My cat is sleeping in a chair next to me. His eyes open as I notice him, and he blinks slowly and yawns. A perfect little boy. The cutest cat I ever did see. And then I look back at the screen. A wave of guilt takes over me as I resume playing Mewgenics. If my cat knew half the things that happened in this game, he’d probably be very disappointed with me. It’s vulgar. It’s disgusting. It involves some of the most deplorable things you can do with cats, packaged as an unfortunately fun videogame.
Not unlike the professor from PowerPuff Girls, in this game, you can create cats with superpowers. Mewgenics, as the name suggests, involves the idea of breeding cats to build the most powerful army of them. The game consists of two distinct phases. Phase One is at home. Home for you is a veritable ‘catio’. Furnished with cat trees, cans, cardboard boxes, cat food — what have you. At home is where you must pick and choose the cats you want to keep and breed. Others will be donated or thrown into a bin. Dominant traits can be bred. And with some luck, some good superpowers may be passed along. Phase Two happens in the creepy zones that cats go to at night. Dark alleyways, caves, sewers. All the dingy spaces where outdoor cats go on nightly adventures, often keeping entire neighbourhoods awake. Here, they fight against a variety of strange enemies. There are other cats, of course. But there are also rats, spiders, and swamp monsters.
Fights happen in a turn-based grid map. One of your cats takes a turn, then the enemy takes a turn, and so on. Each of your cats belongs to a different character class — and many of these unlock as you head further in the game. Combat sequences in the game involve some really smart tactical style gameplay. I always feel a bit clever finishing up enemies in the least possible number of rounds. As if I were some blitz chess Grand Master.
Now, you may wonder, none of these descriptions of the game actually sound all that vulgar or disgusting. Fighting and screaming through the night are all normal cat things, right? Well. There’s obviously more to Mewgenics. Have you sat idly by as a cat’s limbs breaks and he groans a tiny little meow? Or worse, just throw him a tiny baggy of catnip so he can continue attacking a monster while putting his life in mortal danger? Have you intentionally put two cats together in one room so they can give birth to a genetically superior little kitty the next day? If at least one of these doesn’t sound morally reprehensible and disgusting to you as a videogame concept, and if you enjoy the very coarse animation style of cartoons from the 90s, then you may not have a visceral reaction to Mewgenics.
But maybe I’m missing the point here. Maybe Mewgenics wants you to have a reaction to all of these visual elements. It wants you to feel disgusted when one of the enemies fart and sends out fumes of poisonous gas. It revels in being a bit edgy and gross. And if this is your thing, then I have no doubt that you will absolutely love Mewgenics and willingly spend hours and hours on it. Only, I will make it very clear — you will end up spending way more hours than you would expect. The grind is a part of the full experience, and you will end up beating the same levels at least 20 separate times before you get sufficient upgrades that let you breeze through the rest of the game.
Another warning to a future Mewgenics professor is this — this game detests cheesing (aka cheap tactics to win). I know, because I tried a few of them. First, the game doesn’t allow you to take the same cat out on multiple nightly runs. A cat has one adventure, and that’s all they get. They are a retired cat after that, only fit for breeding to create superior versions of themselves. You can’t get very attached to little Mewmew from run number 1. Second, the game hates it if you quit a battle midway. A strange man will come on your screen the next time you open the game and warn you against the dangerous consequences of cheating this way. It’s a really weird game, and it’s quite funny in its own odd ways.
Mewgenics is currently available only on Windows and is best played with a keyboard and mouse. It’s not yet very optimised for the controller. I rate the game 9 cat lives out of 10.