Mewgenics Review: Infinite Ways to Skin a Cat in This Compelling Roguelike
Forget the old adage about cats having nine lives. In Mewgenics, the mischievous roguelike escapade from developers Edmund McMillen and Tyler Glaiel, these felines are strictly limited to just one life, often ending swiftly and brutally. This game shatters any notion that a title about cats must be cute, instead embracing a profoundly tasteless humour and a red-in-tooth-and-claw approach to its subject matter.
A Roguelike Format with Permanent Consequences
The roguelike format, which has spawned numerous indie hits over the past two decades, forms the backbone of Mewgenics. Failure here is permanent; when your cats die, they're gone forever, sending you back to the beginning with the game reshuffling its elements into new configurations for your next attempt. You gather a party of four felines and dispatch them on questing journeys from which they return either victorious or not at all.
Consider Joyce, the tabby mage, who gets trampled to death by a blob-monster in the sewers. Shortly afterwards, Fulbert, with his Bagpuss-like markings and full beard, explodes from within due to maggots infesting his guts. That's the last you'll ever see of either character. Yet before shipping off to war, the pair enjoyed one magical evening together, leaving behind a kitten with distinctive pink-and-white patterning and promising stats, ready for the next generation of warriors.
Pet Simulation Meets Strategic Battles
These emergent family sagas unfold in Mewgenics' pet simulation mode, which combines elements of Tamagotchi with Love Island-style matchmaking. You furnish your cutaway-diagram home and physically drag cats by the scruff between rooms. Beyond matchmaking partners who may produce the next generation of warriors, you must separate love rivals whose scraps provide yet another way for these cats to meet their demise, along with keeping members of the same family apart.
If you find the title's pun distasteful, be warned it accurately signals the game's profoundly tasteless humour. Expect copious references to poop, undeveloped foetuses, and pussy-related single entendres, plus sections where you watch cats in flagrante (though the humping animation can be turned off). The real shock value, however, lies in how quickly you grow accustomed to checking the litter from romantic encounters and dumping kittens with subpar stats or inbred birth defects.
Developers' Aesthetic and Gameplay Depth
Developers Edmund McMillen and Tyler Glaiel emerged from the early 2000s Flash game scene, the heyday of Newgrounds and Happy Tree Friends, and never really grew out of that post-South Park teenage edgelord aesthetic. Approaching their work requires accepting this sensibility as part of the package.
Beneath this icky surface, however, lies a game of rare depth and variety. The pet simulation serves as a sideshow to the turn-based battles, which play out like a sophisticated mashup of chess, Dungeons & Dragons, and Pokémon. You manoeuvre your cats around a 10x10 board, seeking ways to leverage the particular combination of abilities and obstacles before you.
Imagine having one cat with a lightning attack, another with a hosepipe, and a third who enjoys being electrocuted. With careful positioning and basic understanding of water's conductive properties, you can zap multiple enemies and charge up your electrophilic moggy in a single turn.
Constant Innovation and Elegant Interlocking Systems
These eureka moments occur frequently because Mewgenics constantly introduces new elements: locations, enemies, classes, abilities, weather conditions, and one-off events. McMillen's previous game, The Binding of Isaac, launched in 2011 as a forerunner of the modern roguelike sensation and continues receiving updates today. At launch, Mewgenics already feels like it has benefited from years of meticulous tinkering.
What proves particularly impressive isn't just the quantity of content but how elegantly everything interlocks. Recently unlocking two new classes—the nature-loving druid and the meat hook-slinging butcher—revealed an unlikely partnership. Experimentation yielded a discovery: synergy between the druid's ability to communicate with other creatures and the butcher's capacity to spawn flies from rotten meat carved off enemies. For the remainder of that run, my cats could sit back while their insectoid-plague army handled all the hard work.
These stars may align on your 100th run, your 1,000th, or never. According to the save screen, after sixty hours of gameplay, I've experienced less than a third of what this game offers. Mewgenics is built to fill every moment you're willing to dedicate to it, creating an experience that feels both endlessly replayable and constantly surprising.
Mewgenics releases on 10 February, priced at $29.99 or £24.99, offering PC gamers a uniquely dark and strategically rich adventure that redefines what a cat-themed game can be.
