Mewgenics Review – Cat Tactics, Breeding Chaos and Roguelite Bliss
Mewgenics is Edmund McMillen and Tyler Glaiel's turn-based roguelite about breeding weird cats and sending them on tactical adventures. Deep, bizarre, often hilarious — and dangerously replayable.
I came for the cats and stayed for the chaos. Mewgenics takes a ridiculous core idea — breed the strangest squad of felines imaginable — and turns it into a densely packed tactical roguelite that constantly surprises. If you liked Final Fantasy Tactics’ positioning puzzles or the gleeful item mayhem of Binding of Isaac, you’ll find familiar pleasures here, but Mewgenics has its own twisted personality: genetic tinkering, emergent bugs that become strategies, and a soundtrack that sticks to your brain. It’s equal parts strategy toybox and absurd comedy, and I’ve already lost hours to both the combat and the house.
The Cat Loop: Tactical Runs and Domestic Chaos
On paper you outfit a squad from your roving cat horde, slap collars on them (Fighter, Tank, Mage and more) and send them into grid-based encounters — but in practice every run becomes a tiny soap opera with tactical fireworks. Combat is turn-based, position-heavy and surprisingly fast once you get used to the rhythm; fights reward flanking, clever environmental uses (push a foe into a spiked barrel? yes please) and combo chains that read like little puzzles. With hundreds of abilities and items the game avoids feeling repetitive: one run I leaned into bleed damage and traps, the next I accidentally built a crit-mage that solved rooms before my opponents took a turn. The pacing is generous: early runs teach you the basics without yammering tutorials, and then the systems open up until you’re optimizing breeding trees and item synergies like a mad scientist. Expect tactical satisfaction, plus frequent moments where the game’s grotesque humor makes you audibly gasp or laugh.
How Genes Turn Into Gameplay: Breeding and Broken Lineages
Breeding is not a cosmetic gimmick—it's the backbone of your long-term progression. Cats bring scars, mutations and abilities back to the house, and when they mate those traits can compound in gloriously horrific ways: extra heads, stat quirks, odd passive interactions and sometimes, yes, incestuous loops that make you laugh and then slightly uncomfortable. There’s real depth in choosing what to keep and what to feed to NPCs for upgrades; I found myself agonizing over whether a cute kitten with a distracting mutation was worth sacrificing for a permanent house improvement. The system lets you tinker: create bloodlines for specific roles, pass down crucial passives, and deliberately engineer combos. It’s equal parts creative tool and emergent sandbox — meaning you will invent strategies the devs never explicitly designed, and occasionally break the run in ways that are more joyful than game-ruining.
A Chaotic, Lovable Presentation
Graphically Mewgenics wears its McMillen heritage proudly: thick lines, expressive sprites and absurd animations that often lean into gross-out comedy. The UI can feel cramped or hard to read at times — I’d actually like bigger fonts and a clearer combat log — but the art and animation sell every ridiculous moment, from cats eating bosses whole to unexpected body horror mutations. Sound and music are standout features: the soundtrack is catchy, campy and somehow perfect for the tone, while the SFX make every meow and splat impactful. Performance on Windows was solid in my sessions; the game feels polished but not afraid to be messy on purpose. Accessibility options could use expansion (more UI scaling, clearer text contrast) but the game’s controls and pacing do a good job of welcoming newcomers to turn-based tactics while still having serious depth for experts.
Mewgenics is a triumph of weirdness and systems design: equal parts twisted comedy, toybox of tactics and long-term breeding obsession. It’s not perfect — the UI and occasional exploitability could use polish — but those flaws rarely blot out the joy of discovering a new combo or engineering a terrible, wonderful bloodline. If you like tactical depth, emergent chaos, and cats that will ruin and make your day in equal measure, this is a must-buy.
Pros
- Deep, emergent tactical combat with huge variety of abilities and items
- Breeding system that creates memorable, bizarre bloodlines and long-term goals
- Fantastic soundtrack and distinctive art that sells the tone
- Endless replayability and emergent stories — every run tells something new
Cons
- Occasional UI readability issues and need for better accessibility options
- Some balance oddities and exploit-y interactions can trivialize encounters
- Gross-out humor may not be everyone’s cup of tea
Player Opinion
Players are gushing — and rightly so. Reviews praise the game’s depth, soundtrack and the creative freedom the breeding system offers; many compare it to Final Fantasy Tactics, Binding of Isaac and Into the Breach in tone or mechanical DNA. Common praise centers on emergent synergies, the number of unique abilities and the addictive loop of breeding-and-running. Criticisms are consistent too: a few users call out UI clarity issues, request an undo button and note some balance exploits and readability problems. A recurring theme is community excitement: players are discovering hilarious bugs, unexpected combos and inventing their own goals, and many say they’ve already sunk dozens (or hundreds) of hours. If you like tactical games that reward tinkering, the community consensus seems to be: buy this, don’t look up spoilers, and prepare to lose track of time.