Mewgenics Review – The Brutal Cat Roguelite That Broke My Heart (And I Loved It)

Platform Reviewed On: PC (Steam Deck)

Introduction

I love creative indie games. I love roguelites. I love roguelikes.

So when I heard there was a cat-battling, tactical roguelite with a genetic breeding system, I knew I had to play it.

What I didn’t know was that this game would break my heart repeatedly — and that I’d enjoy the bitter taste of defeat while it did.

Enter Mewgenics.

I never played The Binding of Isaac. I’ve always heard great things, but the zany aesthetic never fully pulled me in. Which makes it funny that Mewgenics, from the same creative DNA, absolutely hooked me. Within hours, I found myself thinking: Damn… should I have played Isaac?

Because this game has that same chaotic genius energy — just filtered through grimy alleyways, jazz soundtracks, and cats that absolutely will die on you.

Narrative

The story is sparse and mostly serves as a vehicle for its systems.

You awaken after being resuscitated by a mad scientist. He hands you three cats and tells you to choose two. After a brief tutorial, you’re sent into the neighborhood to build your feline war machine.

The humor is dark. Crude. Sometimes brilliant. Sometimes a miss. You either buy into the weirdness or you don’t. There were moments where I laughed out loud — and others where I felt like I wasn’t in on the joke.

But ultimately, the narrative isn’t the point.

The point is breeding a genetically superior cat army and sending them into battle.

Gameplay

At its core, Mewgenics is a tactical roguelite with shockingly deep systems.

You control a squad of up to four cats in grid-based, turn-based combat that honestly scratches a similar itch to a streamlined Baldur’s Gate 3 — just furrier and far more chaotic.

Each cat comes preloaded with seven core stats:

Strength (melee damage), Dexterity (ranged damage), Constitution (HP & regen), 

Intelligence (mana regen), Speed (initiative & movement), Charisma (max mana) and Luck (critical rolls & chance events). 

Classes are assigned via collars, which modify stats and grant abilities. And here’s the twist — you don’t fully know what a cat will become until you lock it in. Synergy is unpredictable. Sometimes you create a monster build. Sometimes you create dead weight. And dead weight gets culled.

Combat & Runs

Runs span three acts, branching like Slay the Spire with combat nodes, events, shops, mini-bosses, and bosses.

Combat has layers. Lots of them. Status conditions. Injuries. Jinxes. Over 900 items. Random skill checks. Brutal RNG events.

Every system interacts with another. Nothing exists in isolation.

Cats get injured mid-run and carry those limitations forward. Resources that cure these are scarce. Luck can make you feel unstoppable — or completely ruin you.

I remember thinking I was about to dog-walk the entire alley with my stacked squad. 

Ten minutes later? Every kitten was dead. RIP Team Lick Lick.

The Breeding System (Yes… That One)

Between runs, the real madness begins.

Retired cats return home to breed. Genetics matter. Furniture affects comfort levels. Comfort affects breeding rates. Overcrowding leads to fights. Fights lead to death.

You can:

• Add furniture to increase comfort.
• Donate cats to NPCs.
• Move them between rooms.
• Strategically mate cats for better stat combinations.

The animations are… crude. You’ve been warned.

This is not a cozy cat game.

These cats are not for loving. They’re for lobbing onto a battlefield long enough to survive, retire, and pass down superior genes.

That didn’t stop me from getting attached.

And every time one died? It hit like a Pokémon Nuzlocke run gone wrong.

Difficulty & Philosophy

Most roguelites let you get attached to your characters.

Mewgenics tells you to steel your heart.

Low-stat cats are liabilities. You spend them like currency. You keep the best of the litter. You optimize.

It’s ruthless. The learning curve is steep. Early runs can feel overwhelming because of how many systems are layered together. But once it clicks? It becomes dangerously addictive.

This game has that “I’ll just play 10 minutes” energy. And then three hours disappear.

Presentation & Soundtrack

Visually, Mewgenics is grime-coated charm. It has that cute-but-disturbing vibe, almost like Cult of the Lamb mixed with alleyway filth. The animations are lively. The sound effects pop.

And the soundtrack? Phenomenal. Smooth. Jazzy. Catchy.

Each area has its own theme, but during boss fights, the music adds lyrics from the boss’s perspective over the instrumental you’ve been humming for 30 minutes.

It’s genius. I caught myself randomly singing: “He’s a bad kitty… a bad, bad kitty…”

It’s going to be hard for any soundtrack this year to top this one.

Performance

The game can be played entirely with a mouse — clearly its preferred input method. Controller support exists but feels secondary.

On Steam Deck, performance is solid. No major issues to report.

The biggest clunkiness comes from the house management UI. Cats cluster together, making them hard to select. I would have loved a cleaner stat-sorting menu instead of chasing them around with my mouse.

It works. But it’s messy.

Pros

Mewgenics is wildly creative and unapologetically deep. The combat system is layered, strategic, and endlessly replayable thanks to its massive item pool and randomized encounters. The breeding system adds a long-term meta layer that makes every run feel meaningful. The soundtrack is outstanding, the art direction oozes personality, and the sheer scale of the game — easily 150+ hours for full completion — is staggering. It constantly feels like you’re learning something new, and no two runs feel the same.

Cons

The difficulty and RNG can be punishing to the point of frustration. Early runs can feel overwhelming due to the layered systems and lack of immediate transparency when assigning classes. The house management interface is clunky and unintuitive. The humor won’t work for everyone, and some crude animations may turn players away. This is not a game for the faint of heart — emotionally or aesthetically.

Overall / Should You Play It?

When I started this year, I did not expect “cat mating strategy roguelite” to be on my gaming bingo card.

But here we are.

Mewgenics is maddening. Brutal. Innovative. Deep. Chaotic.

It has that “one more run” hook that genre fans will adore, but it also has high-risk, high-reward systems that will absolutely turn some players off.

If you:

• Hate RNG
• Hate permadeath
• Hate dark humor
• Hate seeing cats explode, fight, mate, and die constantly

This ain’t for you.

But if you love strategic roguelites with systems that interlock like a mad scientist’s experiment and don’t mind heartbreak along the way?

This is one of the standout indies of the year so far. It’s not my favorite roguelite of all time, But it’s damn good. If you can handle the struggle and heartbreak then you should check out Mewgenics. The Soundtrack and presentation is superb, the systems are insanely deep, and you are going to struggle to find another game with this much bang for your buck content wise( seriously there is over 200 hours of gameplay. This is the frontrunner for indie of the year so far in 2026.