Hold your catnip; an army of cats just took down Olympus. Turn-based, tactical cat-breeding combat game Mewgenics, created by Edmund McMillen and Tyler Glaiel, has not just become one of the most popular games on Steam but the most-played roguelike/roguelite Steam game of all time, a title previously held by Hades 2.
By hitting an all-time peak of 115,428 concurrent players on Sunday, Feb. 15, Mewgenics set a new record for the highest player count among roguelike and roguelite games, surpassing the previous record of 112,947 concurrent players held by Hades 2. The Olympic-themed roguelite hit its peak on Sept. 28, 2025, which (perhaps unsurprisingly) was also a Sunday.
Edmund McMillen, who previously created the hit action roguelike The Binding of Isaac, surpassed his former game’s peak of 70,701 concurrent players, a record dating back to April 2021 (The Rebirth edition). Just one day after its release on Feb. 10, Mewgenics had already gained more than 80,000 concurrent players.
Naturally, this means that Mewgenics is a financial success, too. On Feb. 11, Tyler Glaiel announced that Mewgenics had made back its budget within three hours, and on Feb. 12, he posted on X that they had sold half a million copies in 36 hours.
As player peaks from other highly acclaimed roguelite and roguelike games, such as the first Hades (54,240 players), Vampire Survivors (77,061), and Balatro (43,905), are usually confined to the 40,000 to 80,000 range, Mewgenics‘s record is exceptionally high. And that goes for cat games, too; while Stray hit a purrfectly acceptable 62,963 player peak, Mewgenics has almost doubled that record. It shows that anything is pawsible, especially if you add unlimited furry friends to your game.
Beware, though, that it may take months or years to find every secret in the game, which will give us something to do while we wait to see if Mewgenics will indeed become a GOTY 2026 contender.
