So it has to be at least alluring enough that you either trick someone in or they're curious enough. I would have people on the microphones being like 'nah man that's sketchy, I'm not going in'. And then outside of the engineering portion is the social aspect of it, because I went through two different versions which were too suspicious - nobody would actually go inside. So I started with different designs and figuring out how much damage it does, how much budget space it takes, how hard it is to arrange. Pretty much it just starts with an idea, so the player oven I did was 'I want to take the flamers and I want to use that to kill someone'. So when you've got an idea for a trap, how do you go about making it?

oh I wonder what the switch does?' And they just keep following as they're curious. But then there's also part of the brain that's like 'this is really interesting, you don't usually see this giant towering church in this rainy lightening foggy night', so most people are like 'I probably shouldn't go in there', but at the same time it's so tempting to know what's on the other side. I think for most people there's the limbic part of the brain which is like 'danger: this is probably not going to be a good situation'. Were you surprised people would go in? Particularly as the building and your outfit looked so creepy. And then I went from that to some of the other ideas, and they weren't really based on any particular thing, I would just think of things in the game like items for camp, objects, and then ask 'how could I use that maybe as something that would be kind of funny'. I thought 'I really like the fire, I wish I had a way of using that to burn somebody alive, I think that would be funny to do'. The oven came out of the first one I did which was called murder church - it was this dark church which had flamers in, and that inspired the next one.

Honestly no, it's never been anything like that. I've seen the comments saying Saw or H.H. Were you inspired by anything in particular from pop culture? I think Wes said that surely these have been inspired by Saw. That was part of the reason why I was always in Flatwoods - I wanted a lot of foot traffic where people could walk by and go 'hey, why is there this creepy church there'? I liked having an interactive element, it was something I thought they should have more of in the game. I wanted something I thought was interesting with the camps rather than just being a static place where you had your stash and crafting. I started around the time they changed the CAMP system so you can't have your camp moved if you're logged in - I just started experimenting with different camp ideas and whatever I came up with in my mind that day. I guess you could say I project onto the wasteland this sort of chaotic neutral maniac, who goes around tormenting people for his own amusement. I don't really have a philosophical reason. So I guess I'll start off with: why? Why are you doing this? Oh - and how he got that Deathclaw into the maze. I had a chat with Mike to ask him a bit about his work and the process behind constructing the devices. The posts have gained significant traction on Reddit, even inviting comment from a Bethesda dev, and Mike has plans to make even more traps in future. So far he's created three traps, including a murder church, player oven and his latest masterpiece: a Deathclaw maze. They're the work of Vault101manguy, also known as Mike: a Canadian Fallout 76 player who by day works in IT, but at night terrifies the citizens of Flatwoods. Huge, grandiose and utterly outrageous these are player traps which seem to hoodwink dozens despite their sinister facades. If you've been on the Fallout 76 subreddit over the past few months, you've probably seen them.

Ideas for the amazing maze church