2012 feels like a lifetime ago here in the present day. 2012 was the year of Gangnam Style, it was when London hosted the Olympic Games, and according to the Mayan calendar the world was supposed to end. In gaming we had the end of the Mass Effect trilogy dividing opinion, Telltale’s The Walking Dead taking the world by storm, and the somewhat underwhelming launch of the Wii U. Since 2012 I’ve moved house eight times, to the point that I can’t even work out where I lived and slept all those years ago. 2012 is also the year that Edmund McMillan announced Mewgenics, and now fourteen years on it’s finally here.
Mewgenics is a Roguelike where you breed cats, and take those cats out into the world to fight tactical battles against various mutants, monsters and forces of evil. Once they’ve succeeded in a run and come back to the house, you can place them in rooms of your house and hope they pass on their fighting prowess and horrific deformities onto their offspring. This loop continues as you unlock all sorts of new areas and challenges to overcome, and if you’re anything like me you’ll never want to put the game down.
The tactics style combat is simple to understand at a glance, but has a massive amount of depth lurking under the surface. Before you leave the house you’ll need to put collars on each of your cats, and these will turn them into different classes. Especially early on I’d make sure to have a balanced team made up of close combat fighters, rangers and mages for distance fighting, and of course a cleric to keep everyone healthy. With over ten classes though you’ll soon realise there are loads of different synergies and combos to work towards, and like so much of Mewgenics experimentation is key.
Each fight takes place on that familiar tactics grid, and units take turns using their abilities until only one side is left healthy. All your kitties can move and use a basic attack once a turn, and also have a selection of special abilities that cost mana. As long as you’ve got the mana you can keep using skills, which means that especially if you save up that blue meter you can unleash hell on tough foes. With each class capable of using 75 unique skills no two runs ever feel even remotely similar, and you’ll need to use your noggin to find new synergies every time you play.
Alongside these skills each cat also has a bunch of passive abilities that really change the game. Some of these are simple like making critical hits deal more damage, others require more effort to take advantage of. One of my favourite early runs featured one cat that spawned a weak friendly maggot every turn, and they partnered up perfectly with my cleric who dealt massive holy damage to enemies who killed any of his allies. Throughout the run I found plenty of ways to gather extra minions by giving my cats fleas and worms, and by the end of the run the battlefield was flooded with pests that easily overwhelmed even the toughest of bosses.
The boss fights in Mewgenics are probably my favourite part of the game. Each of these tough foes you face require entirely different strategies to overcome, be they an alleycat who drops bear traps everywhere or a pair of blind bumholes who automatically spray poison ahead of them when attacked. There are so many of these unique enemies too, and based on your team you’ll need to approach them all differently.
When all the different systems of Mewgenics combine in novel and even hilarious ways the game truly shines. One of the most ridiculous early runs I had featured a warrior cat with no intelligence, who couldn’t read when he was presented with a choice on his adventure. One random event he encountered was a pile of poo blocking the path, and with only nonsense options to choose from I apparently told him to eat the poo. This made him scatalogical, and this poo obsession meant he rushed to eat poo every turn and I was unable to control his movement. I also gave him a poo hat which I didn’t realise made him take a dump every turn, which meant an endless supply of shit that made him effectively useless in battle. This stupid situation was just one of many you’ll encounter in your hundreds of hours with the game, making every day a smelly school day.
Outside of the deep and delightful tactics combat, you’ll spend the rest of your time at home breeding cats and upgrading your house. You can’t just tell two cats to pound it out and make a baby though, instead you need to place them in rooms and just sort of hope the magic happens. As rooms fill up you never really know if cats will breed or fight, and you’ll either wake up to a bundle of joy or a cracked rib.
I must admit that at first I felt a bit lost in the breeding side of the game, but you’re drip fed more and more information about how to best create powerful warrior felines. You also always have new ways to upgrade the homestead, by giving various colourful characters different types of cats.
You’ll be granted new rooms, upgraded stores and even new classes by giving injured cats to one shopkeeper and kittens to the flamboyant fella in the caravan. The sense of progression is seriously satisfying, especially when combined with your constantly growing knowledge of all the wonderful systems. Despite the amount of depth and thought you can put into this game, Mewgenics is anything but serious.
You probably gathered that from the excessive poo discussion earlier, but there are also all those weird, grotesque and hilarious enemy designs that McMillan is known for at this point. The soundtrack is seriously funny too, with tracks that repeat “Where’s that smell coming from?” as you fight poo in the sewers. Pretty much every song is a serious earworm, and I must say I wasn’t expecting this cat breeding Roguelike to have such a banging soundtrack.
Mewgenics is quite possibly the most impressive tactics game I’ve ever played, with a ridiculous amount of depth and so many strategies and synergies to uncover as you play. The fact that such a thoughtful and expertly crafted game is hidden amongst faeces and parasites only makes me love it more, and I know it’ll take years for me to uncover all the nuggets of gold in this delicious pile of tactical excrement. After fourteen years of patiently waiting I can confirm that Mewgenics was worth the wait, and will be a game I’m playing and talking about for a very long time.
