MEWGENICS
Imperative claws: this tactical RPG could be a modern miaow-sterpiece
Developer/publisher
Edmund McMillen, Tyler Glaiel
Format
PC
Origin
US
Release
2024
Clark, the tank of our four-strong cat crew, walks into an alleyway to prompt a random event. Watching us play their game over Discord, Edmund McMillen and Tyler Glaiel react with unfettered delight at what happens next. “It’s a meteor shower!” McMillen says, cackling gleefully. An equally surprised Glaiel reveals he’s been playing Mewgenics for “hundreds of hours” and hasn’t seen this event play out during a run before: “This is a very rare one”. It’s new to McMillen, too. As we move onto the next node on the map, there’s real anticipation in his voice as he tells us that “it’s time to fight a mini-boss… in the middle of a meteor shower!” Immediately, he realises something else: after an earlier battle, we chose a new ability for Clark whereby her caterwauling would cause any rocks on a stage to shoot in a straight line towards enemy units. “Oh, man, this is going to be great with Rock Song,” he says, laughing. “I’ve never seen this – this is going to be utter hell!”
It is the job of any creator to talk up their game when demoing it to the press, but this elated response is entirely unforced: the two development partners have crammed so many ideas into their latest project that every so often it throws up something that stops them in their tracks. Over the course of the next two hours, it becomes clear why McMillen was so keen to revisit a project that was first announced in 2012 – though back then it was a very different kind of game. “The initial idea,” he explains, “was just something that I thought was so interesting. It was a kind of breeding simulation. Instead of this, it was Pokémon-style turn-based fighting. You’d breed your cats, they’d have different abilities, and then you’d fight them against a slew of other cats, Pokémon style.”