Mewgenics review: purrfectly balanced

A charmingly churlish game where anything is pawsible

Mewgenics has been in the public eye for more than a decade. Super Meat Boy developer Team Meat initially announced it in 2012, before canceling it in 2016. When McMillen and the Super Meat Boy developer parted ways, McMillen retained the rights to the game and decided to completely rework it, first exploring prototypes in 2018 with The End is Nigh co-developer Tyler Glaiel.

Mewgenics revels in its silliness and gross-out jokes, which often do seem like they’re from an earlier era of the internet. You see it in the tiny details: how the description when you hover over a cat’s movement is simply “he go,” the fact that every night there’s a high chance you’ll see an animation of two cats getting it on, the prevalence of poop-filled levels McMillen has become known for. It’s the sort of humor that underscored The Binding of Isaac, and could come across as infantile, but the game expertly offers a counterbalance through complex elements found elsewhere.

The runs in Mewgenics span across three acts, all of which feature one main area players begin in, like an alley, that then splits off into two diverging paths of two more levels — a sewer into caves, or a junkyard into a boneyard, for example. Each map also features a fork in the road, offering an optional more challenging path that rewards more valuable loot, but it’s not for the faint of heart. This alone offers a wide variance between each run, but there’s much more to contend with than that.

Along the way, players will find kitty apparel, consumables, and weapons from stores and random skill check encounters. Cats will wear things like old wigs that spew spider companions, pop pills for temporary boosts, and can even wield Mom’s Knife (a Binding of Isaac nod that made me audibly yell at my desk in excitement). Though they can bring these back home for future runs, items will eventually become worn down and break.

The complexity continues with the boundless potential for inventive cat class combinations. Combine a tank with knockback and a mage with ice powers to send frozen enemies careening all over, or team up a fighter who gains power when an ally is downed, a necromancer that can damage the entire board, and a cleric to bring kitties back to life to make an unstoppable killing machine.

Though class partially determines a character’s stats and moves, traits also have a huge impact on how cats function in battle. Some traits are just simple stat boosts or elemental immunity, while others can be completely game changing. When I encountered a boss that split into increasingly small units, for example, my fighter had a trait that would make him take another turn after killing an enemy. I was confused at first, then delighted as I watched him take at least eight turns in a row autonomously, mowing down enemy after enemy.

The combat in Mewgenics certainly has a bit of a learning curve, and can even be a little bit frustrating at the start, but that’s simply because of how many layers it possesses. Even now, having put nearly 30 hours into the game, I know I’ve seen only a small portion of what it has to offer. McMillen has estimated the game has about 200 hours of content, and I’m inclined to believe him.

Every element of the environment is also a factor each run, from the combat grids individual tiles to the weather, have an effect on combat. A fight going well can be completely derailed by lightning strikes during a storm, grass patches can be turned into a spikey frozen weapon with the right spell or conditions, and cats trudging through a desert level will need water in order to heal properly.

When cats are felled in battle (and believe me, you hear ‘em crunch), they’ll still revive at the end of the round, given they aren’t hit three more times, but they’ll suffer consequences like broken legs. But in some instances, these injuries are actually a good thing — on one run, my tank had a trait called “My Leg!” that gave him thorns and a myriad of other buffs for having four broken legs.

Cats can only go on one run before retiring, shifting their purpose from battler to breeder. Breeding cats and upgrading your home (though it’s much more a home for the cats than you, much like real life) are integral to long-term success. Every night, cats living there have a chance to create a kitten, which of course features a comically raunchy animation. Without enough comfort or stimulation, they may fight instead, or do nothing at all. You can’t make your house too unappealing, either, as it will affect the quality of strays that show up at your door.

The randomness of the breeding is part of the fun — you can cross your fingers and hope that two tanky cats get it on to create the ultimate feline flesh shield, but you may wind up with a kitten of half-tank-half-cleric parentage instead. These can often wind up being happy accidents, like a kitten who’s just as hearty as they are charismatic. Cats can also sometimes acquire what the game calls mutations, which offer a blend of pros and cons, prompting one to think sentences perhaps never thought before, like, “Wow, my autistic cat would make a great mage.”

No matter how wonderfully bred, eventually the player and their cats must part ways, which serves as one of the game’s main progression mechanics. Players can send surplus cats to several very weird characters, like Frank (who, by the way, lives under your house), who will expand your home in exchange for specifically retired cats. Expanding your home becomes crucial down the line to separate related cats and prevent inbreeding.

As morbid as it may sound to be shooting retired (or dead) cats down a tube to an assortment of weirdos, or hearing your cats crunch as their bones break on the battlefield, Mewgenics does an excellent job of helping the player see that every cat serves a purpose — even dead ones. I’m a die-hard cat lover, and at first I did have slight attachment issues when it came to clearing out my older veteran cats to let the next generation prosper and breed. Perhaps I was just hardened by battle, but over time it became easier to see it as truly using them to their full potential instead of a sad goodbye.

Players could likely get years of entertainment from Mewgenics, especially if the developers continue to update the game post-release, as with the robust degree of content additions The Binding of Isaac received. I’ve found myself consumed by this game, dreaming about combat grids and sinking hours into trying to create the strongest cats this world has ever seen. It’s a true feat for a game to walk the line between juvenile and complex, and Mewgenics does it deftly.

---

Mewgenics will be released Feb. 10 on Windows PC. The game was reviewed on PC using a prerelease download code. You can find additional information about Polygon’s ethics policy here.