem where players alternate between the roles of architect and intruder. At its core, Meet Your Maker is a game about ingenuity, persistence, and the dark joy of outsmarting (or being outsmarted by) fellow players.

The premise is deceptively simple: in a world ravaged by the Corrugenic Virus, humanity’s last hope lies in the Chimera, a bioengineered abomination that requires vast quantities of genetic material (GenMat) to evolve. As a Custodian, you serve this grotesque deity by raiding the fortified outposts of rival players to steal their GenMat, while simultaneously constructing your own labyrinthine death traps to harvest GenMat from those foolish enough to challenge you. It’s a cycle of creation and destruction, where every failure is a lesson and every victory a testament to your cunning.

Meet Your Maker is not just a game—it’s a sandbox of sadistic creativity. It thrives on the tension between builder and raider, where the former revels in the macabre artistry of their designs, and the latter delights in dismantling them. The game’s genius lies in its asymmetry: the tools for building are as deep as they are diabolical, while the tools for raiding demand precision, adaptability, and no small amount of masochism. This duality makes Meet Your Maker a rare breed—a game that is as much about community as it is about competition, where the real story isn’t scripted but emerges from the collective imagination of its players.

Yet, for all its innovation, Meet Your Maker is not without its flaws. Its narrative is threadbare, its progression systems can feel grindy, and its initial toolset is somewhat limited. But what it lacks in polish, it more than compensates for in potential. With a robust post-launch roadmap and a community already pushing the boundaries of its design tools, Meet Your Maker stands poised to evolve into something truly special. Whether it will achieve the longevity of Dead by Daylight remains to be seen, but one thing is certain: in a genre often dominated by repetitive shooters, Meet Your Maker is a breath of fresh, if slightly toxic, air.

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Development History & Context

The Studio Behind the Game

Behaviour Interactive is no stranger to the multiplayer landscape. With Dead by Daylight (2016) under its belt—a game that has not only thrived but defined the asymmetrical horror genre—the studio has proven its ability to craft experiences that rely heavily on community engagement and user-generated content. Meet Your Maker is a natural evolution of this philosophy, swapping the gothic horror of Dead by Daylight for the grimy, cyberpunk-infused desperation of a post-apocalyptic wasteland.

The development of Meet Your Maker began as an internal prototype, one of many experiments Behaviour conducted to explore new multiplayer dynamics. According to Nicolas Lefebvre, the game’s Brand Director, the team sought to create “a mature first-person asynchronous game driven by user-generated content.” The goal was to blend the strategic depth of base-building with the adrenaline rush of first-person raiding, all while fostering a sense of connection between players through their shared creations.

Technological Foundations

Meet Your Maker is built on Unreal Engine 4, a choice that allows for both the detailed environmental design of its post-apocalyptic outposts and the fluid, fast-paced movement of its first-person gameplay. The engine’s flexibility also facilitates the game’s most innovative feature: its AI-driven guard patrol system. Players can record custom patrol paths for their guards, adding a layer of unpredictability to raids. This system, while not entirely novel, is executed with a level of polish that makes it feel fresh.

One of the most interesting technical constraints the team faced was balancing the game’s building mechanics. To prevent outposts from becoming overwhelming or unfair, the developers implemented a “build capacity” limit, which can be increased through upgrades. This ensures that even novice builders can create challenging levels without being outclassed by veterans with deeper pockets. Additionally, traps are designed to be visible and telegraphed, giving raiders a fighting chance to react—a design choice that emphasizes skill over sheer brutality.

The Gaming Landscape at Launch

Meet Your Maker entered a market saturated with both shooters and base-building games, but its hybrid nature set it apart. At the time of its release in April 2023, the gaming world was in the midst of a renaissance for asymmetrical multiplayer experiences, thanks in part to the success of titles like Dead by Daylight, Hunt: Showdown, and Evil Dead: The Game. However, Meet Your Maker distinguished itself by focusing on asynchronous gameplay, where players don’t directly compete in real-time but instead engage with each other’s creations at their own pace.

This approach draws parallels to games like Super Mario Maker and Dreams, where user-generated content is the lifeblood of the experience. Yet, Meet Your Maker’s first-person perspective and emphasis on lethal, trap-filled dungeons give it a distinct identity. The game’s post-apocalyptic setting also taps into a perennial fascination with dystopian survival, a theme that has resonated in everything from Fallout to The Last of Us.

Post-Launch Ambitions

From the outset, Behaviour Interactive positioned Meet Your Maker as a live-service title, with a roadmap promising regular updates, new traps, guards, weapons, and cosmetic options. This commitment to long-term support is crucial, as the game’s success hinges on the diversity and quality of its user-generated content. Early reviews noted that while the core gameplay loop was compelling, the initial toolset felt somewhat limited. The studio’s willingness to expand and refine the game post-launch suggests a recognition of this fact and a desire to nurture the community that will ultimately define Meet Your Maker’s legacy.

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Narrative & Thematic Deep Dive

The World of Meet Your Maker

The game’s lore is delivered in broad strokes, painting a picture of a world on the brink of extinction. In 2032, the Corrugenic Virus swept across the globe, mutating DNA beyond repair and reducing humanity to a handful of survivors. Centuries later, these remnants have coalesced into the Salvation Council, a collection of clone-based Sanctuaries ruled by the Chimera—grotesque, bioengineered overlords who demand constant infusions of GenMat to evolve into a form capable of surviving the virus.

As a Custodian, you are a clone-engineer-soldier hybrid, tasked with both harvesting GenMat from the burial sites of the dead and defending your Sanctuary’s stockpiles from rival Custodians. The narrative is minimalist, delivered primarily through environmental storytelling and the occasional cryptic transmission from your Chimera. There’s a deliberate ambiguity to the world: are the Chimera humanity’s saviors or its final tormentors? Are the Custodians heroes or pawns in a larger, more sinister game?

This ambiguity is one of the game’s strengths. Unlike many post-apocalyptic narratives that lean heavily on melodrama or moral absolutism, Meet Your Maker embraces a morally gray, almost nihilistic tone. The world is dying, the Chimera are monstrous, and the Custodians are expendable. There’s no grand redemption arc here—just survival, brutality, and the cold calculus of genetic preservation.

Themes of Creation and Destruction

At its heart, Meet Your Maker is a meditation on the duality of creation and destruction. The act of building an outpost is an exercise in sadistic creativity, where every trap and guard is a testament to the builder’s ingenuity. Conversely, raiding an outpost is an act of deconstruction, where the raider must unravel the builder’s logic, exploit their weaknesses, and claim their resources.

This dynamic mirrors the game’s broader themes of survival and evolution. The Chimera, as grotesque as they are, represent humanity’s last hope—a hope that can only be realized through violence and exploitation. The GenMat you steal isn’t just a resource; it’s the literal building blocks of the future, harvested from the corpses of the past. There’s a grim poetry to this cycle, one that the game doesn’t shy away from.

The Role of the Player

The player’s agency in Meet Your Maker is defined by their dual role as both creator and destroyer. As a builder, you are godlike, crafting elaborate death traps and watching with glee as raiders fall prey to your designs. As a raider, you are the underdog, a lone (or paired) warrior navigating a gauntlet of hazards with nothing but your wits and a handful of tools.

This duality is reinforced by the game’s progression systems. Every death in your outpost grants you resources, which in turn allow you to expand and refine your designs. Every successful raid nets you GenMat, which you can use to upgrade your weapons, suits, and traps. The game’s economy is built on this cycle of failure and success, where every setback is an opportunity to learn and adapt.

The Chimera: A Villain or a Savior?

The Chimera are the game’s most fascinating and underdeveloped element. These grotesque, bioengineered overlords are both the architects of humanity’s salvation and its most ruthless exploiters. Their design—equal parts H.R. Giger and Dead by Daylight’s The Entity—evokes a sense of unease, a feeling that they are not entirely on the side of the Custodians.

The game’s narrative designer, Joe Dermo, has hinted that the Chimera’s true nature is deliberately ambiguous. Are they benevolent scientists, desperate to save humanity at any cost? Or are they something far more sinister, using the Custodians as pawns in a larger, more insidious game? The lack of clear answers is frustrating for some players but adds a layer of intrigue to the world. It’s a narrative that feels ripe for expansion, whether through future updates or a potential sequel.

The Community as Storytellers

Ultimately, the most compelling stories in Meet Your Maker are not scripted but emerge from the community. Every outpost is a narrative unto itself, a reflection of its creator’s personality, humor, and cruelty. Some builders craft elaborate puzzles, forcing raiders to think critically and adapt on the fly. Others create gauntlets of sheer brutality, where survival is a matter of twitch reflexes and blind luck.

The game’s replay system further enhances this storytelling. Watching a raider navigate your outpost—seeing where they hesitate, where they fall, and where they ultimately triumph—is a uniquely satisfying experience. It’s a form of asynchronous communication, where builders and raiders engage in a silent dialogue of challenge and response.

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Gameplay Mechanics & Systems

The Core Loop: Build, Raid, Upgrade

Meet Your Maker’s gameplay is divided into two primary modes: building and raiding. These modes are interconnected, forming a loop that drives progression and engagement.

1. Building: Players construct outposts using a variety of blocks, traps, and guards. The goal is to create a challenging but fair gauntlet that other players must navigate to steal your GenMat. Successful outposts reward builders with resources and prestige, allowing them to expand and refine their designs.

2. Raiding: Players infiltrate outposts created by other players, attempting to reach the GenMat core and escape alive. Raiding is a high-stakes affair, with death sending players back to the start of the level. Successful raids net GenMat, which can be used to upgrade weapons, suits, and traps.

3. Upgrading: Resources gathered from both building and raiding are used to unlock new traps, guards, weapons, and cosmetic options. This progression system ensures that players are constantly evolving, both as builders and raiders.

Building Mechanics

The building mechanics in Meet Your Maker are robust and intuitive, offering a level of depth that rivals dedicated level editors. Players start with a basic plot of land and a limited build capacity, which can be expanded through upgrades. The core building tools include:

• Blocks: The foundation of any outpost, blocks come in a variety of shapes and materials, from basic concrete to more exotic options like corrosive cubes and lava. These blocks can be used to create everything from simple walls to elaborate mazes.

• Traps: The heart of any outpost’s defenses, traps range from the straightforward (spike walls, turret guns) to the devious (holocubes that disappear when stepped on, incinerators that shoot through other traps). Each trap can be further customized with mods, allowing for a wide range of behaviors.

• Guards: AI-controlled enemies that patrol the outpost, guards can be equipped with different weapons and augments. Players can record custom patrol paths for their guards, adding a layer of unpredictability to raids.

• Cosmetics: While not directly impacting gameplay, cosmetics allow builders to personalize their outposts, adding atmosphere and personality. From graffiti to environmental props, these options help outposts stand out and tell a story.

One of the most innovative aspects of the building system is the “harvester robot,” which ensures that every outpost has a viable path to the GenMat core. This prevents builders from creating impossible levels and ensures that raiders always have a fighting chance.

Raiding Mechanics

Raiding in Meet Your Maker is a tense, high-stakes affair that blends first-person shooting, platforming, and puzzle-solving. Players must navigate a gauntlet of traps and guards, using a combination of speed, stealth, and firepower to reach the GenMat core. Key mechanics include:

• Movement: The game’s movement system is fluid and responsive, with a strong emphasis on verticality. Players can double jump, wall run, and use a grappling hook to traverse the environment. Mastery of these mechanics is essential for surviving the more elaborate outposts.

• Weapons and Gear: Raiders can choose from a variety of weapons, including ranged options like the Volt Lancer (a gauss bolt rifle) and the Falconic Plasmabow (a semi-automatic plasma crossbow), as well as melee weapons like the Fury’s Edge (a magnetic broadsword). Each weapon has its own strengths and weaknesses, encouraging players to experiment with different loadouts.

• Consumables and Perks: In addition to weapons, raiders can equip consumables like the Phoenix Pod (a one-time revive) and perks that enhance their abilities. These options allow for a high degree of customization, ensuring that no two raids play out the same way.

• Death and Respawn: Death in Meet Your Maker is punishing but fair. When a raider dies, they are sent back to the start of the outpost, forcing them to reattempt the level from scratch. This design choice ensures that every death is a learning experience, as players must adapt their strategies based on what killed them.

Progression and Upgrades

Progression in Meet Your Maker is tied to the collection of GenMat and other resources, which are used to unlock and upgrade a variety of systems:

• Chimera and Advisors: The Chimera serves as the central hub for progression, with five specialized Advisors overseeing different aspects of the game. Upgrading these Advisors unlocks new traps, guards, weapons, and suits.

• Outpost Prestige: Outposts can be “prestiged,” increasing their build capacity and extending their lifespan. Prestige is earned through successful raids and deaths in the outpost, encouraging builders to iterate and improve their designs.

• Cosmetics and Customization: In addition to functional upgrades, players can unlock cosmetic options for their outposts, weapons, and suits. These options allow for a high degree of personalization, ensuring that every player’s experience is unique.

Multiplayer and Co-Op

While Meet Your Maker is primarily a single-player experience, it does support co-op in both building and raiding modes. Building with a friend allows for more elaborate designs, as players can divide tasks and brainstorm ideas together. Raiding with a friend, meanwhile, adds a layer of strategy, as players can revive each other and coordinate their efforts.

However, the game’s multiplayer implementation is not without its flaws. There is no distinction between solo and co-op outposts, meaning that levels designed for single players can be trivially easy (or impossibly hard) for duos. Additionally, the lack of cross-play at launch limited the player pool, though the game’s “cross-content” system ensured that outposts were shared across all platforms.

Technical Issues and Balance

At launch, Meet Your Maker suffered from a number of technical issues, including buggy grappling hooks, inconsistent trap behavior, and occasional crashes. These issues, while not game-breaking, detracted from the overall experience and contributed to a sense of roughness.

Balance was another concern, particularly in the early days of the game. Some traps and guards were overpowered, while others were underwhelming. The game’s progression system also felt grindy, with upgrades requiring significant amounts of GenMat. Behaviour Interactive addressed many of these issues in post-launch updates, but the initial imbalance left some players frustrated.

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World-Building, Art & Sound

The Post-Apocalyptic Aesthetic

Meet Your Maker’s world is a grimy, cyberpunk-infused wasteland, where the remnants of humanity cling to survival in the shadow of the Chimera. The game’s art direction blends the industrial decay of Mad Max with the high-tech horror of Dead by Daylight, creating a visual identity that is both familiar and fresh.

The outposts themselves are the stars of the show, with each one reflecting the personality and creativity of its builder. Some outposts are sprawling, open-air fortresses, while others are claustrophobic dungeons filled with traps and hazards. The game’s block-based building system allows for a wide range of architectural styles, from brutalist bunkers to elaborate castles.

Environmental Storytelling

While Meet Your Maker’s narrative is minimalist, its environments tell a story of their own. The burial sites that serve as the foundation for outposts are littered with the detritus of a dead civilization—rusted machinery, skeletal remains, and the occasional hint of what came before. The Chimera’s Sanctuaries, meanwhile, are grotesque cathedrals of flesh and steel, where the line between science and horror is blurred.

The game’s use of color is particularly effective. The wasteland is a palette of grays and browns, punctuated by the occasional splash of neon or the sickly glow of GenMat. This contrast reinforces the game’s themes of decay and renewal, where the old world is dying but the new one is struggling to be born.

Sound Design and Atmosphere

The sound design in Meet Your Maker is understated but effective, with a focus on immersive environmental audio. The clanking of machinery, the distant hum of the Chimera’s Sanctuaries, and the eerie silence of the wasteland all contribute to a sense of isolation and desperation.

The game’s soundtrack, composed by an in-house team at Behaviour Interactive, is a mix of industrial beats and ambient drones, perfectly complementing the game’s post-apocalyptic aesthetic. The music is dynamic, shifting in intensity based on the player’s actions—subtle and atmospheric during exploration, pulsing and urgent during combat.

Voice Acting and Dialogue

The voice acting in Meet Your Maker is minimal but impactful. The Chimera and their Advisors are voiced with a mix of authority and menace, reinforcing their role as both benefactors and tormentors. The Custodian, meanwhile, is silent, allowing the player to project their own personality onto the character.

The game’s dialogue is sparse, with most of the narrative delivered through environmental cues and the occasional transmission. This approach ensures that the story never overshadows the gameplay, but it also leaves some players wanting more. The Chimera’s true nature, in particular, feels like a missed opportunity for deeper storytelling.

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Reception & Legacy

Critical Reception

Meet Your Maker received generally positive reviews at launch, with critics praising its innovative gameplay loop, deep building mechanics, and tense raiding action. However, the game was not without its detractors, with some reviewers criticizing its thin narrative, grindy progression, and technical issues.

On Metacritic, the game holds a score of 73/100 for the PlayStation 5 version, 76/100 for the PC version, and 71/100 for the Xbox Series X version. These scores reflect a consensus that Meet Your Maker is a promising but flawed experience, one that could benefit from additional content and polish.

Player Reception

Player reception was more mixed, with some praising the game’s creativity and depth, while others criticized its repetitive nature and lack of variety. On Metacritic, the game holds a user score of 5.6/10, reflecting a divided community.

One of the most common criticisms from players was the prevalence of “kill box” outposts—levels designed to trap and kill raiders as quickly as possible, with little regard for fairness or creativity. This issue was exacerbated by the game’s reward system, which incentivized high death counts over clever design. Behaviour Interactive addressed this in post-launch updates, introducing new accolades and rewards for creative outposts.

Post-Launch Support and Updates

Behaviour Interactive has been proactive in supporting Meet Your Maker post-launch, with regular updates adding new traps, guards, weapons, and cosmetic options. The game’s roadmap includes plans for new environments, deco packs, and even a ranking system, suggesting a long-term commitment to the game’s success.

The studio’s approach to post-launch support mirrors that of Dead by Daylight, with a focus on community engagement and iterative improvement. This bodes well for Meet Your Maker’s longevity, as the game’s success hinges on the diversity and quality of its user-generated content.

Influence and Legacy

While it’s too early to assess Meet Your Maker’s long-term legacy, the game has already made an impact on the multiplayer landscape. Its blend of building and raiding mechanics has inspired comparisons to Super Mario Maker and Dreams, while its post-apocalyptic aesthetic has drawn favorable comparisons to Doom and Fallout.

The game’s most significant contribution may be its demonstration of the potential for asynchronous multiplayer experiences. By allowing players to engage with each other’s creations at their own pace, Meet Your Maker offers a model for community-driven gameplay that is both accessible and deeply engaging.

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Conclusion

Meet Your Maker is a game of contradictions—a brutal shooter with a creative soul, a post-apocalyptic wasteland with a cyberpunk heart, a competitive experience built on cooperation. It is, in many ways, a reflection of its own core mechanics: a delicate balance between creation and destruction, where every success is built on the ashes of failure.

At its best, Meet Your Maker is a masterclass in emergent gameplay, where the community’s creativity drives the experience forward. The thrill of outsmarting a raider in your own outpost, or the satisfaction of finally conquering a seemingly impossible level, is unmatched in the genre. The game’s building tools are deep and intuitive, while its raiding mechanics demand precision, adaptability, and no small amount of perseverance.

Yet, for all its strengths, Meet Your Maker is not without its flaws. Its narrative is threadbare, its progression systems can feel grindy, and its initial toolset is somewhat limited. The prevalence of “kill box” outposts in the early days of the game highlighted the need for better incentives for creative design, a issue that Behaviour Interactive has since addressed.

Ultimately, Meet Your Maker’s success will hinge on its community and the studio’s commitment to long-term support. With a robust roadmap and a willingness to iterate based on player feedback, the game has the potential to evolve into something truly special. Whether it will achieve the longevity of Dead by Daylight remains to be seen, but one thing is certain: in a genre often dominated by repetitive shooters, Meet Your Maker is a breath of fresh, if slightly toxic, air.

For players who crave creativity, challenge, and a healthy dose of sadistic fun, Meet Your Maker is a must-play. It’s a game that rewards ingenuity, punishes complacency, and thrives on the tension between builder and raider. In a world where so many shooters feel interchangeable, Meet Your Maker stands out as a bold, ambitious, and deeply engaging experience.

Final Verdict: 8.5/10 – A flawed but brilliant hybrid of creation and destruction, with the potential to become a modern classic.