For the past several weeks, I’ve been hacking away at Mewgenics, the latest game from The End is Nigh Duo Tyler Glaiel and Edmund McMillen, the latter of which is also known for creating The Binding of Issac. That said, Mewgenics is absolutely massive, and while I’m not finished with it yet, there’s plenty to talk about already. My dozens of hours so far have been quite enjoyable, thanks to incredibly varied and engaging combat and an all-timer soundtrack. Though it’s frustrating at times and the humor doesn’t always hit, Mewgenics, which has been in the works in some form for over a decade, has been worth the wait so far.
The adventure puts the player in charge of an ever-changing house full of cats, and you command up to four of them during roguelike runs. Combat is turn-based and grid-based (like Fire Emblem or Hundred Line: Last Defense Academy), and you assign each cat a classic RPG class to determine their pool of stats and abilities. Some are straightforward, like the defensive Tank or the ranged Hunter, but others are more unique, like the weapon-crafting Tinkerer or animal-summoning Druid. Each starting ability set is randomly generated, so with my current set of ten classes (and there are more to unlock), every run feels truly unique.
Combat keeps you on your toes (and your cats on their toe beans). Cats usually heal a little at the end of each fight, but heals are otherwise inconsistently found, so it’s crucial to battle as carefully as possible. Most of my failed runs come from fights that fall apart in just one or two rounds of combat against especially dangerous foes I’ve underestimated. Since your cats’ starting abilities are randomized, each run also introduces variables to keep track of on the player’s end, too. Passive abilities can make enemies’ difficulties fluctuate, and sometimes two cats in your party have abilities that can hinder you if you’re not paying attention. Every run has unique, often silly specifics that you’re unlikely to run into twice. Some are helpful, some are not, but they’re always entertaining.
Partly because of that randomness, Mewgenics is very challenging and unforgiving. There’s no undo button to avoid misclicks or moves gone horribly wrong, and while you can quit the game without saving to restart a battle, a Mr. Resetti-like character only lets you do so once per run. Dying means you permanently lose your current party of cats and all the items in your inventory at the time. This makes a huge difference in subsequent runs. Good cats from past runs give birth to high-stat kittens for future attempts. Meanwhile, items give cats new abilities or improve their stats, and starting a run with a full inventory of equipment from past encounters sets you up for success. Losing doesn’t just prevent you from progressing – it sometimes even sets you back.
This stands in stark contrast to other modern roguelike conventions, where each failure is a step forward in some way, either because you’re leveling up some stat, collecting resources, or progressing a story. Mewgenics has macro-progression, but it moves more slowly, especially on a loss. This is not an inherently bad system, and I like knowing each fight has life-or-death stakes. Still, it is frustrating to get stuck in a losing cycle, especially if you’re expecting a more relaxed experience.
Before you embark on a run, however, you have to assemble your team of cats, either by adopting strays or by breeding existing cats. Your home base, a customizable house, is decorated with furniture that alters its stats, which factor into how often cats breed and what the kittens’ base attributes will be. So far, I’m fine with this system, but not really in love with it. Decorations and furniture are expensive enough that you can typically only buy one item each time you come home, and interior design is strategically irrelevant – an effective room is crammed full of as many items that boost a house’s stats as possible.
The breeding itself is mostly a passive system, where you place compatible cats in a room together and hope they mate and make a new kitten that shares some of their traits. Fair warning, though – with the default settings, you’re going to have to watch a lot of cat humping animations. You can thankfully turn these off, and the game is a lot better for it, because they’re replaced with varied, creative, goofy ways the cats have children, like by summoning them from a pentagram or having them delivered by a stork.
Mewgenics’ crude humor is one of the biggest obstacles keeping me from truly loving the game, especially its emphasis on fecal humor. If it were rarer or used more sparingly, I would find it more tolerable – funny even – but it all comes across as juvenile and gross. Still, there’s plenty here that is funny, including the randomly generated cat names (you’re just as likely to find one named “Jake” as you are “Ethernet”) and each cat’s distinct meow sound (one of my favorites has auto tune; the other swears in English when taking damage and goes “oh, I meant, ‘meow'”).
Most of my criticisms of Mewgenics are admittedly minor because you spend the vast majority of playtime in combat, and combat is absolutely stellar. There’s plenty more for me to experience before coming to a final verdict, but the fact that I’m itching to hop back into the game dozens of hours in is a great omen.
