Mewgenics

The game

You raise cats in a house, choose which ones breed, then send groups of four into turn-based battles. Cats that survive pass their traits, mutations and sometimes illnesses on to the next generation. According to Nicalis’ press release, you can also sequester specific cats and decorate their space with items that affect their comfort and health. The console versions include all the content of the PC version. The game offers French text.

The Steam page warns of blood, dismemberment, excrement, cats humping each other (which can be disabled in the settings) and swearing.

What the press says (PC reviews)

Reviews are very enthusiastic. PC Gamer (92/100) calls it a sprawling, ridiculous and endlessly surprising roguelike. IGN (9/10) stresses the huge amount of content: its reviewer was still seeing new enemies, skills and mutations after more than 150 hours. Loot Level Chill (10/10) says the game was worth fourteen years of waiting. Critical Hits and Tryhard Guides give it 10/10, Eurogamer.de 5/5 and Multiplayer.it 9.5/10.

Randomness is the main downside. IGN notes that many skills and attributes are randomised and largely out of your control, forcing you to improvise. PC Gamer finds it genuinely frustrating when things go wrong, especially as runs can easily last an hour or more.

Our reading

The seven PC reviews range from 9/10 to 10/10. Mewgenics is for tactics and roguelike fans willing to accept a lot of randomness and very crude humour. The console versions, released in September, are not covered by these reviews. The displayed average is computed by the site from the seven PC scores.