There”s never been a shooter like this: Meet Your Maker, from the studio behind Dead by Daylight, mixes base-building, looting and leveling into the action.
1999 was one of the best years for multiplayer shooters. With Quake 3 and Unreal Tournament, two real milestones were released almost simultaneously, and as a twelve-year-old without an Internet connection I sank hundreds of hours into bot matches.
But the same year also saw the release of a shooter that most people have probably long forgotten: Wheel of Time, which was based on the first Unreal Engine and the popular books by Robert Jordan. I still can”t get this game out of my head. Not because of its exciting story or because it played like Quake with spells – but because of its unique multiplayer principle.
The Citadel mode was actually a classic capture-the-flag mode, but it had an incredibly cool unique selling point: before the start of each round, you could equip your base with deadly traps and guards. How ingenious is that, please?
Over 20 years later, Behaviour Interactive, the makers of the popular Steam perennial hit Dead by Daylight, have now announced a new shooter called Meet Your Maker that might finally fulfil that very dream for me!
Table of Contents
Complex base building as the main task.
As you might have guessed from this introduction, Meet Your Maker is all about base-building: You have a huge selection of different blocks in all kinds of shapes at your disposal to build your post-apocalyptic outpost according to your wishes.
The goal is to make the centre of your base as hard to reach as possible, as other players will want to reach it to steal important resources from you – more on that later.
Attack and defence are asynchronous: So when other people enter your End Times dungeon, you are not there (and vice versa). You only defend yourself by building cleverly. Meet Your Maker is therefore a PvP game without direct enemy contact! The brand new Reveal Trailer demonstrates the game principle with first gameplay scenes:
How the traps work
To prevent strangers from retrieving your treasure, you can – just like back in Wheel of Time – freely place countless different traps and guards in your base.
We watched the developers building a very early version of the game live during a presentation and were able to see several different traps in action. Among them:
- Flamethrower traps that try to roast you at regular intervals.
- Grenades raining from the ceiling
- Acid and plasma walls that you should not touch
- Glowing metal pistons that crush and burn you
- Classic Indiana Jones-style arrow traps
Because you build your base completely from scratch, you can also use this to your tactical advantage. For example, the developers have shown how you can hide traps by cleverly placing blocks to catch the invaders off guard.
Even through the visual design of the base – there are countless colours, decorations and other visual customisation options – you should be able to draw the attention of the invaders and thus confuse them.
This is how the guards work
The second important element for the successful defence of your outpost are the guards: we could only identify four different ones, but each of these defenders has its own speciality.
- The thickly armoured Warmonger is a tank that can take two hits.
- The two ranged fighters can be positioned on platforms high in space, for example.
- The flying Hornets are ideal for surprise attacks.
The real excitement of these guards comes from the fact that you can programme them. So it”s possible to configure a flying Hornet so that they initially wait undetected on the roof of your base. As soon as the attacker has reached a certain point, the guard then flies off and falls in his back. It is already clear that the tactical possibilities are almost unlimited!
Once you are satisfied with your death maze, you can of course try it out yourself and check whether everything really works as you planned. But the more important analysis tool will be the replays. You can watch every single attack of a player again – either from the eyes of the attacker or from a free perspective – to discover possible weak points in your defence.
Alternatively, you can switch to Heatmap mode, which not only lets you see all of your invaders” death spots at once, but also lets you collect some loot in the form of resources for each successful kill.
You also need brains for the raids
In addition, you will of course have to attack other bases yourself (optionally also in co-op) in order to steal so-called genetic material from the death forts of other players. An overview map always shows you a handful of possible targets, which vary in size, difficulty and possible rewards.
You have various weapons at your disposal for your raids, your loadout always includes a melee weapon and a special weapon. In the developer presentation we were able to spy the following:
- A harpoon gun that disintegrates enemies and traps at a distance, but only has three rounds of ammunition.
- A crossbow with 15 bolts, but only works against guards.
- A shield generator that makes you invulnerable for a short time
In addition, you can buy consumable items such as grenades or portable barriers before each attack
You have three attempts per raid: If you don”t manage to get the material and leave the base alive within these attempts, the attack is considered a failure. By the way, you don”t need any blatant shooter skills to be successful here. What counts is a methodical approach, learning from your deaths and developing a new strategy with each attempt.
What remains unclear
How motivating the whole thing will be in the end remains to be seen: Of course I”m very happy that I”ll soon be able to dowel together huge death traps and watch other players hopefully cut their teeth on them. But I”m also sure that building them will be a lot more fun than attacking other outposts.
Just like Dead by Daylight, Meet Your Maker is supposed to be a highly competitive game in which everything ultimately revolves around climbing the rankings. Will I get anywhere there if I only want to attack someone occasionally? What if everyone else is like me and all they want to do is build?
Creative Director Ash Parnell was also unable to answer my question as to when a raid is considered a victory or defeat for attackers and defenders. Sure, if someone loots my base without dying, that will be a defeat for me. But what if he”s bitten the dust twice in the process?
But it”s still a while until release anyway, Meet Your Maker is scheduled for release in 2023 for PC, PS4/PS5 and Xbox One/Series X|S So there”s still plenty of time to work out details like that.
If you want to help out or just play it yourself: You can now register on the official website (for the closed beta), which will start on 23 August. Maybe I”ll soon be able to welcome one or two of you to my base of death, hähä.
Editor”s verdict
As a big fan of Dead by Daylight, I naturally pricked up my ears when Behaviour announced a real new game again after years – and I wasn”t disappointed!
I find the gameplay incredibly exciting, especially with the numerous building options I”m guaranteed to spend dozens of hours until I finally build the deadly base of my dreams and watch other players die.
However, it remains to be seen how much fun it ultimately is to go on a loot hunt myself – and how long the idea can keep me hooked. The developers have promised to deliver new traps, guards, weapons etc. on a regular basis. It is not yet known whether new game modes will also be included. In any case, I”m curious to see how Meet Your Maker will fare in the long run.
