Games

Thats because they made a review a week ago

Mewgenics purrfectly balances crass humor with brilliant tactics

Mewgenics is perhaps the most ridiculous venture from Binding of Isaac developer Edmund McMillen yet, and I mean that in a very complimentary way. It’s part turn-based tactics game, part roguelite, and part, uh, cat breeding simulator? Sure! The overall game loop itself is fairly simple: send cats on combat excursions to collect food and coins, level them up, then bring them back home to breed even better fighters for next time. If you think that sounds ridiculous, you’re completely right, and it absolutely rules.

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.