Forget the notion that games about cats must be cute. Mewgenics, the new roguelike from Edmund McMillen and Tyler Glaiel, presents felines that are red in tooth and claw, prone to strange mutations, and limited to just one life – which often ends swiftly and brutally. This is a game where failure is permanent, sending you back to the beginning with a reshuffled world.
You gather a party of four cats and send them on quests, from which they return victorious or not at all. But before their demise, they can breed, leaving behind kittens with combined traits for the next run. This emergent family saga unfolds in a pet sim mode reminiscent of Tamagotchi meets Love Island, where you manage relationships and rivalries, and even dispose of kittens with subpar stats or birth defects.
The turn-based battles are the main event, playing out like a mashup of chess, D&D and Pokémon. You move cats around a 10x10 board, leveraging synergies between abilities. For example, a lightning attack combined with a hosepipe can electrocute multiple enemies, while a druid's ability to talk to creatures can enhance a butcher's fly-spawning skill. The game constantly introduces new locations, enemies, classes, and events, making each run feel fresh.
The humour is profoundly tasteless, with an abundance of poop, undeveloped foetuses, and pussy-related single entendres. This edgelord aesthetic reflects the developers' roots in early 2000s Flash game culture. However, beneath the ickiness lies rare depth and variety. Mewgenics benefits from years of tinkering, feeling as polished as a game that has been updated and expanded for years, despite being new.
With frequent eureka moments and elegant interlocking systems, Mewgenics offers immense replayability. Players may discover new synergies on their 100th or 1,000th run. For those willing to accept its teenage edgelord humour, it's a roguelike that is both tasteless and deeply compelling.
