| Mewgenics | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Release Date | Gameplay & Story | Pre-Order & DLC | Review |
Mewgenics is the latest game from Edmund McMillen, made in cooperation with Tyler Glaiel, featuring a personal army of continually interbred cats. Read our review to see what it did well, what it didn’t do well, and if it’s worth your money.
← Return to Mewgenics main article
Overview
What is Mewgenics?
Mewgenics is a turn-based roguelite tactical RPG by Edmund McMillen of The Binding of Isaac fame and Tyler Glaiel. Set in the fictional Boon County, Mewgenics lets players selectively breed, manage, and outfit their own army of cats as they head out on adventures across alleyways, sewers, caves, and other urban locales in search of food and resources. Other cats and environmental dangers await their intrepid party, and it will take a tactical mind to get these felines home after a night out in the urban jungle.
Mewgenics features:
⚫︎ Turn-based strategy combat (with cats!)
⚫︎ 900+ unique equippable items
⚫︎ 200+ unique enemies and bosses
⚫︎ Cat-breeding and mutation mechanics
⚫︎ 10+ character classes with 75 unique skills each
⚫︎ Single-player tactical roguelite progression
| Digital Storefronts | |||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
 Steam |
|||||||
| $29.99 |
For more gameplay details, read everything we know about Mewgenics' gameplay and story.
Mewgenics Review: Nearing Purrfection
It’s been forever since my last Isaac run. Once upon a time, I spent every waking minute diving the Depths, hoping and praying that my first item room had something good in it, and now, I’ve played myself into boredom. Infinite as it was, and difficult as its mysteries were to solve, The Binding of Isaac had nothing more to offer me after literally thousands of hours of gameplay.
For a while, all seemed lost, because I truly believed that Edmund McMillen’s work was a once-in-a-lifetime experience that could never be matched. The Legend of Bum-bo certainly didn’t scratch the itch, so I had no reason to think anything ever would.
Melodrama aside, boy, was I glad to be wrong. I knew from the moment it was announced that Mewgenics would be something special. I could feel all those Isaac runs coming back to me as the rough, childlike drawings of the Isaac-verse snuck into every preview. Mixing with my fascination with turn-based tactical combat a la XCOM, the game had my heart on a platter from the start.
Having finally played it, my expectations were more than met on many fronts, with the most concerning friction being a matter of taste. But that’s getting ahead of things. Let’s kick this review off with how the game plays, and we’ll see where it takes us from there.
Experience Feline Squad Tactics in Boon County
With a title like "Mewgenics" (a portmanteau of Meow and Eugenics), it’s safe to assume that you’re going to be selectively breeding cats. While not incorrect, most of the game is actually dedicated to a turn-based isometric tactical roguelike adventure on a grid, with RPG classes to boot, randomized skills, equippable items, and enough stats and status effects to satiate a Final Fantasy player.
Players begin each adventure by selecting up to four of their precious cats and assigning each of them a class. No class can be used twice in the same party, at least at the start, so strategic pairing of favorable cat traits, stats, and class identity is paramount to a good team composition. Once their party is set, players can head out with their cats and have them duke it out across various urban settings, such as the Alleyway, the Sewers, and the Caves.
Mewgenics operates on a node-based map progression system with branching paths similar to Slay the Spire’s, though notably not to the same degree of deviations from the starting path. Depending on the nature of the node they land on, players can encounter random events that require their cats to pass a D&D-esque skill check, free equipment, shops, or, most interestingly, combat scenarios.
In a combat scenario, the player takes turns with the CPU, moving their units around and using their actions to destroy the enemy squad. Each cat works on a basic, stat-and-count-based action economy, where they can move, use their consumables, activate skills, and make basic attacks as independent actions on their turn. Each of those options is usually limited to one use per turn, though other limitations like once-per-round, once-per-combat, and once-per-run do exist for certain items.
Stats determine the effectiveness of attacks, as well as other standard RPG variables like maximum HP, melee, ranged, and magical attacks, movement speed, armor, etc. These can be modified by various factors like their class, current equipment, passive skills, and their current state on the grid. Most of the time, though, stats are determined by their lineage, mutations, and whatever stats they inherited from their parents; that’s where the Eugenics part of this whole game comes in.
Managing, Exploiting, and Selectively Breeding Your Cat Army
The other half of the Mewgenics experience occurs at your house over the course of days in a surprisingly unique reimagining of the standard RPG resource-gathering system. Rather than getting resources out in the world to craft new weapons, armor, and earn new skills for your party, your resources are instead literally born and bred within the confines of your domicile.
This "hub" of sorts is one of the biggest deviations from the Isaac formula, as it combines the run-based progression of TBOI with a campaign-like metagame that’s unique to Mewgenics.
Moving on to how you use this house, you basically sell the cats for more resources. Well, not really. It’s actually more complicated than that, and it all hinges on the fact that once a cat finishes a run, it is "retired" and can’t do another run ever again, no matter how good their stats were. Their equipment is preserved through your storage, but to go on more runs, players will have to breed their previous party with each other, or with whatever strays show up on their doorstep, and have them pop out kittens to start anew.
This is where the selling of cats comes in. Connected to your home is a community of other cat enthusiasts looking to trade upgrades in exchange for your cats via a pipe delivery system. Each one has a preference, so sending the right cat to each vendor can expedite your upgrade process. These preferences aren’t easy to fulfil either, like the kid who only accepts injured cats, the couple who only want kittens, or the hunchback who only wants "retired" cats to keep him company.
Once the appropriate amount of cat donations is received, the vendor dishes out new upgrades like new starting classes, equipment for sale, cosmetics, or entire game mechanics locked behind this progression mechanic. Of course, if you could just send your cats out once they’ve served their purpose, this would be far too easy a game.
No, players are expected to balance the donation of cats by making good stats and skills hereditary between parents and their children. This means that, though they can’t go on another adventure, that super-powered wizard cat you had last run might be better utilized as breeding stock rather than fodder for the upgrades, and shouldn’t be donated for now.
It’s certainly a unique way to go about resource management for this game. It’s strange and unfamiliar, but efficient and effective. Even the Food cost of passing days for potential kittens is genius, because players must absolutely head out for more food eventually, lest their litter of mildly mutated kittens die of hunger. More than that, they still need to survive the run to bring the food home, so it’s very easy for players to just FUBAR their entire by not balancing their cat population with their adventuring.
Luckily, McMillen’s masterful game design shines through once more with the many, many safety nets players get to rebuild their pride of cats if they ever do end up cornered by dwindling resources. Losing runs can be salvaged for food, coins, or equipment once you unlock a specific NPC, and food is cheap in bulk at the Pet Mart, should it ever be needed.
Turtling at home really isn’t an option despite this because, as I’ll elaborate on later, the danger can eventually come to you, and not heading out is the best way to make sure you’re ill-prepared for its arrival.
Let’s go over the game’s insane tactical depth, equipment, and skill systems, and how McMillen managed to make it rewarding while simultaneously tearing you a new one.
Enough Content to Keep Every Cat Occupied
Apart from the two main halves of Mewgenics’ gameplay, we just went through, the game also has tactical depth and content density that needs going over, because it’s genuinely impressive enough to be comparable to TBOI, which is famous for its near-infinite replayability.
Mewgenics encourages tactical equipment-switching, diverse party compositions, and critical thinking by making every little thing matter in every combat and map scenario. The grid isn’t just for show in this game, because things like terrain modifiers, interactive combat map features, attack ranges, directional facing, and attack types are all factors to consider when facing an enemy squad, among countless others.
These can make or break an engagement entirely, as the skills your cats start with, as well as the ones they gain mid-run, while random, are generally useful and synergistic enough to work in any situation, but are most effective when planned accordingly. It’s basically like TBOI’s randomized item pools and unique rooms; once you know what you’re dealing with, you can plan ahead, use niche tactics, and dominate an otherwise RNG-directed experience.
And I do mean that literally, because this game is positively packed with unlockables and content. So much, in fact, that it might run Isaac for is coins. There are more than ten possible classes to choose from once you have them unlocked, each with 75 unique skills to discover, and each specializing in a specific archetype within the class’s main identity. Melee attackers can range from bruisers who can tank as many hits as they can dish out to mobile skirmishers who weave in and out of engagement.
This isn’t even accounting for any possible traits and stats the cat itself got from its parents, any negative traits they got from injuries, and what equipment they can slap on for more specialization. The number of permutations this game can have is in the millions, and that’s measuring conservatively. It’s like having your RNG cake and eating it too, in this case, because the game is plenty random, but never too random to be unfun.
Glacial Progress with Unforgiving Difficulty
Sadly, unfun is exactly the word I’d use to describe this game’s pacing. Simply put, it’s downright glacial, requiring more and more cat donations of each specific cat type to unlock marginal upgrades that don’t really help right away, but are invaluable much later. Again, this is similar to Isaac’s whole schtick, where unlocks are only as helpful as you can utilize them, though I’d say this game’s version of that is far less fun because it takes much longer to pay dividends.
The worst part is that you do kind of need those unlocks ASAP. Mewgenics is difficult. It’s not a bullet-hell controller-breaker like its predecessor, but it can get very frustrating very fast if you keep painting yourself into a corner through a vicious cycle of cat overpopulation and cat overspending that can’t be rectified with a successful run.
This game does not have a difficulty slider, and anything you do only makes it harder in the long run as new unlocks flood your equipment pools and complicate your compositions. This may turn away many people at the door, but Isaac did well enough despite having a similar barrier for entry. It’s all a matter of execution and easing players into the pain, and that’s one aspect of the player experience that this game sadly does not capture.
That is to say that I don’t want an easier time, just more time for things to get difficult. TBOI had a great formula by unlocking new paths based on progress, and Meewgenics does do that. More of that, and a tweak on cat donation values to match, and this game should wriggle off everything that’s tying it down.
McMillen’s Humor Isn’t for Everybody
Moving on to the aesthetic, auditory, and narrative quality of Mewgenics, it’s pretty solid throughout, though heavily stylized. Edmund McMillen’s signature crudeness and penchant for toilet humor are very apparent in the game’s grimy, almost amateurish visual stylization, and there are literal songs about being flushed in the toilet playing during specific boss fights.
Now, while I don’t find these repulsive in the slightest, I can see how some may. The aforementioned toilet song is an absolute banger as long as you don’t listen to the lyrics, and the same goes for about 70% of the game’s entire OST. There’s no avoiding the toilet and gore visuals, though, because the game is absolutely steeped in them.
There’s no getting through thirty seconds of gameplay without running into sentient fecal matter, some variant of cat that certainly isn’t above board in terms of naming conventions, a rotting corpse, a bloated water creature, and if you’re very unlucky, all of the above. Again, not a bad thing; it’s just part of the brand. As long as you know what you’re getting into, then you should be fine. Wash your hands after, though.
Beware the Encroaching Danger of Guillotina
Moving on to mechanics that Mewgenics actually nailed, the game has a unique approach to boss fights. While mid and end-bosses do exist while out adventuring, selected from a randomized pool in standard McMillen faire, sometimes the boss will come to you, and you'd best be ready for it when it does.
The first of these invasion bosses, as I like to call them, is Guillotina, or just Tina for short. This morbidly obese, kitten-eating monster will attack your house once she makes herself known, giving you a few days to prepare and posting dire consequences if you can’t drive her away. This is a major boss above any boss a normal run can give, usually requiring you to call in your veteran cats to kick some tail one last time. You'd better have some in stock for when this happens, because normal cats just won’t cut it.
This is a very fun mechanic that stirs the pot, as it were, because between the length of the average run and the randomness of cat-breeding, Mewgenics can sometimes get frustrating and repetitive. With this huge mess ahead and no choice but to face it, you’ll be forced to play and play well, so I see this as both a plus and a necessity.
Almost Purrrfect, but Not Quite
It pains me to give this game anything less than 90 because it did surpass my expectations. It has far more depth and unique features than anticipated, and I look forward to the next run as much as I do the latter end of the current one I’m on. That said, appreciation and exceeded expectations can only account for so much.
The game’s imagery does not affect me at all, and I’m not interested in docking merits for how it may affect others, but the game’s pacing truly is a huge wrench in the works, as is its price. Simultaneously too fast to ease into and too slow to get lost in, while also costing a pretty penny, Mewgenics may have had the DNA to reach Isaac’s heights, but as it stands, it could only stand close to purrrfection.
Is Mewgenics Worth It?
A Bit Steep, But Still Worth It
Coming in at $29.99, Mewgenics is a tad more expensive than your usual indie to AA title. It’s far from being the first game of its pedigree within this price range, but there’s a reason we don’t see too many of these, with most capping off at $25.
I’d happily pay this much for Mewgenics, but that’s with my complete adoration of McMillen’s otherworks in mind. For new or unfamiliar players, I won’t blame them for faltering, but I also don’t think they’d regret buying the game if they play it for long enough. The game at least has the density to earn back its value that way.
Mewgenics FAQ
Is Mewgenics Set in The Binding of Isaac’s Universe?
Yes. According to the game’s devs, Mewgenics is part of the setting featured in The Binding of Isaac and its expansions, although they did also stress that a thorough playthrough is necessary to fully understand the extent of this game’s relation to its predecessor.
Will Mewgenics Have Online PvP?
Maybe. Edmund McMillen has confirmed on a Steam Q&A that an online PvP mode wasn’t part of the game’s original development plan, but adding it in the future isn’t fully off the table yet.
Game8 Reviews
You may also like...
Mewgenics Review by User
Information
Article Ranking
Latest News
