Meet Your Maker is a new Steampunk survival and building game currently in development by Behaviour Interactive. In Meet Your Maker, players take on the role of a Custodian–a roaming nomad on a decimated planet. Your goal? Care for the Chimera, an experiment meant to save the world from devastation.
At its core, Meet Your Maker is a build-and-raid game focused on creating giant structures containing complex puzzles and hazardous traps for other players to overcome called “Outposts.” These Outposts can be constructed in a variety of ways, the end result of which is only limited by players’ imaginations.
Meet Your Maker Interview
Last week, we spoke with Nicolas Lefebvre, the Brand Director for Meet Your Maker, about the new and unique game set to release sometime in 2023.
Gamer Digest: What inspired the unique concept of Meet Your Maker?
Nicolas Lefebvre [NL]: At Behaviour, we want to create games that don’t fit in a mold to stand out in a crowded market. Our angle is to create alternate multiplayer experiences that offer surprising gameplay moments. Over the years, we built many prototypes focusing on providing unique gameplay loops. Meet Your Maker came out of this desire to make a mature first-person asynchronous game driven by user-generated content that connects players via levels called Outposts.
We loved the idea that every level is built by a player, for other players. The social aspect and entertainment value come from the fact that there is a player behind every Outpost.
To ensure the game would be both creative and strategic, and thus infinitely replayable, we decided to offer a deep building and raiding toolbox that can be further expanded upon in the long run. Therefore, for builders, every trap and guard can be customized with mods and augments, and for raiders, every weapon in the arsenal enables loadout and playstyle customization. All in all, in Meet Your Maker, we wanted to offer a sandbox to players and offer the tools for them to create, share, overcome and progress in its world.
GD: How many people are working on Meet Your Maker? Do any of the developers come from other Behaviour games?
NL: The Meet Your Maker team is a bit over 100 people if you count all the cross-functional teams working on the game (marketing, player insights, player experience, etc.). The core team is around 85 developers from various backgrounds, including Dead by Daylight, Deathgarden, and other internal projects. Behaviour has grown a lot over the last couple of years, so we recruited a lot of external talents.
GD: What platforms do you plan on developing Meet Your Maker for?
NL: Meet Your Maker is planned to launch in 2023 and will be a multiplatform launch on PC, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X|S.
GD: Do you plan on making Meet Your Maker crossplay or cross-progression? How about in the future?
NL: At launch, the game will be ‘cross-content,’ meaning that every player-built Outpost will be available on every platform. For example, you can raid an Outpost built by an Xbox player on your PC. We don’t have plans to support crossplay nor cross-progression at launch.
GD: What is the next stage for Meet Your Maker? Will there be another closed playtest? Will there be early access?
NL: Great question! As mentioned above, we are planning a full multiplatform launch in 2023, so the game will not enter an ‘early access’ period prior. Now, this does not mean we will not host another dedicated playtest prior to the full launch.
It’s too soon to confirm anything as we are still assessing the feedback gathered from the recent Closed Playtest and finessing the roadmap leading to launch.
GD: What is the team most focused on improving for the early access/official open launch of the game?
NL: Oh! You want the full list. The core gameplay raid-build loop and mechanics are quite advanced. We want to improve elements and add quality-of-life features here and there. We have a lot of little things going on in parallel, but if we have to summarize, the focus will primarily be around finalizing some mid-long-term progression systems, social features (i.e.: the custom social raid menu), and first-time user experience.
GD: Will Meet Your Maker be free-to-play or a paid experience? Do you plan on doing paid DLC or expansions?
NL: Meet Your Maker will be a paid experience (to access the base game) with a strong post-launch support plan. We will not communicate official pricing yet. It’s a bit too soon to give all the details, but we will be expanding the player’s toolbox with raiding and building gameplay elements so expect new traps, mods, guards, augments, weapons, suits, etc. We should communicate about our initial post-launch roadmap as we get closer to launch.
GD: What was the most impressive/insane Outpost you saw someone build during the playtest?
NL: We’ve been playing this game internally for more than 3 years now (not counting the prototyping period). It’s insane how fast the community outshines us devs when they start playing with the game. Although we’ve been sharing screenshots internally, there were tens of thousands of Outposts, so I couldn’t see them all…
Some of the most memorable for me: A fire-breathing dragon, thanks to fire/acid trap, awesome medieval castles and villages, an evil snowman, a huge blue crocodile, and, of course, our favorite harvester character.
GD: Do you plan on adding more character customization options? What is in the works?
NL: Yes, cosmetics are planned. This is a user-generated game, so on top of the more traditional suit and weapon cosmetics, the player-built Outposts open a whole new world of possibilities. We are introducing deco packs in Meet Your Maker, allowing Builders to choose from themed blocks, decals, and props to build and customize their Outposts. The potential to customize Outpost is there, and we definitely have other ideas that we will share in the future.
GD: It seemed like there was a deep world behind the consoles and sand, but it was added to the game organically. How much lore/story do you want to inject into the final version of Meet Your Maker? How direct or indirect do you plan on presenting that to the player?
NL: We’ve seen in our playtest that players are quite interested in knowing more about the world of Meet Your Maker, its lore, and narrative elements. Who is the Chimera? Is it evil? Good? Are you really saving the world? Our initial objective is to build a world with a unique narrative backdrop and grow and nurture it over time. We don’t want to answer all the questions from the get-go, but we do have a lot of narrative seed elements to expand on over time.
GD: What kind of players do you think would enjoy Meet Your Maker?
NL: Players looking for a true novel gameplay experience and that enjoy a strategic, creative, mature gameplay experience. Enjoying Building games is a big plus. Builders are the powerhouse of our game, as we’ve seen in our countless internal/external playtests, they spend as much time building as raiding and really fuel the game’s economy.
Although you can decide to only spend your time raiding and trying to beat other player’s Outpost, Meet Your Maker really shines when you watch players die and collect their remains within your own creation.
Players can follow along on the official Meet Your Maker website and wishlist the game on Steam.
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