With its market launch in spring 2023 Meet your maker is officially handing over the keys to its post-apocalyptic wasteland to players around the world.
If the title is new to you, Meet your maker is a building and raiding game powered entirely by user-generated content. Rather than designing a standard FPS experience, Behavior Interactive offers a devious toolbox of blocks, traps, guards and more, inviting players to create their own experiences and challenge one another.
Challenges come in the form of standalone levels called Outposts that you will both build and invade. These vast labyrinthine fortresses hide deadly deterrents around every corner. They also house canisters of pure genetic material that you must protect or steal to advance in the game.
Meet your makerThe builder/raider dynamic of is unique, and today we’re going to explore some of the ways it offers players uniquely connected moments.
Fair play
For any strategic multiplayer game – even an asynchronous one like Meet your maker – Fairness is paramount. From outpost selection to gameplay, the team made sure to cover their bases.
“Often, user-generated content (UGC) games bring their content to the fore by focusing on the crème de la crème, perhaps through a rating system,” explains creative director Ash Pannell. “Meet Your Maker differs from this approach by ensuring that every outpost built is looted by other players, which is much more rewarding for our builders.”
While a first-person perspective might be a natural fan favorite for shooters, it was also key to keeping gameplay at the same level. “The FPS view for both buildings and raids suited us well,” Pannell continues. “For one thing, the claustrophobic view offers a great sense of immersion. There is also a core rule: traps in the game cannot fire at a player without first seeing them and giving them time to react. This adds an inherent fairness to each death and leaves no room for ambiguity, which in turn helps raiders learn and not make the same mistakes twice.”
stay connected
Sharing an outpost in Meet your maker means millions around the world can interact with your content. That’s a powerful prospect, and the game ensures that a constant connection between creators and challengers can be felt even when they’re not online at the same time.
“It’s very important for us to keep reminding builders and raiders that they’re both UGC on the other side,” says Pannell. Raiders choose outposts from a world map that marks each builder’s name. After a raid, the raider is also encouraged to leave commendations for the outpost, choosing words of appreciation that describe their experience for future challengers.
On the builders side, similar social features also offer a nice educational bonus. “With our replay system, you can watch a raider attack your outpost and take delight in their failure – or bang your fist on the desk when they make it through. This is real iteration of real people, and it really shows,” says Pannell. “There really is nothing quite like watching a player fall for a clever setup you built, or coming back to see a player who took thirty or forty tries to crack your outpost.”
The Meet Your Maker skull system also allows builders to return to their outpost to gather resources from skull tokens that raiders have died from. Each skull features the raider’s name, rank, and what killed them.
“We also have a Social Raids feature where every outpost is searchable and playable,” he continues. “Find a player name you know and access all available content at any time. This allows players to share content directly with friends, forums or their communities. Social Raids don’t offer direct in-game rewards, but they do offer replays and the chance for outposts to stay alive forever.”
While Meet Your Maker is primarily an asynchronous multiplayer mode, classic co-op is also always available. Players can combine their creativity and build with a friend, or team up to raid as a team of two.
constant development
A big part of the builder/raider relationship is getting the other side to evolve. No outpost in Meet Your Maker is ever final, and builders can always return to amplify and re-share their creations, taking advantage of the influx of new traps, guardians, mods, and themed block types that are added to the game on a regular basis.
“Sometimes things don’t go according to plan, and getting back to work on your masterpiece is an important part of gameplay,” Pannell points out. “The Replay and Skull systems allow you to analyze every single detail of your design to understand what works and what doesn’t. Then you can come back in, learn from your mistakes and make a better outpost.”
“Outposts stay online for quite a while and have their own progression system that can extend their lifespan,” he concludes. “There will be many raids on your creation, and it was important to us to give everyone the freedom to improve. At the end of the day, when players make better content, whatever that means to them, everyone wins.”
Meet your maker will be available on April 4, 2023 on Xbox One and Xbox Series X|S. Learn more at MeetYourMakerGame.com.
