Meet Your Maker is an incredibly interesting concept for a game that I think is not very fun single player, but is genuinely a really good time with a buddy.
The objective of the game is to make it through dungeons, crafted by other players, that are filled with traps and monsters trying to kill you in the trickiest ways possible. Everything in these dungeons kills you in one hit, and when you die, you go straight back to the beginning. They’re like mini rogue-likes. You keep any materials and XP you gained along the way but you’ll have to perform a flawless run of the dungeon if you want to successfully make it out. But that is only half of the game. As a dungeon creator, you want to kill the people attempting your dungeon because the more kills you get, the more resources you win from your victims. So you are quite literally incentivized to make your dungeons as cruel and punishing as possible.
Playing through these dungeons in single player can be a stressful experience. You can make it through the whole dungeon, steal your prize, then die to some tricksy trap at the end of the level, and have to do it all again. My first hour with this game was all solo, and I honestly almost quit because I was not having any fun, but then I played with a friend. Playing multiplayer, you can revive each other which completely changes the game. It’s no longer a cruel test to see if you can flawlessly complete a dungeon in one go. It’s a game of working together to try to puzzle your way through this dungeon, laughing when you make a mistake because your buddy can revive you. Even if you both die, having to try it again with a friend just feels less bad because you’re tackling a problem together. Somehow I went from wanting to delete the game from my PS5 to wanting to play it every day with my friend so I could unlock more gear to make my character better, or unlock more traps to make my dungeons more brutal. I looked forward to logging on every day and seeing how many victims I took in my dungeons watching the replays of people attempting my dungeon to see how effective certain elements I designed were. I’d take those lessons from the replays or the lessons I learned from trying some particularly challenging dungeons, and apply those to my own to see how well it worked. It was a satisfying game loop.
While I enjoyed unlocking weapons, suit upgrades, and gear for my character, the actual selection of what you can unlock is extremely limiting. There are 2 suits, 2 ranged weapons, 2 melee weapons, and a handful of equipment. That’s it. And the only way of getting fun character skins to customize your outfit is by paying extra for it. There are zero cosmetic options built into the game. It’s a pretty big bummer. Speaking of cosmetics, the tilesets you have to choose from for your dungeon are limited to red, brown, gray, or anything else that looks like stone and dirty metal. It’s an extremely dull aesthetic. I get that they’re going for a certain kind of gritty vibe, but it’s a very unappealing game to look at.
The problem with the dungeon-maker half of the game, is that every dungeon you make is on a timer that must be refreshed every day to keep your dungeon active. And after refreshing (prestiging) your dungeon 10 times, that dungeon is done forever and cannot be reopened. If that sounds insane, that’s because it is. I understand why they did this - it ensures that the community is constantly engaging with the dungeon-maker tools to keep things fresh. And it ensures that the pool of available dungeons is small so that your creations will get featured enough in a 12-24 hour window to get enough raiders and to net you enough points so you can prestige it. However, this entire system comes crumbling down the second the player base begins to wane. Any time a player stops playing, their maps are lost to oblivion forever, which means the life of this game is on a ticking clock that is completely reliant on the size of its active player base and how well the devs can keep them incentivized to keep coming back. And with such a limited selection of things to unlock, no cosmetics, and not a lot of variation beyond what I’ve described, I worry that this system the devs created just sets their own game up to fail and become irrelevant in months.
Despite the drab visuals, lack of content, and perplexingly short-sighted dungeon refresh system, I think the core of what’s in this game is neat. The gameplay loop of dungeon crawling so that you can earn things to upgrade your character and improve your dungeons is extremely satisfying. Meet Your Maker is a fun game worth checking out, especially if you have a friend to tackle the dungeons with.
+ Great core gameplay loop
+ Beating player-made dungeons is fun
+ Great co-op
+ Dungeon creator is great with included tools to see which parts are more effective than others
- Short-sighted dungeon refresh system
- Drab, boring visuals
- Limited selection of things to unlock
- Feels a bit like an early-access game
The objective of the game is to make it through dungeons, crafted by other players, that are filled with traps and monsters trying to kill you in the trickiest ways possible. Everything in these dungeons kills you in one hit, and when you die, you go straight back to the beginning. They’re like mini rogue-likes. You keep any materials and XP you gained along the way but you’ll have to perform a flawless run of the dungeon if you want to successfully make it out. But that is only half of the game. As a dungeon creator, you want to kill the people attempting your dungeon because the more kills you get, the more resources you win from your victims. So you are quite literally incentivized to make your dungeons as cruel and punishing as possible.
Playing through these dungeons in single player can be a stressful experience. You can make it through the whole dungeon, steal your prize, then die to some tricksy trap at the end of the level, and have to do it all again. My first hour with this game was all solo, and I honestly almost quit because I was not having any fun, but then I played with a friend. Playing multiplayer, you can revive each other which completely changes the game. It’s no longer a cruel test to see if you can flawlessly complete a dungeon in one go. It’s a game of working together to try to puzzle your way through this dungeon, laughing when you make a mistake because your buddy can revive you. Even if you both die, having to try it again with a friend just feels less bad because you’re tackling a problem together. Somehow I went from wanting to delete the game from my PS5 to wanting to play it every day with my friend so I could unlock more gear to make my character better, or unlock more traps to make my dungeons more brutal. I looked forward to logging on every day and seeing how many victims I took in my dungeons watching the replays of people attempting my dungeon to see how effective certain elements I designed were. I’d take those lessons from the replays or the lessons I learned from trying some particularly challenging dungeons, and apply those to my own to see how well it worked. It was a satisfying game loop.
While I enjoyed unlocking weapons, suit upgrades, and gear for my character, the actual selection of what you can unlock is extremely limiting. There are 2 suits, 2 ranged weapons, 2 melee weapons, and a handful of equipment. That’s it. And the only way of getting fun character skins to customize your outfit is by paying extra for it. There are zero cosmetic options built into the game. It’s a pretty big bummer. Speaking of cosmetics, the tilesets you have to choose from for your dungeon are limited to red, brown, gray, or anything else that looks like stone and dirty metal. It’s an extremely dull aesthetic. I get that they’re going for a certain kind of gritty vibe, but it’s a very unappealing game to look at.
The problem with the dungeon-maker half of the game, is that every dungeon you make is on a timer that must be refreshed every day to keep your dungeon active. And after refreshing (prestiging) your dungeon 10 times, that dungeon is done forever and cannot be reopened. If that sounds insane, that’s because it is. I understand why they did this - it ensures that the community is constantly engaging with the dungeon-maker tools to keep things fresh. And it ensures that the pool of available dungeons is small so that your creations will get featured enough in a 12-24 hour window to get enough raiders and to net you enough points so you can prestige it. However, this entire system comes crumbling down the second the player base begins to wane. Any time a player stops playing, their maps are lost to oblivion forever, which means the life of this game is on a ticking clock that is completely reliant on the size of its active player base and how well the devs can keep them incentivized to keep coming back. And with such a limited selection of things to unlock, no cosmetics, and not a lot of variation beyond what I’ve described, I worry that this system the devs created just sets their own game up to fail and become irrelevant in months.
Despite the drab visuals, lack of content, and perplexingly short-sighted dungeon refresh system, I think the core of what’s in this game is neat. The gameplay loop of dungeon crawling so that you can earn things to upgrade your character and improve your dungeons is extremely satisfying. Meet Your Maker is a fun game worth checking out, especially if you have a friend to tackle the dungeons with.
+ Great core gameplay loop
+ Beating player-made dungeons is fun
+ Great co-op
+ Dungeon creator is great with included tools to see which parts are more effective than others
- Short-sighted dungeon refresh system
- Drab, boring visuals
- Limited selection of things to unlock
- Feels a bit like an early-access game