Mewgenics Systems that Could Make It More Replayable than The Binding of Isaac

At first glance, you might not realise just how massive Mewgenics really is. However, if you’ve ever played a roguelike, or rather, any game from Edmund McMillen, you’ll understand how deceptively deep they are.

If you thought Act 1 was big, then you have another thing coming. 3 total acts, multiple secret bosses and hidden areas, extremely deep systems and mechanics that promote you investing serious amounts of hours to perfect, and more! For those who want to dive in and get totally lost inside a game, Mewgenics is practically tailored for you.

Let’s take a look at some of the design decisions and systems that make this bizarre cat-filled adventure endlessly replayable!

10 Levelling NPCs to Max

I Will Buy Their Respect with Cats!

This one might seem pretty obvious at first, but honestly, this simple task is going to take you dozens, if not hundreds, of hours.

The game teaches you right from the get-go that your Boon County NPCs have levels tied to them. Their first level is super quick to unlock, showing you the benefits of raising each one. However, for many of them, every level after that gets progressively more difficult and time-consuming to unlock.

If you want a fully upgraded house, max storage, and a totally transparent breeding system, well, you’ll need to devote some serious hours and hundreds of cats to that very cause. So get breeding!

9 Rare Special Events

It’s Been 84 Years…

Have you ever gone through an act for what seems like the hundredth time, only to find an event that you’ve never seen before? And then, if you pass the skill check, that event leads to another, and another, etc.

Mewgenics is filled with these kinds of rare and powerful events that can only be traversed by cats with very high stats.

Take, for example, the tomb event found in the Desert. This tomb has several skill checks that you need to progress through. Every success leads one step forward, and every failure leads one step back. Completing all the steps will reward you with a ton of cash, but is it worth the risk? Events like this keep every run fresh. Who knows what you’ll encounter on run 1000?

8 Completing Every Side Quest

No, I Don’t Want to Kill My Teammates! Oh, 200 coins? Sure, Why Not?

While you might think simply completing the main Acts of Mewgenics is the main draw, you’ll quickly find yourself going back through these acts performing all sorts of bizarre tasks.

Upon unlocking Dr. Beanies, you’ll be given side-quest items that you can equip to your cats. He will instruct you to take these to the 3rd area of the Act. Seems easy, right? Wrong. These items, when equipped, will inflict you with terrible conditions.

For example, inflicting poison on everything in play, having to kill your own team members, or even redacting your cat's information. You’ll have to completely change the way you play, increasing the difficulty, but offering a nice 200 coin reward too!

7 Becoming a Hoarder

Become the Crazy Cat Lady You Were Born to Be!

I think everyone has this problem in one game or another. My new obsession is stacking a room with as much furniture as possible, making it look like an absolute nightmare. At least my cats are comfy, right?

Mewgenics has so many pieces of furniture, bought either from Baby Jack or simply by grabbing furniture boxes during your adventures. But did you know you can also find rare pieces of furniture? Is it even possible to collect them all? Who knows?

Maxing out, or at least getting each house stat as high as possible, is something I plan on doing in the future. But for now, I’m content with hoarding my stuff and doing as many runs of Act 1 Hard route as possible to satisfy that furniture urge.

6 A Room for Every Occasion

A Cosy-Home Sim? In My Cat Breeding Game? Preposterous!

And speaking of furniture, once you’ve upgraded your house to have the maximum number of rooms possible, it only makes sense to continue on and turn every single room into its own unique breeding ground.

Do you want a room specially for causing horrific mutations to your cats? Sure! How about a room where you only keep high-stat kitties? Why not? And certainly a room made specifically for putting high Appeal value furniture in to attract the most well-rounded homeless cats, of course!

Separating those cats and making sure you’re keeping track of who is breeding with whom is going to help you in that quest to find greatness. Inbreeding is detrimental in the long run, so having dedicated rooms for specific goals is crucial.

You Thought that was Hard? You Ain’t Seen Nothing Yet!

Have you had a chat with Steven yet? He’s an odd fellow who will disincentivise you from save-scumming during your runs. He sees everything! So watch out.

However, once you enter Act 3, you’ll discover he has another purpose. Steven can change the difficulty mode of the Acts and also respawn defeated house bosses for another more brutal round of combat.

Hard mode will introduce new elite versions of enemies into your runs, making every attempt far harder than before. Just when you thought Act 1 was getting too easy, Mewgenics pulls you right back in again. The increased rewards are definitely worth your while! Oh, and did I mention there are Crazy & Impossible difficulty levels too? Yep, Mewgenics doesn’t want you to leave for a good long while! But that's fine by me!

4 Discovering Every Secret Cat

Edmund McMillen... Breeding with my Cats? I Don’t Know How I Feel About That.

Secret cats? Just what on earth am I talking about? Well, have you ever looked outside to check your newest stray and seen something… odd?

Well, I don’t blame you if you haven’t, because this isn’t a common occurrence. Once in a while, you can find special cats who look and behave rather differently.

Whether this is a cat that looks like an enemy from the Acts, an Isaac-themed cat or even the dreaded Sonichu cat (If you’ve never heard of Sonichu, then I think that’s for the best), there are plenty of hidden cat variants to find. And these aren’t just for aesthetics; these cats can have some great mutations. Another reason to collect them all, I suppose?

3 Completing Every Chapter with Every Cat

For When Time is but a Number

You might have seen those achievements pop up when you complete Chapter 3 of a certain act. You completed the Caves with a Fighter! Well, that’s nice, isn’t it? But oh… wait… aren’t there like 13 classes? And 3 Acts, with split paths?

Yep, the realisation has dawned. Part of completing Mewgenics involves finishing every single act with every single class of cat. Oh, and that includes secret bosses too, like the Throbbing King.

And if you can only do 4 at a time… well, it certainly seems as though you have your work cut out for you, right? And that is, of course, assuming that one of your cats doesn’t die mid-way through the run. Safe to say that getting every single one of those achievements may take a short lifetime of work.

2 Collarless Cats

You Are on this Council, But We Do Not Grant You the Rank of Master

Oh, did I say 13 classes? Perhaps I should have said 14? Because the Collarless cat is also part of these challenges, requiring you to defeat every single portion of the game with a Collarless cat.

If you didn’t know already, Collarless cats don’t get the same kind of buffs that class-based cats do. They don’t get extra stats, and all of their abilities are neutral… which are generally quite a bit weaker than class-focused versions.

Imagine having a Collarless Cat on your team as another form of hard mode… and that’s on top of the difficulty modes the game already has! Mewgenics is all about challenge on top of challenge. But that doesn’t mean it can’t be done, you just need to get that noggin of yours pumping!

1 Breeding the Perfect Cat

There is no Prize to Perfection... Only an End to Pursuit

A perfect cat. That means something very different to different people. Do you want a regular cat with all 7 base stats? Do you want a highly mutated feline with outrageously high stats, regardless of whether it looks like an alien? Or do you just want something that looks super cute?

Perfect is going to mean something different to every person, but that’s what makes Mewgenics such a rich, deep experience. If you want to create that perfect house from before and then breed a team of highly skilled warriors, you can do that. Do you want abilities from various classes that break the game with ridiculous combos? Well, that’s another way to play, too.

Mewgenics doesn’t force you into a box. It gives you a world with loose rules and guidelines, telling you to run free and experiment. Some runs will test you, some will break you, and some will feel like you’re playing on easy mode.Your cat experiments might not always work, but you can always start with a fresh batch and try again.

Mewgenics is an unfinishable game, something with constant replayability, which is a rare thing indeed.