It is time for something a little bit different and that different is a game called Meet Your Maker.
Developed and published by Behaviour Interactive, Meet Your Maker is set in a post apocalyptic world, and the story is utterly bonkers. I’ll cover that in depth, but this is a hard game to describe. Hopefully I’ll be able to do enough to explain what it is and why you should play it. Strap on your best Mad Max style pants, we’re going in!
I want to start by taking a look at the story. And yes, it is bonkers. We play as the Custodian of the Chimera, a grotesque looking creature that floats in a tank. The Chimera was apparently created as a last ditch attempt to save life on Earth, and it can only do this by gathering pure Genetic Material, or GenMat. But being stuck in a tank, it obviously can’t go a-gathering, and so it falls to us. The story is pretty sparse, to be honest – get GenMat, make the Chimera stronger, and then profit. But from there it all boils down to where we get this GenMat from. Well, there are two sources, and this is mirrored in the gameplay, which is very much a thing of two halves.
The first way to get GenMat is to extract it from the ground, and as you go through the story, you can build an outpost to ensure you get a steady supply of GenMat. The second way to get the stuff of life is to raid the outposts of others, stealing theirs – but this is not an easy option. We’ll have a look at both methods separately.
First off, raiding other outposts. Now, the thing to know about Meet Your Maker is that every outpost you try to raid has been constructed by a real life human player, and if there is anything sneakier than a real life human, I’m yet to meet it. You see, it isn’t quite as simple as waltzing in, grabbing the GenMat and leaving with a cheery tip of the hat, oh no. What these other players do is fill their outposts to the brim with traps, guards, and even guards on traps in an attempt to make you dead and their GenMat safe. The tension is absolutely palpable as you sneak through an enemy outpost, looking for where the GenMat receptacle is. There is a kind of transporter that you can follow that will lead you to the GenMat via the shortest route, but I’ve noticed a surprising number of builders kill the transporter straight off the bat, so you are guideless.
Sneaking around an outpost, with barely any ammo is a proper edge-of-the-seat experience. Don’t worry about your health, as at the outset any single hit will kill you, no matter what from. Be it a guard shooting at you, a hulking Warmonger rushing and battering you, or even a flamethrower trap, or a spike trap, or a… You get the picture. Sneaking around, with you head constantly on a swivel means that by the time you reach your goal, you are just itching to get out and extract, but hold your horses there – usually the builders have a second wave of traps that activate once you have grabbed the goodies, so now you have to take in the same process all the way back out.
Luckily, as you go and fight the guards and smash the traps you do get a little crumb of comfort, as the traps and guards drop other materials that you can use to upgrade your own stuff. Even more luckily, you can take a second player along on the raids, and this does offer a tiny bit more hope, as you can be revived if you are downed by a baddie. Twice the firepower never hurts either.
On the other side of the Meet Your Maker coin are your own outposts; when it is your turn to make one, you’ll want to fill these with your own devious traps. The path that the transporter will take to the GenMat is included in the map, and must be kept free – you can’t put the Outpost live if there isn’t a clear path to the GenMat. Other than that though, and assuming you meet the minimum level of defences (which you will want to, believe me) the sky is very much the limit to how your strategic calls ans tactical plans work out.
Basically, you’ll be found sticking traps where you like, modding the traps and even the guards by researching them with the various NPCs in your Sanctuary (the kind of hub where you decide what you are going to do next, and where the Chimera “lives”). Researching costs the materials that you pick up in raids, and so there is a pleasing circular economy built into the game. The other NPCs allow you to upgrade the weapons and suits you wear on raids, as well as allowing you to upgrade yourself with perks to ensure you can properly deal with the challenges in front of you. There are no shortage of things to unlock in Meet Your Maker.
And when players die in your outpost, you can watch a replay to see where your defences are weak, running in to grab the resources the dead leave behind. The whole game is very much Yin and Yang in perfect balance.
Presentation? Well, Meet Your Maker looks like a post apocalyptic game; all shades of rust and desert, but the graphics work well. The building interface is simple to understand, and you can build walls and other structures if you so desire, whilst placing traps and guards is a surprisingly tough challenge. The raiding side of things is again very good, played out from a first person perspective, constantly tense. And the audio is on point, with good voice acting and the shouts and shrieks of the guards as you go raiding often your only warning that you have been spotted. Well, that and a red edge to the direction that the danger is coming from! Usually just too late to do anything about it though…
Meet Your Maker will quite possibly exceed your expectations. You may find it delivers a rough start, as you are hand held through the basics and then abandoned, but stick with it and something a bit special comes from repeated plays – beating an outpost after multiple failed attempts always feels a bit good.
