Mewgenics is weird, completely chaotic and it's out now

Mewgenics from Edmund McMillen and Tyler Glaiel is officially out now, and it will absolutely annihilate your free time. Disclosure: a key was provided to GamingOnLinux.

There's no getting around the excitement (and weirdness) on this one. Coming from the creators of The Binding of Isaac, Super Meat Boy, Closure and The End Is Nigh — you didn't expect something even remotely normal from them right? It's far from it in all the right ways. Expect lots of poop.

Science! It reminds me of that famous quote from Jurassic Park: "Your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, that they didn't stop to think if they should". Except we're not screwing around with the DNA of dinos here, instead we're creating some of the most insane combinations of things somewhat resembling a cat that you can imagine.

What actually is it? Breeding cat armies is the name of the game here. A curiously chaotic blending of different genres centred around two core pillars: cat breeding and turn-based tactical battles with a whole lot of options on the table.

You get a small bit of set-up with a short tutorial that shows you waking up to a mad scientist grinning at you telling you to pick two starting cats and some odd scientist chatter about changing the world or something with cats. Freaky. Then you're abruptly kicked out, so off into the world to go. Here you go through a short beginner adventure with someone else the mad scientist kicked out before that teaches you the very basics. But you're very quickly left to figure out the rest as you go.

You go through adventures that see you picking nodes on a map split between different types of normal battles, encounters, shops and boss battles. When you've finished a run you head home with whatever money, items and food you gathered. Cats that have been through one adventure are then automatically retired, and cannot go adventuring again.

To actually go on an adventure, you need to have enough cats (4 total). Thankfully, those oldies may end up getting a bit frisky making little kittens during the night to help you expand your roster. These fresh kittens can pull elements from their parents for their abilities and stats, and they need a day to grow up before they can be sent on an adventure. Weird stray cats will also appear at your house with their own unique stats, which you can grab and bring them inside and that loop continues. So having enough is never usually an issue unless you're terrible at the combat (like me!).

If you don't have enough cats, you just end your day until you do acquire more cats and fill your house full of them. However, this is where resources come in as each cat eats 1 food per day so you have to be quite stocked up.

Managing your house is also a big part of the game, as you need to keep your feline friends comfy which you'll learn as you go through the game on what works and what your cats like. This includes adding new items into your house as you expand it.

As for the combat it plays out very much like other turn-based tactical strategy games. You get a small area to move through tiles, to line up your attacks and abilities based on their tile range. Some cats need to get up close and personal, while others attack from across the map. You also deal more damage if you get behind enemies. It's a fair bit like Into The Breach but with a much wider variety but equally as consuming of your attention.

Enemies can be all sorts including cats, flies, maggots, fleas and more. And of course, you're not the only one with abilities, many enemies you face have some truly annoying attacks to overcome.

When it comes to your own kitty crew you have a mixture of basic abilities and spells to activate, along with various passives and they're all individual to each cat. You can fire off a spell as many times as you can afford with mana, which you gain each turn (or from items you pick up and equip to them). So at times, stocking up on mana to fire off lots of one attack in a later turn can be a good idea. You also have classes, which are given to cats by equipping them with collars before your run starts. Cats will even level up during runs as well allowing them to get stronger while you pick from new active and passive abilities.

The combat system has a number of layers to it. Each cat has their own health, they can be downed and eventually die permanently. Running out of health during a fight is not critical, as they're just downed - but they will get various debuff effects from getting downed. However, something that's a little painful and heartbreaking (if you get attached to their abilities…) is that downed cats can still be hit during a battle (even by friendly fire) and be permanently killed during the fight.

Even more additional things to think about - items! You acquire all sorts during an adventure, with the ability to buy more from shops during and after a run as well. Some of them can be quite powerful, others not so much but the added variety here really adds to just how much there is in the game.

The mixture of abilities really is awesome here. There's just so many of them and often quite hilarious, like one cat I had that could "Butt Scoot" to move an extra tile while leaving behind an (ergh!) maggot familiar to fight for you. Another had the ability to do a "Forbidden Fart" that would poison enemies, knock back nearby units and additionally a note that it has a "permanent consequence" for using it too. Since this is a game of science, I had to use that in my very next adventure to see what insanity it would unleash.

Forbidden Fart was actually pretty hilarious, and a new favourite just for the hilarity of seeing it in action. Although, my cat gained an unfortunate kamikaze effect from using it, whereby they would explode if they're downed — oh no! Can't let poor Jarah explode, I need them! Using it again, and another unfortunate effect, as it gave poor Jarah depression bringing their stats down. I don't think I'll be using that ability again with a future cat unless it's a true emergency…as unfortunately Jarah didn't live long on account of the kamikaze in a later battle.

So many abilities like that you end up thinking, "oh damn, that's now my favourite thing ever!" and later you find something even funnier or just outright crazy for what combos they enable.

The maps themselves can be a little dangerous and challenging to work through as well, especially in later levels. There's all sorts of hazards that will appear including spikes to damage you, water that slows you down, water that has currents that will keep moving you and enemies around, harpoons that pull you in and so much more. Dealing with the map conditions on top of enemies and all their abilities together makes it a thorough challenge. The worst enemy though? Miss-clicks. God damn, the amount of times I accidentally clicked an empty tile and wasted an action - frustrating. However, there is actually a setting in the options you can enable to force targeting empty tiles to require a double click (which I think should be enabled by default but never mind…).

The enemy AI isn't particularly smart at times though, in fact it can be pretty stupid - which is both a blessing and a curse. They can, and will, walk over all sorts of map tiles hurting themselves like spikes and fire (even their own traps). But they're also quite good at using their abilities to screw you over too. It's all on you to use every single tile and ability to your own advantage to block enemies, punch them into each other, set up traps and more. Easier said than done with all the different ways abilities work together, and enemies using combo attacks and you might find quite a number of runs abruptly end will all your cats gone. Still, I would like to see some improvements there, as I've won a few fights purely because the enemy repeatedly walked into all of their own traps every turn.

I think the most frustrating thing is that some of the battles feel a bit unbalanced, especially with enemy actions (mostly certain boss encounters). They can move around a lot, and it gets pretty punishing and at times literally impossible if you don't have the right team ability combinations. Especially so when a couple of your cats have been downed, and the enemy at times just has turn after turn while you sit waiting.

Something you'll gradually discover more of are all the elemental systems - leading to even more ability experimentation. This includes fire, ice, lightning, water and probably others I'm forgetting. One particular boss at the start is quite a nuisance dropping bombs constantly that spreads fire, but not a big problem with one of my cats I bred that takes a pee around themselves to create water tiles - ideal for putting out fires. Lots and lots of fun mechanics like that to discover. Not just from abilities but overall weather effects during your run will affect the outcome too. Wind might keep pushing you during a battle, lighting may strike water you're in electrifying it and more.

The events can be quite funny and there's a really nice mixture of themes, like a trash can that one of your team just cannot resist. Because of course, cats sure do love trash. Others can be a real nuisance and cause all your cats to receive negative effects, some give you rather useful items, you might even find another cat to join you and more. There's quite a lot. Some are instant, some need you to make a choice where outcomes will depend on the stats of the cat that discovers it.

To give you a good example of how absurd it is. One of the events was basically a cat orgy, and yes I allowed my cat to join in. Bad idea? Well, they got dysentery and sometimes make a burning poop during combat - not entirely sure if that was a win or not.

Back at home though, you end up building up quite an assortment of cats. Some of which have pretty terrible stats, that could end up bringing down your team when they breed or just be completely useless in a fight. Thankfully, you can send them packing down a mysterious pipe to get rid of them. You get to pick a few places to send them through this pipe like the trash to just get rid of them, or Frank's Sewer to get some bonus additions for your house and other places with other types of bonuses. There's also a weird zombie living in a box that steals your name, who collects your dead cats in exchange for a resource you can pick. These vendors are a big key in your progression, as you'll be sending lots of cats down that pipe to unlock and reveal more.

There's other problems - one day your crew of cats are screwing to make kittens, the next they're fighting. Because of course they'll fight. A house filled with cats you breed along with strays, there's bound to be issues. Fights can result in debuffs like concussion, or even death. Especially annoying when it's a cat you really liked for their stats and abilities and overall craziness. So you have to keep them separated into specific rooms since you can eventually expand your house. It's a fair amount of trial, error and experimentation though but that's part of the fun.

One issue I will note is the lack of certain accessibility features. For example: when docking a Legion Go or Steam Deck to a TV, it was quite difficult to actually see a lot of the enemies (especially in the sewer), with so much grey on grey (and just similar dark colouring in lots of places). Even when sat much closer at a PC, the contrast between enemies and backgrounds can sometimes be a problem. There is a tactical view mode where you can hold a button down to turn everything into plain blocks, which can really help but it ruins part of the fun of seeing the gruesome style of it. I really hope they include some additional accessibility options in future to help with that, like simple red outlines for enemies or something you can toggle on. Aside from that there are settings for things like tooltip sizing, status bar sizing and you can entirely remove certain graphical features like noise & grain / vignette.

Lots more to the game I'm not covering here simply because there's just so much of it, the game just keeps on expanding constantly and I also really don't want to directly spoil a lot for you here. Part of the true entertainment in this one is just seeing how it gets increasingly absurd as you go through it. Just be prepared to spend a lot of hours with it.

Overall, the game has begun to take over my life. From the catchy tunes that loop over in my head and all the silly cat voices, to my life now requiring I go for one more run in it to see what kind of crazy cat combinations I can come up with. Truly horrible for your free time because it's just so engrossing. Thankfully, you can save and quit a run any time so you're not locked into anything which is great.

The game runs perfectly with no issues to note when using Proton 10 on Fedora KDE. It is also Steam Deck Verified. The majority of my time was spent with it was on Desktop Linux, but I also put a good few hours in on my Lenovo Legion Go with Bazzite and it runs really well there as well. Where it falls a bit short is the gamepad controls as they're not ideal but serviceable. I noticed sometimes the gamepad controls with shoulder buttons and Dpad seemed to get a bit stuck and confused swapping between the UI buttons during battle, so most of the time you'll end up using the thumbstick like a mouse pointer.

Despite a few annoyances I've no doubt will be solved — Mewgenics is an absolute must buy. There's so much here that it will keep you going for 100s of hours to discover it all and it will nicely fill those hours quite full, it's just too easy to keep coming back to it.

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