Around the 30-hour mark of playing Mewgenics, I found myself in a strange domain deep within the bowels of a cave. My team of cats, armed to the teeth with pistols, serrated blades, bone trinkets, and even a rocket launcher and the Necronomicon, had just defeated a gargantuan zombie boss that kept attacking their home. Each encounter with the zombie behemoth, Guillotina, yielded a quest item that made subsequent runs more difficult. Finally, after the third bout and multiple painstaking attempts, I made it to the end of the zone… or so I thought.
To my horror, I realized that I was nowhere close to the end. Worse, the cat that had the quest item equipped had to be sacrificed on an altar made of flesh and veins. Needless to say, the rest of my team did not survive the gauntlet of battles that came afterward. Initially, I felt too demoralized to continue playing. Then, I remembered that I still had a dozen cats back home with lightning spells, magic missiles, lifesteal, and even one with a Hadouken fireball. “All is well,” I told myself. “I’m ready for one more run.”
Mewgenics, the brainchild of Edmund McMillen and Tyler Glaiel, the developers of critically-acclaimed games The Binding of Isaac and The End is Nigh, is an incredibly complex roguelite game. Part management sim where you breed cats in a home, and part turn-based tactical RPG where cats battle hordes of enemies, it might just be one of the best games in the genre I’ve played in recent years, owing to its unparalleled depth. Its whimsical presentation is like a fever dream come to life and each playthrough has you praying to the RNG gods knowing that it’s likely a fruitless endeavor. But when the stars align, that’s when the magic truly happens and you can shout in triumph… until your next run, that is.
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