Meet Your Maker Preview - Move Over Mario Maker

In decades past, map editors were a bullet point on the back of the box alongside a vestigial deathmatch mode and co-op. They were generally complicated, especially when utilizing a console's severely reduced number of controller buttons. Having lived through those experiences, it's amazing to see how player-focused map creation has become. Created by Dead by Daylight developers Behavior Interactive, Meet Your Maker offers an impressive building tool that feeds into endless first-person action. Whether I was constructing a maze to lure in unsuspecting players online or taking on the creations of others, my initial time with Meet Your Maker's open beta showcased a game with loads of potential.

Players take the role of a Custodian, a "living experiment" that sets out to find genetic material to fuel a tube-bound creature known as a Chimera. The proceeding lore dump feels rushed and unwieldy, but it barely factors into the proceedings once you get past the tutorial. All you need to know is that every fortress you encounter has a shiny red chunk of progression hidden inside, and you need to escape alive with it in your possession. How you do that depends on the level and its creator's whims. Some stages are stealth rounds with guards patrolling the pathway, others are brawls with traps and gunfire raging around you, and others are intricate mazes ready to ensnare anyone without a sense of direction.

No matter the theme of the deathtrap, your Custodian comes equipped with several options to fight back. The default options include a precise energy-enthused nail gun, a quick melee swing with a sword, and a grappling hook to navigate dangerous areas. Even if your character feels a bit plodding at default speed, the grappling hook and its ability to hang from walls once you land gives you a plethora of movement options. These will undoubtedly expand further in the main game as you conquer the endless dungeon buffet, but progress toward unlocks seems slow from the jump. I wish there were at least one or two additional weapons ready from the jump to break up the monotony and showcase how expansive the loadout system could be.

At least there is a lot of variety in the maps available at launch. However, it's hard to say how many of these levels are developer made and how many are from testers and other early players. Much like weapons and suit upgrades, Meet Your Maker locks templates for building out your base behind a currency you earn from clearing levels. This seems like a poor choice, especially for players who want to jump right into creating and don't care so much about clearing other people's stages. In a game like Super Mario Maker, the player base is split neatly into creators and players, but Meet Your Maker expects you to do both to maximize your progression and get to the good stuff faster. I hope that the level curation is top-notch since I forsee this system producing a lot of low-effort chaff from anyone who wants to min-max their upgrades.

For anyone interested in building out new levels, the interface of the map maker is top-notch. Taking many cues from Halo's Forge mode, it's easy to create whatever you want on a keyboard and mouse or controller setup. Geometry is laid out in giant cubes, and there are already quite a few options for different textures that could serve as gameplay hints or simple decorations. Traps stick to most surfaces with ease, and you can record AI paths for guards and other enemies to follow. Creating something engaging from this setup with undoubtedly take a lot of trial and error, but I got satisfaction even from my brief experimentation with the mode. 

While there are a lot of systems that only serve to get in your way, Meet Your Maker shines when you find a great challenge that you desperately want to overcome. In some stages, I felt like I was a speedrunner perfecting their run through an old favorite. I inched closer and closer to the finish with every death, memorizing trap placement and developing new ways to zip around bad guys before slashing them to death. It's an enthralling feeling to be sure, and I can see that base serve as a jumping-off point for a game that could be spectacular after a few updates.

The base of Meet Your Maker really speaks to me as a fan of Mario Maker and other games that through infinite challenges at you one after the other. Plenty of games do this through procedural generation, but it's hard to top experiences crafted by human hands, and Behavior Interactive has provided the tools to create quite a few exciting gauntlets. Whether Meet Your Maker truly stands the test of time depends on whether the developers can provide creators with new tools to upgrade their works and players with new tools of destruction. For now, it's a promising idea, and it's well worth taking for a spin while the beta is still open and waiting.

TechRaptor previewed Meet Your Maker on PC via Steam with a copy provided by the developer. It will be launching for PC on April 4, 2023. An Open Beta for the game is available on Steam from now until February 13.