A catastrophic masterpiece of strategy and chaos.
A name like Edmund McMillen is hard to miss for people who grew up during the rebirth of independent games. McMillen is known for making games like “The Binding of Isaac,” “Super Meat Boy,” and “The End is Nigh,” which are known for combining gross humor with well-tuned gameplay loops.
Together with Tyler Glaiel, whose work on Closure and The End is Near showed a talent for experimental design, McMillen started Mewgenics, a big project that had been talked about for over a decade.
The game is different from McMillen’s usual action-platforming work. It’s more like a tactical roguelite, with turn-based fighting, D&D-style exploration, and, most surprisingly, a focus on cat breeding. In his earlier games, reflexes and twitch-based skills were very important.
Mewgenics, on the other hand, is about being patient, planning ahead, and accepting chaos all at the same time. The end result is a game that looks silly at first glance but requires careful thought and encourages trying new things.
At its core, Mewgenics has a delightfully silly premise: you have to build an army of cats for Thomas A. Beanies, an oddball mad scientist in Boon County.
These cats aren’t just pets; they’re fighters, and each one has its own skills, traits, and quirks. They are sent on dangerous missions to find food, gold, and magical things.
The story is simple but effective, coming out in short pieces that remind me of McMillen’s “The Binding of Isaac.” Every exchange is darkly funny, from the dialogue between NPCs to the strange things that happen to your cats. You could see a cat with a cube-shaped head fight off rat ninjas or get swallowed by a floating demon after failing a skill check.
All the while, your squad’s success is passed on to new generations through the breeding system. Even though there aren’t many plot points, the sense of story that’s coming together is amazing. Every cat has its own story, with successes, mistakes, injuries, and even death.
The roguelite structure makes sure that no two runs are the same, and the story is at its best when it comes up naturally through gameplay instead of through scripted moments. Mewgenics is made up of two loops that work together: managing the base and going on tactical adventures.
At home in Boon County, you take care of your growing group of cats by raising them, giving them collars that give them lessons, and planning their breeding to make the next generation of adventurers. Which cats do you send to the altar of battle? Every choice you make is important. Which cats should you pair together to get the best traits? The answers affect how well your team does on future runs.
The adventure takes place on a map that looks like a board game.
Each space on the map represents a fight, an event, or a vendor. To succeed, you need to carefully choose your party, taking into account how their skills and those of other classes can work together. The lineage system drives long-term strategy, since cats quit after each run.
Children may get strong skills, mutations, or even strange diseases that can help or hurt them. Mewgenics is based on this interaction between genetics and tactical choice. Each practice is a test of both planning ahead and making decisions on the spot.
The combat is turn-based, based on tiles, and very clever. You place cats, take advantage of environmental hazards, and chain abilities for devastating results on the battlefield. One of the most memorable things to do is to use the “Soul Link” trait to link maggot skills together to do a lot of damage while also healing, knocking back, and controlling enemy aggro at the same time.
As you can see, the game rewards creative builds. For example, a Mage can turn into a healer with ice-blocking skills, a Necromancer can summon hordes of familiars, and hybrid class combinations can produce surprising but very useful combos. Because of things like enemy positioning, the environment, and how abilities work together, the same squad may perform differently each time, which keeps fights interesting and new.
The fighting is at its best when things get tough. Unexpected interactions can provide both turmoil and hilarity. For instance, a Cleric might accidentally throw allies across the battlefield, which would start a chain reaction that kills foes and makes you laugh out loud. Boss fights, like against the huge Guillotina or the Zodiac with his constant barrage of bullets, require careful planning and encourage trying out new strategies and party compositions.
The method does have some problems, though. Sometimes, bad luck or skills that don’t work at the right time can ruin well-thought-out plans, leading to frustrating losses. Checks for skill on random events can also be very harsh: one failure can forever hurt a cat, creating a harsh but thematically consistent tension. Also, it can be hard to keep track of a big roster of cats with 30 or more active units because the UI is limited and trait information is spread out.
Both fighting and breeding are important for getting experience and moving up in Mewgenics.
Cats gain experience on runs, which gives them access to new skills and abilities. Also, cats that have retired have an effect on the genes of the next generation. Changes, illnesses, and mutations all affect development, making it so that careful planning can lead to better offspring while careless adventuring can ruin future runs.
A second level of development is made up of resources like gold and food. Food keeps your army from going hungry, and gold lets you improve your home, buy new gear, and breed better. So, grinding XP is an important part of the game. Your long-term success depends on how well you can feed, arm, and breed cats, and running encourages you to take calculated risks.
The art style is very McMillen: bizarre, funny, and weird without trying to hide it. Cats have cube heads, extra eyes, rat tails, and other changes. Enemies include monsters that look like they belong in a carnival, alien attackers, and huge zombies. There is cartoon-like gore that is both scary and funny when it shows injuries, changes, and even deaths.
Some people might think the graphics are bad, but the graphics go well with the tone and fun of the game. The character animations, attack effects, and environmental details are all clear enough for tactical gameplay. This way, the chaos of the fight never gets too hard to understand.
Ridiculon’s music is one of the best parts of the game.
Each big boss fight has a signature song with words that fit the mood of the fight. This makes the experience more immersive and helps you remember important parts. Ambient sound effects, like cats meowing and fight impact sounds, add to the strange and chaotic mood. Audio cues are also useful because they let you know when an enemy is attacking or changing your state, which is important for planning your moves in battle.
The independent game Mewgenics is a rare success. It’s a roguelite that blends tactical depth, emergent storytelling, absurd humor, and complex breeding mechanics into a single, well-rounded experience. Combat is hard but fair, breeding is fun and addicting, and progressing through the game is satisfying, even if random events can be annoying sometimes.
The humor is dark and childish, the graphics are grotesquely cute, and the sound is top-notch, with tracks that you’ll remember long after you play them. There are some problems with the game. The UI can be hard to understand when there are a lot of rosters. The early hours can be confusing because of secret traits and not much help, and luck can sometimes ruin well-laid plans.
Still, these flaws aren’t very big when you look at how deep and replayable the game is. Mewgenics is a memorable experience because every run that fails and every run that succeeds adds to a bigger story that is both personal and chaotic.
Mewgenics is a ridiculously fun strategy game that everyone who likes McMillen and Glaiel, strategy game fans, and cat-fight fans should play the same way. It celebrates self-made stuff, teaches emergent gameplay, and most importantly, combines chaos, humor, and strategy in the worst way.
