Mewgenics [REVIEW] – Tactical Brilliance (and Poo-eating Cats) 

It’s genuinely strange to be sitting here writing a review for Mewgenics, you know? For a lot of us, 2012 feels like a different lifetime… London had the Olympics, we were all doing that Gangnam Style dance, and the world was supposedly ending according to the Mayans. That was the year Edmund McMillen first teased this game, but it just sorta… vanished, only to eventually come back into the limelight years on. Now, after fourteen years, McMillen and co-developer Tyler Glaiel have finally pushed it out the door, and honestly? I love it. 

Check out some screenshots down below: 

At a glance, it’s easy to look at this as ‘that weird cat game from the Binding of Isaac guys’, and yeah, the DNA is definitely there. It’s got that signature gross-out art style, unsettling humour, and a soundtrack by Ridiculon (that is frankly much better than a game about inbred cats has any right to be). But scratch the surface, and you find a strategy game with a frightening amount of depth that’ll easily keep you hooked in for a long, long time. 

The core gameplay loop is split pretty cleanly into two halves. First, you’ve got the adventuring – you pick four cats from your house and drag them out into the world to fight mutants, cultists, and grim horrors on a grid-based map. You move, you attack, you use abilities, and you progress… if you’ve played a tactical RPG before, you’ll figure things out quite quickly, and everything here is soundly designed with some wonderful combat scenarios, clever enemy designs, and addictive battle mechanics to keep players invested. 

What makes everything in Mewgenics tick is the class system, which is wonderfully implemented by having players put a collar on a cat to give it a job. You’ve got your standard Rangers and Mages, but then you unlock weirder options that feel befitting of the ingenuity of McMillen and Glaiel… let’s just say there are some wild (and gross) class options that ensure your cat party are certainly on the unconventional side (and that’s putting it lightly). The magic of the class system happens when you start to piece together the ideal synergy between classes, finding those with abilities that complement one another and make for feline perfection on the battlefield. There really is a lot of depth to Mewgenics, and part of the joy of that comes with experimentation when in combat. 

“Everything it offers is finely tuned to keep the player engaged from start to end, and even after putting around 40 hours in, I still can’t stop playing… it’s that good.“

So you’ll venture out into battle, get into dangerous situations, and hopefully survive… that’s the simple part. The actual heart of Mewgenics is what happens when you get back home. Your feline survivors don’t just level up, but retire and… well… breed, making kittens that you can then take on further adventures. Come on, they’ve done their time, let those horny little rascals get at it. 

Breeding is a very intricate system where you’re constantly trying to pass down specific stats, abilities, and mutations to the next generation. It starts simple enough, but once you’ve put a few hours in and have fine-tuned an army of cats moulded to your exact needs, you’ll be staring at your screen like a mad scientist, trying to figure out how to breed the PERFECT kitten. The depth here is staggering, almost intimidatingly so at times, but it’s also one of the best things about Mewgenics. 

The game is properly funny too, though it’s definitely an acquired taste. It’s full of McMillen’s trademark dark humour, which is something that I personally love, but won’t be for everyone – especially when you’re dealing with cats with scatological disorders who run off to eat poo in the middle of a fight (seriously), or cats with ADHD that force you to take their turn in under five seconds. It’s absurd, but also incredibly clever and fitting of the gameplay experience. There are plenty of other horrid surprises tucked away that I won’t go into here, simply because stumbling upon them yourself is what makes the experience feel so special… just do yourself a favour and prepare to be properly grossed out (in the best possible way). 

Check out some screenshots down below: 

One thing that’s worth mentioning is that the game will absolutely kick your teeth in. Mewgenics doesn’t mess about, and if your team gets wiped, you don’t just lose the run – you lose those cats, their gear, and potentially some top-tier genetics you were banking on for the future. There are some really high stakes at play, and believe me, there’s nothing worse than losing it all in a run gone wrong. 

It all comes together to make for an experience that’s strategic, deep, and very fulfilling, with Mewgenics absolutely hooking me in from the word go. Everything it offers is finely tuned to keep the player engaged from start to end, and even after putting around 40 hours in, I still can’t stop playing… it’s that good.  

That being said, it does have some impurrfections (sorry). For one, the onboarding is a bit of a shambles, with the game hiding a lot of crucial info from you at the start – it feels like there’s a lot to learn, and I much prefer an in-depth tutorial as opposed to learning (and often failing) on the job. There’s also the issue of RNG… sometimes the game just decides you’re going to lose, giving you rubbish ability rolls or forcing you to take quest items that actively sabotage your team. It’s a shame that you can’t do much about bad luck, especially when the stakes are so high. But you know what? Those flaws don’t stop Mewgenics from being a blast to play.  

Developer: Edmund McMillen, Tyler Glaiel 
Publisher: Edmund McMillen, Tyler Glaiel 
Platform(s): PC (Reviewed) 
Website: https://store.steampowered.com/app/686060/Mewgenics/