Well, it's finally here. What do you think of Meet Your Maker?

Day 1 Thoughts

(played the open beta, currently playing on Xbox Series X)

Onboarding: Simple yet effective tutorials that don't waste too much time. I do feel that the game isn't much fun until you start unlocking more stuff. It's kinda hard to build an effective base with just the current starting pieces and no mods, I really think the holo-cube specifically should be unlocked by default to help new players create some uncertainty in their early builds. Similarly I don't understand why 1 of the only 2 suits has to be unlocked. It just seems like an unnecessary cost to heap on players who want to use the melee suit, especially when 1 of the required resources to unlock it is so rare compared to the other 2, more on that later.

General Gameplay: The basic gameplay loop of MYM is fun, though I am worried that without introducing some alternative modes of raiding things might get stale after a while, more on that later. The game controls well and I haven't encountered many bugs so far (and of those bugs I have encountered nothing has impacted gameplay in a negative way yet). I know a lot of people are somewhat frustrated with the limitations placed on building (Harvey) but I genuinely believe it's for the best. If a base feels like it's just an unfair troll then just leave, you dying to that base just benefits the builder and encourages more troll bases. Plus if they can't get kills or accolades then they can't prestige, so that base goes away.

The Grind: This is my only real sore point so far. The game has 3 resources, whose names I'm still learning so I'll just call them by color. Even after only a few hours of play I have more than enough orange and blue resources to do whatever I want without thinking about it, it's just the red resource that's holding me back. I'm not really sure what to make of this, it almost feels like orange and blue are pointless since you pretty much can't unlock anything without red anyway. If 1 resource is going to be the linchpin object that lets me do things, why even bother having the other 2 at all? I guess because orange is used to buy base locations and blue is used to restock on equipment? Regardless, it's clear that the grind to unlock everything will be slow so long as the red resource gains are as low as they are now. Which I suppose isn't completely a bad thing, just annoying.

What's Next?: We already have a first roadmap of things to look forward to. New weapons, traps, guards, and mods all sound like good additions, especially with the promise that they can all be unlocked through gameplay. New cosmetics are always nice (though I feel like there should have been some in the game already). The main thing that sticks out to me is new environments. What does this mean exactly? Is this just a cosmetic piece to change the atmosphere of a base or will it affect gameplay? I guess we'll just have to wait and find out.

Now about new gameplay modes, the trick here is figuring out how to introduce new raiding objectives besides get in, get Gene-Mat, get out, while working within the bounds of the current build system. Admittedly I find it hard to come up with ideas that seem reasonable. Here are some of my better ideas:

• Combat Focused Mode: Objective is to kill all guards. There might still be traps to contend with but the guards are the objective. Adds a restriction that all guards must be accessible i.e. no hiding a guard in impossible to reach, walled off location. Could even turn this into a boss-fight mode, pick a guard to be the boss, make it bigger, give it some kind of stat boost, requires multiple hits to kill, etc. This seems like the simplest alternate game mode idea that could be added without fundamentally changing the game's build system.
• Timed Mode: Objective is to get in and plant a bomb to destroy some important piece of equipment/machinery/etc. Once the bomb is planted the raider has a time limit to escape before it detonates. Admittedly this one already has some problems, I think it would be too easy to make troll bases with this objective. Imagine a base with lots of winding pathways that take a long time to navigate or a base with all second wave traps. Would need to make the detonation timer dynamic, calculate it based on how long it takes Harvey to get all the way in/out. Might even need to disallow second-wave traps to make it fair but that might be going too far in the other direction, too easy. Still, thought it was a neat idea.
• Multiple Collectables Mode: Objective is to collect multiple components from the base. Again, might be too easy to make troll bases. Would of course need all components to be accessible. Could be interesting as it would encourage less linear build design. Not sure how second wave would work, might need third and fourth wave mods. Or alternatively disallow second wave entirely but allow for increased build capacity? Not super confident in this one.