Meet Your Maker Review (Steam)

by Jim Smale · Published May 2, 2023 · Updated December 11, 2023

For this Meet Your Maker Review, we play a post-apocalyptic first-person building-and-raiding game where every level is designed by players. Play solo or with a friend as you mastermind devious maze-like Outposts full of traps and guards, then gear up for methodical fast-paced combat raiding other players’ creations. You are the Custodian of the Chimera, a living experiment created as a last resort to save life on Earth. Enter a tactical battle for the planet’s most coveted resource and the key to your Chimera’s evolution: pure Genetic Material. Construct and fortify brutal Outposts to extract and guard your Genmat. Infiltrate and outsmart other players’ Outposts to gather more. Adapt, upgrade, and evolve… or die trying.

Meet Your Maker Review Pros:

Decent graphics.
Download size.
Steam achievements.
Full controller support.
Graphics settings – brightness, motion blur, window mode, resolution, v-sync, auto set, field of view slider, graphics preset, shading, post-processing, view distance, effects, shadows, textures, environment details, ambient occlusion, screen-space reflections, volumetric fog quality, texture filtering quality, sharpening, and AMD FSR 2.
Co-op support for both raiding and building.
Controller settings – Invert axis and sensitivity sliders, vibration, peek controls, aim response curve type, deadzone sliders, stick layout, swap shoulder inputs, outer stick threshold sliders, aim assist, and 3 button presets for raiding and 3 for base building.
Mouse and keyboard settings – Invert axis and sensitivity sliders, peek controls, rebind controls, and buttons.
First-person survival shooter gameplay.
Opening the tutorial section then pop-ups as you play.
Cross-play support. (can be turned on and off)
Raids carry difficulty tags.
The goal of the game is to raid bases for resources, exp, and the core then escape.
One hit kills so it’s a tense nerve-wracking experience.
There
Is a bot (enemy harvester) that will go on a loop of going to the core and back to the entrance which helps you navigate the base.
After escaping you have to get back to the entrance or run into the open area.
Earn EXP and level up.
Uses resources to upgrade and buy weapons and items.
The main hub area (Sanctuary) is where you pick missions, hear stories, use the hardware advisor, guards advisor, suits advisor, traps advisor, and Weapons advisor, upgrade yourself, build your base, and watch replays of players in your base.
Advisors are a nice way of saying shops or vendors. Each one is for a specific part.
The game runs really well.
Handy friends list integration for inviting them in.
Codex and tutorial menus allow you to quickly read up on tips and controls.
Very addictive.
It feels like a new game every time you boot up a level.
Constant updates and refinements.
End of raid breakdowns.
Leave feedback and ratings on raids.
Guns fire on an arc mostly and ammo is sparse so you have to retrieve your bullets if you want more.
You have a grappling hook to help with traversal.
Enhancements can be earned and add buffs and passives, you can have 3 equipped at once.
When you collected the genmat the base goes into alert and this can trigger new defenses.
Proper feel-good gaming.
Earn EXP from playing, building, destroying defenses, and killing enemies.
Upgrade advisors to get cells that then unlock new equipment.
Play how you want.
The level selection has been changed to have world maps with an overall difficulty and bonuses attached. As you work your way through a world you can pick up bonuses and work your way through.
Resources you are after are – cells, parts, and synthite.
In the raid selection screen, you get told about rewards and exp.
Daily challenges with bonus rewards.
Boosts can be bought with in-game resources. They are things like increased exp or more material gathered for X amount of raids or time.
You can upgrade your suits and their abilities.
Fast loading times.
If you abandon a raid you keep all items and exp earned but lose all genmat.
If you are not getting on with a raid you can abandon it and a new random raid will take its place.
So much replay value.
It’s a game where you learn patterns and routes, you keep trying and never feel cheated.
Does a really good job of policing builds and raiding.
Outpost building requires you to buy burial sites on which to build.
Social raid – detailed search function for bases and builders.
Burial sites refresh daily and you can spend resources to speed it up.
A game that when you are not playing, you are thinking about it.
The outpost building tutorials pop up after you buy your first burial site.
All traps in a base can be modded and you unlock new mods as you play, some traps can have multiple mods.
Try raiding your own outpost option.
Enemies in your base can have augments added to them that work like mods for traps.
When placing enemies in a base you control them and set the route they take and how they behave.
Outpost-building tutorials give you bite-sized tasks so you learn everything in a more manageable way.
Each outpost requires a minimum number of traps and guards.
Outpots must meet all criteria markers before they can be uploaded and shared.
The harvester will always automatically find the shortest route to your core and back again. You never have to set it up or order it.
Blood or red paint is drawn on the floor to the core to make it easier to identify the route.
Every kills your outpost gets rewards you with genmat, parts, and synthite.
Outposts work without the game running and earn you genmat regardless of performance.
If your outpost gets enough kills and accolades then after it goes inactive (runs out of genmat) you can reactivate it and the outpost prestige.
Skull stones are what killed Raiders leave behind. You get loot, their name, and how and where they were killed from the skull stone.
Four outpost statuses – active, overdrive (you lose genmat when Raiders steal but earn more genmat with kills), inactive, and social (no rewards for Raiders or you).
The building does have a lot of handy functions like holding down the build button to do long lines in one go.
The game has since been updated with new traps, Weapons, and suits.
Tense atmosphere throughout.

Meet Your Maker Review Cons:

So much to take in.
Takes a while to get used to everything.
The difficulty is constantly up and down.
You don’t have an actual pause screen so gameplay never stops.
No graphics benchmark test.
Doesn’t offer a tutorial raid.
Cannot rebind controls.
Dealing with flying enemies is a real bitch.
Only four tags for level feedback.
The building menus are still fiddly and multi-layered.
You don’t get full building privileges like building in whatever you want.
The upload and sharing system doesn’t require you to be able to finish the raid beforehand.