Mewgenics review: A game of two halves, Into The Breach-style strategy meets frustrating feline life-sim

David Staffell, 18 May 2026

We’ve all had those experiences where a ‘must-play’ accolade causes us to ignore our better judgement and, despite not enjoying it, attempt to play the same game multiple times, simply because the overwhelmingly positive reviews mean we must be missing something. The first game that ever happened to me was with Into the Breach. Not only was it resoundingly well-received, but it had all the hallmarks of a game I was going to enjoy: turn-based strategy with a roguelike loop to it; effectively ‘like a giant puzzle’, I’d seen it described. Sounds perfect! Three purchases and three subsequent begrudging returns later, I vowed that I would trust my first impressions moving forward.

So why I decided to pick up Mewgenics, I’m not really sure. It already had a significant handicap in my eyes: objectively questionable art, humour which is something not even my 12-year-old self would have found funny, and the fact that you’ll be hard-pressed to find an existing review that doesn’t compare it with Into the Breach. The answer is Ed McMillen, of course. His previous mega-smash, The Binding of Isaac, showcases one of the most deeply satisfying item power-up systems I’ve ever played, and so, wanting to see what he might have cooked up in the mammoth 14+ year development cycle, I jumped at the chance.

Mewgenics throws you right in at the deep end. After a very brief introduction on the ‘wonders’ of science, the madman NPC, Dr Beanies, asks you to pick two cats from a line-up of four: “Make sure you choose a boy and a girl,” he says. “You’ll find out why later.” (Hint: the answer is sex; it’s always sex). He makes you feel bad for not choosing the others, promptly murders them, and then it’s straight into the action. You’re then subjected to a short playable tutorial by another character, in which you fight some enemies, discover an item and encounter an event; essentially introducing you to all of the possible things you will do when sending your cats off on the ‘adventure’ portion of the game.

During the fight, you’re given a quick run-down of your cats’ stats. The classics feature: Health, Damage, Mana and Movement, which are all derived from Strength, Dexterity, Constitution, Intelligence, Speed, Charisma and Luck. Each cat also has a randomly assigned range of different attacks, spells and passive abilities, chosen randomly or selectively depending on the context, and naturally, the enemies do too. When it’s time to pick your cats later and send them off yourself, there are ways of boosting their stats in favour of the archetypes you want (Tank, Fighter, Mage, Hunter, Cleric, etc).

Combat is turn-based, represented by a rotating carousel of faces in the top right corner. If your cat gets knocked down in battle, they’re not dead forever, but just downed until the end of the battle, or until they get resurrected mid-fight. Though there is a third unfortunate option: once a cat is downed, their lifeless body can be destroyed forever and thus removed from the game, never to be recovered. I learned this the hard way several times before realising there was a separate counter above their heads to show how many hits they could take before this happened.

After finishing the tutorial, you return ‘home’ — a cross-sectioned layout of a house where you manage all the cats you will eventually take care of. This game is basically a crazy cat-woman simulator. Another NPC, your neighbour, apparently, explains this all to you, further mentioning that the cats you just battled with are now considered ‘retired’ and you may no longer send them off on another trip. That’s right: you only get to take your cats on one journey before they’re no longer of use to you in the field. From then on, they’ll wander around your house growing old, breeding if the conditions are suitable, dying if they’re not looked after, or, if you choose to, being sacrificed for the greater good.

Clicking ‘End Day’ whilst on the home screen causes the day to end, and with it a number of things occur: first, the guaranteed arrival of a stray cat on your doorstep the next morning, ready to do your bidding; secondly, a chance for cats of the same sex to fight; and thirdly, the chance for cats of different sexes to, of course, fornicate. Indeed, in this game, you are going to spend a good portion of your time watching your cats bump uglies in order to bring new offspring into this world, and the reason you want to do this is that you will need more cats… a LOT more cats.

Your neighbour briefly mentions newborn cats inheriting traits from their parents, but it took me a good 20 hours of gameplay before I realised that I could utilise this fact in my favour. I deduced this from the features available, but it wasn’t long before I realised that the game also teaches you this through unlocks.

Those unlocks come at the mercy of handing over your cats to one of the myriad utterly insane characters that live around the town. Each NPC only accepts cats of a certain type: they have to be over a certain age, retired, newborn or dead; Dr Beanies, for example, only wants cats with horrendous mutations. Who would have thought selective breeding could have negative consequences?? Once you’ve handed over a certain number of the poor, helpless creatures, the respective character will either unlock a helpful item or deliver a new nugget of information, both with the aim of improving your chances for future runs. Once you start gaining this new knowledge, you begin to understand that Mewgenics is very much a game of two halves, and unless you conquer the other half, you’ll be at the mercy of RNG for a painfully long time.

Remember that one time I mentioned your cats having sex? Well, there are ways of manipulating the odds of this happening, depending on how you kit your house out and where you place your cats before ending the day. Indeed, with the money you gain during your adventure, you can expand your house and purchase upgrades in the form of furniture and decor, either helping to make your house more appealing to the stray arrivals, or more comfortable for your cats to do the deed in. You can even force cats to fight to make sure the stronger get stronger, and the weaker get… eliminated… Sheesh, this game really does earn its title, doesn’t it?

It took me a while to truly understand the game. To be honest, I spent the first 10 hours feeling fairly apathetic towards it, but on reflection, that was mainly down to the fact that I wasn’t digesting the various tidbits of information I was being fed - unfortunately, I have a skill issue with the skill in question being reading. It was only when I had my first accidental OP synergy that everything suddenly made sense. One of my cats had an ability to give all her fellow teammates a buff if she picked it up, and alongside another’s power to hand out free Blessings (a power-up which mitigates all damage for one hit), I managed to create an infinite loop where I could make my entire team invincible.

Once it clicked, I had a real blast seeking out and learning all its intricacies – from the joy of getting to grips with the synergies between items and abilities, to the misery of not reading the tooltips on enemies and having my poor cats deleted from existence; watch out for the Shark-cat, yo! The game felt like a series of mini aha-moments as I slowly became aware of the terrifying depth of all the possible interactions. I had one particularly glorious Dwarf Fortress-esque moment when Tobias the cat accidentally licked a pile of poop, and suddenly his ear mutated, causing him to suddenly gain a destructively powerful passive ability which I had absolutely no control over.

That being said, as I mentioned, Mewgenics is a game of two halves, and it’s within the other half that I sort of just lost steam with the game. Each time I returned home, I felt increasingly frustrated by having to switch into management mode; endlessly breeding to find useful stats and abilities. 

When I was having fun with the game, I was really having fun, but when it started to feel like I was playing a feline version of The Sims, I sort of lost the desire to continue.  When I wasn’t out in the wild fighting and exploring, I was at home making purchases, rearranging the furniture and being subjected to the slog of watching my cats bonk, and that ain’t fun.