Meet Your Maker Beta Review: Unique, Strange & Tons Of Fun

Meet Your Maker is a strange game. It is set in a weird post-apocalypse a la Mad Max, full of disturbing alien creatures, human sacrifices and torturous design. The gameplay loop between raiding other players' outposts and building your own ones is weird as well, but in a unique, intriguing and ultimately very rewarding way.

While it can take a bit to fully get into the game, once you do, it's truly a joy to behold. We had a fantastic time with Meet Your Maker during the open beta, which you can download here and play until February 14. Here's why you should play it right now.

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Meet Your Maker Open Beta Review – Raiders of the Lost GenMat

The raiding is what you will first do for a bit when you start Meet Your Maker. The idea is pretty simple: other players have built outposts, containing genetic material, or GenMat, which you need to find and bring back to your base. The outposts can range from tiny houses to giant complexes, full of traps, enemy guards and tricky design.

The first-person action gameplay part of the game is fun and fast-paced. The weapons, of which there were unfortunately only a handful in the beta, feel great and look cool as hell, thanks to the game's typical weirdo sci-fi design. It's not quite the same thing, but the game did remind us of the recent DOOM games.

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It's not quite as full-on, as you usually only deal with a few enemies or traps (which you can destroy with your guns) at a time, but the grimy look and fast tempo reminded us more than once of Id Software and their recent slate of games. Oh, and full love for the great and fluid movement. There's a grappling hook. what's not to love?

The raiding part of Meet Your Maker is really fun. Seeing, what other players could come up with and making your way through these levels was always entertaining and engaging during our time with the beta.

Meet Your Maker Open Beta Review – Minecraft + Mario Maker = Profit

The building part of the game is what really gives it its ultimate unique spin. In Mario Maker style, you make the levels which are played in the game. A selection of raids, which the game curates for you, is available in your home base. These are ordered by difficulty, with the easiest bunch usually being very quick and without too much danger, and the harder levels offering a real challenge. You can also directly select the levels your friends made. Like I said, strong Mario Maker vibes. Just with a lot more dirt and blood attached to everything.

Completing raids earns you resources, which you can use to upgrade your gear or unlock new items. You can make your own outpost after gathering enough resources to buy a slot for your new creation. The vibes of the building are comparable to Minecraft creative mode: you can fly around, place blocks at your will, there's beautiful music playing. It's immediately fun.

But it's also a little overwhelming at first. There's a lot you can do, between changing shapes, a different array of controls, recording guard movements and more. Once you get into it, it's a ton of fun to build beautiful, messed up and dangerous gauntlets for your fellow players though.

And the whole experience is massively enhanced by the co-op mode. During our time with the beta, we had some technical issues, but the game is really elevated by going through the raids with a buddy or cooking up the next ingenious death trap together.

Overall, Meet Your Maker is a ton of fun. It might take players a little bit of getting used to the unique spin of the game and the really strange world. But once you're into it, a whole world of fun presents itself to you. We're really excited for the full game and can't wait to see what kind of amazing things the community will be able to create.