Meet Your Maker Review

In the far-off future, on a planet that may or may not be Earth, civilisation’s worst nightmare has been fully realised. Humanity has, for all intents and purposes, ceased to exist in any meaningful capacity and the once-beautiful natural vistas of our home amongst the stars has been replaced with barren, seemingly never-ending deserts. The most coveted substance one can now possess is the sweet nectar of life – pure genetic material or GenMat. Whoever controls the genes controls the fate and future prospects of the species’ revival in Meet Your Maker.

It’s up to you to defend your GenMat from any gene-hungry Raiders by placing it within an intricately constructed death-box or Outpost, filled to the brim with traps and monstrous guards, while heading out into the wasteland in an attempt to secure more gene juice for yourself.

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That’s one hell of an introductory setup for Meet Your Maker, the latest offering from the lovely folks over at Behaviour Interactive, primarily known for bringing us the 2016 serial killer escape simulator, Dead by Daylight. You’re likely going to be rather confused and overwhelmed for the first 15 or so minutes after stepping into your role as a genetic Custodian, your first objective delivered to you courtesy of a strange tank-bound alien lifeform known simply as the Chimera.

After unquestioningly obeying the being’s request to pull the switch powering your Sanctuary, a home base of sorts, the previously detailed plot is explained to you. There are some sinister undertones to the Chimera’s words and its insistence on needing as much GenMat as possible to facilitate a total population rebirth but you don’t need to worry about that right now.

From here on out, the gameplay loop is simple and addictive. Raid enemy Outposts, steal their GenMat, return to your private Sanctuary and feed the Chimera. Every Outpost in the game is created by another player and has two primary zones of interest – the GenMat site and the genetic drop-off point situated right outside the entrance. A box-carrying creature known as a Harvester continuously walks back and forth between these two areas, serving as your unwitting guide to where you’ll need to go in order to find the genetic goodies you’re so desperately seeking.

Depending on the structure of the Outpost, the placement of traps and guards and the sadistic nature of its creator, GenMat retrieval can be a truly perilous exercise or a walk in the park. Regardless of the difficulty, you’re almost always going to have a good time making your way to the extraction target. You even have the ability to bring a friend along for the ride through co-op, although cross-platform functionality is, unfortunately, absent right now.

With GenMat in hand, you might be under the impression that the worst is behind you and you’re free to merrily skip your way back to the entrance. Second wave trap activations are here to mess up your escape plan in a big way. The second you grab that GenMat, previously invisible hazards pop into existence, potentially killing you before you can even register the environmental shift. A suspiciously empty room can suddenly become filled with flamethrowers or the entrance corridor could sprout a series of spike traps, skewering your body just as you think you’re in the clear. It’s this constant sense of paranoia and hyper-cautionary behaviour that makes Outpost exploration so fun and heart-poundingly exhilarating.

Of course, not every single structure will be a masterpiece or even competently arranged. Some Outposts are essentially just small rectangles stuffed with the cheapest trap and guard placement imaginable. If you’re lucky, the builder may have forgotten to close up a small hole in the back or ceiling – offering you another way to gain entrance when dealing with exceedingly overkill setups. After your getaway, you’re given the opportunity to praise the creator of the Outpost by selecting from a series of phrases: fun, ingenious, artistic and brutal.

Back at your Sanctuary, the materials gathered from successful raids and trap destruction (Synthite and Parts) can be spent through one of your Advisors seated around the base who serve as vendors and upgrade stations. Items on offer include weapon and suit upgrades or optional improvements to your personal collection of traps to use in your own Outpost construction projects.

Every enemy Outpost on the raid map contains a specific type of GenMat, each corresponding to one of your Advisors. Whenever enough of one type of GenMat is collected and processed into your chosen Advisor, their timed passive boost’s duration is increased and the Chimera’s evolutionary progress bar moves up a notch. These Advisory boosts can be activated before raiding and range from displaying all traps and guards in an Outpost to increasing the amount of obtained genetic material. After reaching specific processing milestones, the Chimera will award you a sizeable number of additional resources, including Cells. This third form of currency, like Synthite and Parts, is spent on purchases and upgrades.

After completing your first few raiding trips, the ability to obtain your own piece of real estate pops up. All purchasable Outposts carry varying capacity limitations to ensure that some creative tethers are in place and are comprised of dozens of connected blocks. All building materials consume a set amount of site capacity when placed, including whenever traps are set to “second wave” only. Guards also consume resources and can be designated a unique patrol path if you’re not entirely keen on having them stand dead-still, waiting for a prospective Raider to turn the corner and stumble into danger.

If you need creative inspiration, recall the many untimely deaths you’ve experienced throughout your raiding excursions at the hands of intelligently placed traps or drag a more artistically inclined friend along with you onto the build site. It’s nice to see that the development team took into account that the demand for co-op gameplay would extend past the obvious Raid system, adding multiplayer to the more creative side of the title as well. Your only design limitations when finalising your Outposts are a safe and consistent path for your Harvester to pick up and bring materials back to the entrance and ensuring your gene generator is not obstructed in any way. After all, people have to actually be able to complete your map.

Whether you’re in-game or out there in the real world folding laundry and going about your daily grind, your Outpost generates a steady supply of GenMat and sends it all the way home to your cosy Sanctuary. There is a finite amount of extractable resources on each plot of land, and when all materials are exhausted your Outpost and supply chain shuts down. If your hard work paid off and the required amount of kills and praise are thrown your way, you’re able to breathe new life into your now defunct and lifeless site by reactivating it.

Thus, the circle of ceaseless death and gene harvesting continues all over again. My favourite part of possessing your own personalised Outpost, without question, is the ability to grab a cup of coffee and sit through all the replays of Raiders who dared plumb the depths of your nefarious creations. Not only can you observe where other players met their grisly ends and their magnificent grappling hook techniques, you can also travel back to your Outpost and loot materials dropped at their death points from landmarks known as Skull Stones.

As the game stands right now, the cycle of raiding, upgrading and contributing to the future of the Chimera Project is all Meet Your Maker has to offer. This is in no way a criticism or a complaint of a lack of content, although it likely won’t take you too long to max out a decent number of items or Outpost defences if you play it with any amount of serious dedication. Meet Your Maker is exactly what it says it is and achieves everything it sets out to accomplish without bloating its mechanics with unnecessary extra fluff or pointless side-tracking.

If you’re expecting a rich story with scores of deep lore to dive into and mull over, you’re going to be very disappointed. As far as I can tell, the only exposition sources within Meet Your Maker come from the opening cutscene and short bursts of dialogue from the Chimera as well as your Advisory team.

There are subtle hints at the existence of something deeper than what’s presented on the surface level, but it never comes together to feel fully coherent or worth paying too much attention to. Having said that, give the team a few more months of live service updates and I wouldn’t be surprised to see more of an emphasis on the plot or at least more overt storytelling elements.

Thankfully I never encountered anything too out of the ordinary or buggy in the time I spent playing on the PS5. Most of my focus went into the raiding half of the game, only switching to building an Outpost when I felt a tad burnt out from straining my eyes for any ceiling traps tucked away behind cleverly placed corridor blocks or I just wanted to relax. The aiming controls did initially feel rather inconsistently responsive, which I was able to fix for the most part by messing around with the controller deadzone settings. If you’re having a similar issue, give that a try.

Meet Your Maker is a title that sucked me in like few others could, honestly surpassing any expectations I had after hearing the premise or viewing the trailer. It’s one of those experiences that you can spend half a day within without feeling the time melt away, made even sweeter with the optional co-op. There’s a little bit of something for everyone lured in by the promises of the Chimera – the first-person shooter elements of raiding harmoniously co-exist alongside the more open sandbox Outpost creation features. Meet Your Maker can only improve as time goes on, with more upgrades, items, gimmicks and building options no doubt squarely at the forefront of Behaviour Interactive’s road map.

Meet Your Maker is available on PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S and PC as well as PlayStation Plus. You can purchase a PlayStation Plus Essential 12-month subscription for R749 here. Reviewed by Ryan Pretorius.