Mewgenics review: The great cat army

After many years in development, The Binding of Isaac creator Edmund McMillen and developer Tyler Glaiel have released Mewgenics, a turn-based tactics game in which players breed cats and then send them to war. It’s my latest obsession, and a game that I know I’ll be coming back to for years to come.

Cat combat

Under the tutelage of the eccentric Dr. Beanies, Mewgenics players are tasked with building an army of cats and sending them to fight in increasingly dangerous regions. It’s here that Mewgenics splits into two core gameplay loops: adventuring and breeding.

When you send cats out in parties of four, you can equip class collars that grant them unique abilities to use in combat. For example, the Fighter uses melee abilities to deal damage up close, while the Mage can hit enemies and alter the playing field from afar. As players progress through the game, they’ll earn additional class collars, like the Necromancer and Druid.

Each cat’s performance is determined by its abilities. Strength, Dexterity, Constitution, Speed, Intelligence, and Luck influence practically everything a cat does, and equipping specific class collars can alter these stats. Stats can also be impacted by genetics, but, more on that later.

Combat plays out in a turn-based format on a square-shaped grid. When your kitties are up, you can move them around and have them attack or aid other units. Enemies will do the same, and you’ll have to be thoughtful in all of your decisions to win the tougher battles. With that, it’s frustrating that your cat pathways are automated. When selecting a tile you want a cat to move to, the game sets the path on its own, which sometimes means stepping on a trap or walking through a tile of poison instead of going around it. In a game where one point of damage could be the difference between success and failure, players should have the option to route custom paths, even if it means sacrificing overall distance traveled.

As you progress through each area, you’ll battle groups of enemies, mini bosses, and bosses as you collect money and food to take back home. Once a level is cleared, you can choose to go home or keep adventuring, weighing the risk of more loot with the possibility of getting wiped and losing it all.

Mewgenics’ combat is simply brilliant. The variety and randomness in cat-building means that no two felines are the same, creating essentially endless permutations of all the skills and abilities. Twenty, thirty, and forty hours into my playthrough, I was having eureka moments when the right item, passive, and active ability would line up.

Early on, you’ll likely spend most of your turns attacking enemies and healing your cats. Standard stuff. But as you learn enemy behavior patterns, start collecting items, and interact with the environment, you’ll discover some absolutely insane strategies. From status effects to field hazards and elemental effects, there are so many systems at play that all interact with each other in exciting ways. I learned my lesson in the Sewers when I hit an enemy with a lightning bolt attack, only to damage all of my nearby kitties, each of whom had the wet condition. You’ll constantly run into unintended consequences as you experiment with builds, but it’s all part of the fun and discovery. Even as I write this review, I’m confident that I haven’t even scratched the surface when it comes to strategic depth.

This is all made more intense by the fact that Mewgenics is a roguelike with permadeath. If your party gets wiped during a run, they’re dead. They, and most of their equipped items, are lost forever. This leads to some absolutely heartbreaking moments when a downed cat is finished for good, and you know you’ll have to finish a run without it. Conversely, there’s no greater feeling than wrapping up a run with all of your cats still alive and ready to pass down their stats and abilities.

Animal engineering

When your cats successfully complete an adventure, they retire. You’ll need to send fresh felines out for your next adventure, but luckily, these veteran cats can still be useful through breeding! Every night, your male and female cats have a chance to do the deed and produce a kitten. Not only will this kitty share visual traits from its parents, but it’ll also inherit their stats! By donating kitties to neighborhood characters, you can upgrade your house with additional rooms and furniture that helps set the mood.

I don’t think I was ready for how involved a management sim Mewgenics would be in between the actual adventures. There’s a true science to decorating each room so that it encourages breeding, and then putting the cats with the best stats in that room together. If comfort levels aren’t high enough, cats won’t breed. If they’re too low, they’ll fight, suffer injuries, and potentially die. Strays will show up periodically, offering a necessary shakeup to your gene pool. After several hours of playing, I unlocked the ability to see the lineage of each of my cats, revealing that a concerning percentage of them were inbred and had worse stats as a result. Cats can also develop traits like cancer, autism, and dyslexia.

This all combines to create a gameplay loop that’s just as compelling as the actual adventures. I cheered like a sicko as my high strength cats engaged in coitus and produced a formidable kitten. I felt a sting of emotions when my best cats grew old and died. When I realized that one of my current kittens was the great great great great grandson of one of my favorite cats, I couldn’t help but smile. You get emotionally invested in your cats, and then get to watch them explode into a pile of blood and guts when they get killed in battle. It’s great.

Crude kitties

If you’re familiar with McMillen’s previous work, you won’t be shocked by Mewgenics’ rigid, intentionally off-putting art style. The same goes for the game’s sense of humor, which primarily revolves around poop jokes and sexual innuendoes. It’s a game that delights in the nastiness, which I’m sure will deter some players. I wasn’t bothered by it. In fact, it reminded me of the years I spent playing the weird flash games that cropped up in the 2000s.

Perhaps the most surprisingly awesome aspect of Mewgenics—even with all of its great gameplay design—is the soundtrack. Each level has its own theme, and during the boss battle, you hear a version of the song with lyrics. Every single song is a banger, with unexpected genre mashups and lyrics that made me chuckle as I sent my cats into battle. I’ve had the lines “I’m a chumbucket kitty baby living in the city” stuck in my head on loop for the last two weeks. I can’t help but blurt our “where’s that smell coming from?” in the middle of conversation. Nobody knows what I’m talking about when I yell “AL-I-EN CRATER FE-LINE IN-VADER.” To experience the Mewgenics soundtrack is a beautiful blessing and a curse.

Cat calls

Mewgenics is a masterclass in tactics game design. Strong enough to stand on its own, that gameplay loop is complemented by an in-depth management sim and roguelike elements that ensure no two runs feel the same. Just as The Binding of Isaac continued to grow and peel back its layers over the years, I expect Mewgenics to have a long tail. In the meantime, I’ll be over here trying to breed a cat with a seven rating on all stats.

Donovan Erskine

News Editor

Donovan is a journalist from Maryland. His oldest gaming memory is playing Pajama Sam on his mom's desktop during weekends. Pokémon Emerald, Halo 2, and the original Star Wars Battlefront 2 were some of the most influential titles in awakening his love for video games. After interning for Shacknews throughout college, Donovan graduated from Bowie State University in 2020 with a major in broadcast journalism and joined the team full-time. He is a huge film fanatic and will talk with you about movies and games all day. You can follow him on twitter @Donimals_