If you’ve played The Binding of Isaac, then you know that Edmund McMillen tends to make games that go 1,000 layers deep. That holds true for his latest project with co-developer Tyler Glaiel, Mewgenics. The new roguelike has players breeding cats and taking them into a gauntlet of turn-based tactical battles. It seems straightforward enough at first — that is, until you’ve sunk 10 hours into it and see that your completion percentage is only at 10%. To reiterate: it goes deep.
Mewgenics can be an overwhelming game to dig into, especially when it’s so hard to see the actual bottom of it from the outset. Don’t worry about the destination. Instead, your first task in Mewgenics is simply getting into the rhythm of the game so you can start getting consistent wins. All will be revealed once you start progressing, so here are some beginner’s tips to make sure you get some early victories for your kitties.
Tinker around with UI before you start
Before you even begin a run, you’ll want to get familiar with the settings menu. Mewgenics is a very visually busy game, and sometimes it can be a little hard to see what squares you’re clicking on as a result. I recommend popping into Game Settings and toning down Status Bar Size for starters. This will make the status effect icons that appear above your cat smaller, which helps because you’ll eventually have half a dozen of them applied at once, which can block visibility. Tooltip Size can come down a notch if the windows that appear when hovering over cats are blocking too much space. And if you find the old film look of it all hard to deal with, the Video Settings menu will let you cut down on noise and grain.
Always bring a Cleric
Whenever you start a new run, you’ll have to choose four cats and then give each one a collar that determines its class. You can turn a cat into an attacker, a ranger, a thief, and more. There are plenty of team loadouts to experiment with, but I recommend always having a Cleric on hand early on. These cats can heal your party with their basic attack and even learn skills that revive fallen cats. Healing is very hard to come by, as you’ll mostly be relying on random consumable drops and post-round health regeneration to keep your team alive, so keeping a Cleric on your team will be a true lifesaver.
Try a defensive thorn build
Part of the magic of Mewgenics is that there are countless ways to build your cats. The best advice I can give is to experiment often and roll with random chance, but here’s a handy cat that will get you through some tough situations. If you give a cat a Defense collar, it will become a high-health tank that can take a lot of hits. Get the most out of that by finding ways to load it up with stacks of thorns. These will cause damage to anything that touches your cat, making for a pretty deadly counterattack. Take spells that can generate thorns or equip items that have them, and pair that with abilities that put your cat directly into danger to keep your glass cannons protected.
Hard routes are worth it
Whenever you clear a biome for the first time, you’ll unlock the option to take a harder route after the mid-boss. Whether or not you should take that will depend on how healthy your cats are after a big fight, but don’t be afraid to take on the challenge. If your team was strong enough to beat the boss with no trouble, it should have no trouble with the regular encounters after it. Think of the midboss as a skill check to test if you’re prepared for the extra challenge. Taking the hard route will give you some valuable gear, so it’s always a good way to buff up your cats and find rare items.
Be conservative with your stat checks
During runs, you’ll come across random events. To resolve these, you have to complete a skill check using one of your cat’s stats. While big risks can pay off, a failed check can also leave your cat with a permanent negative trait like ADHD or Narcolepsy. (Yes, really.) To avoid failing often, be more conservative with your gambles than you’d think to be. I don’t tend to take the risk unless the stat being tested is 7 or above. You can definitely get a success with lower numbers, but it’s always harder than you expect. Don’t be afraid to play it safe.
Luck is more important than you think
If you’re like me, Luck is one of those stat boosts that you tend to deprioritize in roguelikes. After all, stats like that mostly relate to critical hits, which are never a given even with high Luck. That stat is way more useful in Mewgenics, and not one you want to ignore. Luck doesn’t just impact critical damage; it also raises your chance of success during random events. If you want to fail less and gather more rewards between battles, don’t neglect your Luck.
Don’t be afraid to wear out items
During your runs, you’ll grab a lot of items that you can equip on your cats. Some are consumables with limited uses, while others are wearables that will degrade over time and even break entirely. You might be a little nervous about wasting good items at first, but don’t be. You are going to get tons and tons of items during Mewgenics — way more than you can hold in your very limited storage. It’s more of a waste not to use them, so don’t be afraid to equip everything you’ve got early on and not worry about losing a good item to a bad run.
Clean up the poop!
Look, I shouldn’t have to tell you this, but you have to clean up after your cats. Whenever you’re back at your house, you’ll notice that your pets have left you some poop. That poop isn’t just a visual gag; it can impact your cats’ health and the comfort level of your house. So don’t ignore your dooty duty! To remove a turd from your, simply click on it.
Donate your cats to a good (or questionable) home
Between runs, you need to manage a house full of cats. It fills up with strays fast, but you can thin it out by donating cats to different characters. Why it may feel mean, do not become a cat hoarder. The more you have, the more food you’ll need every day and the more chances you have of two clashing personalities killing one another. Donating cats is a kindness — and there’s good incentive to do it too! Meta progression is tied to giving cats away, so you’ll want to part with felines often to expand your item storage, add rooms to your house, and more. You’ll get a new stray cat every day and your retired cats love to breed, so don’t worry about running out of cats. You can’t get rid of these things fast enough.
Embrace experimentation
This is less a specific tip and more so a philosophy you should adopt. If you ever get a chance to try something weird, do it. The early game hours of Mewgenics are less about winning and more about learning the language of the game. You’re only going to do that if you follow some question marks where they lead. One time, my cats came across a hole in a wall, so I sent one to investigate it. It disappeared from my party. I was mortified at myself for letting a cat get lost. But a few battles later, that cat returned… except his sprite was vertically stretched. The game never explained what the hell happened out there, and now I have a whole lineage of stretched-out kittens created through generations of breeding. You’re not going to discover moments like that unless you experiment.
