Behaviour Interactive is the developer behind the hit 2016 title Dead by Daylight, where a single Killer chases four Survivors around pre-built maps as they try to escape. The developer has proven itself countless times with the introduction of interesting original horror characters as well as some of the most popular horror IPs in existence.
After playing over eight hundred hours in Dead by Daylight you might have some expectations when going into Meet Your Maker. It’s best to leave those at the door though and go in with an open mind. That being said, there is one major similarity to DBD and that’s the ability to choose which side of the game you prefer: defense as a builder or offense as a raider.
No matter which you choose, you’ll still have to try out the other early in the game to get your resources and start the first couple of bases. After that, it’s a matter of farming and spending your resources wisely to make raiding and defending easier.
Look both ways before dying anyway
At the start of the game, you’ll log in for the first time and be introduced to the Chimera and your four advisors. Each of these advisors will specialize in weapons, traps, guards, suits, or hardware (throwables). The entire base seems to be built around the Chimera though, a mysterious mutant that can’t leave a tube of liquid in the northwest corner of your base.
By interacting with the command center, you can either choose to raid a selection of 15 bases across three difficulties or build your own. Raiding bases are split into Normal, Dangerous, and Brutal difficulty modes with the game seemingly creating these labels automatically. Each category works as a pretty good marker of the general difficulty, with each tougher difficulty giving more rewards.
The gameplay as a raider basically involves you running through a base made by another player filled with traps and guards around every corner. All it takes is one hit from a trap or a guard to get killed and you’ll have to start over from the beginning. The idea is that you’ll get closer with each death, having remembered where the traps were previously.
While you do get better at detecting traps eventually, you’ll still likely die to the same ones repeatedly in the beginning when you’re getting used to the variety. It’s important you hit traps with your sword or break them, as they can sometimes drop resources even after they’ve fired. The grappling hook is one of the better parts of raiding and it can help you get to a variety of hard-to-reach areas.
While Dot Esports was only given one code, there was a co-op team that came through one of the bases and that seems like a much easier way to play. If only one character dies per trap, then the other can just revive them repeatedly. The owner still gets the credit for the death, but it makes it much easier to just go through the base in one go. It feels a little unbalanced, admittedly.
Bases get generally easier as you learn the standard way that most people will lay traps, although there will be surprises along the way. After a certain point, especially after you’ve built your own, you’ll come to respect bases that are built well, even if they completely demolished you. You have the option to give accolades to the bases you like, which works as a nice morale boost when you see it.
Sadism disguised as being creative
Before you ever start building your base, you’ll have to go through the tutorial bases and even a couple of user-made ones. These give you a good idea of what you can do while you earn enough resources to unlock your first Burial Site. Once you unlock it, the extractor will already have a path made that you can build around, but it’s more fun if you delete all the existing blocks and start over.
You start with enough building blocks to make something, whether it be freestyle or on the base that already exists. One of the bigger caveats is that you’ll have to build around an immovable objective and certain blocks can’t be deleted. There also has to be a clear path for your extractor from the starting area to the objective and back so it can lead the player if they get lost.
Within these parameters, you’re set free and can establish a decent base pretty quickly. After getting it set in place, you will need to set it to active and then leave the level. When you get back to your main base and start hearing death sounds from your command center, you’ll know that your base is claiming the lives of the raiders in it.
After a little while, replays will appear on the screen to your left, showing you the different ways that enemies have died in your base. The most satisfying part of the game is when you see someone fall for a trap or distraction exactly as you intended it. It’s so gratifying that it may change your opinion of the game completely. You have to be willing to get to this point, but then the whole game changes.
After seeing your own traps doing something successfully, you’ll learn to respect other players’ bases more. You can see the process of how it was built and you learn to appreciate the skill and thought into the elaborate maneuver that just eliminated you. It also encourages you to go back to your base and improve your existing traps and layout.
The building is probably the better part of the game, but this opinion will likely differ from person to person. It’s hard to describe the enjoyment you get from seeing other players fall from a holographic cube into the fiery laser block you’d placed below. You’ll likely need to continue to raid though because each base has a limited availability before it costs resources to re-activate.
Conclusion
Meet Your Maker is a pretty strong departure from the game that’s made Behaviour Interactive such a popular name in horror. It’s not even really a horror game in its current state, but a tug-of-war between the raiding and defensive game modes. There’s a fair amount of potential here and it will be exciting to see how many base options are included when the game launches on April 4. That will determine a lot in both quality and replayability.
Published: Feb 6, 2023 09:06 am