On Tuesday, Mewgenics, the tactical RPG-slash-life-sim roguelite about breeding and battling cats, created by developers behind The Binding of Isaac and Closure, launched and almost immediately shot to the top of Steam’s charts. Mewgenics seems like it’s shaping up to be the next big hit for roguelite sickos, in no small part thanks to how absolutely massive its scope is.
In an AMA on the Steam Deck subreddit over the weekend, developers Edmund McMillen and Tyler Glaiel teamed up to answer fans’ questions about the game, and they revealed that it’s a lot larger than anyone previously expected. In one response, McMillen referred to the game as “one of the largest tactical RPGs of all time.” In another, he revealed that “it will take an average player about 200+ hours to ‘beat the game’ and 500+ hours to 100% :)” (thanks, PC Gamer).
Judging by the game’s 281 Steam achievements and the fact that it has 1,000 unique abilities to unlock, that estimate doesn’t sound like much of a stretch. And it seems like Mewgenics’ most dedicated players might end up pouring quite a few extra hours into hunting for secrets. According to Glaiel, “there’s a lot of little things that I think people will be discovering for months or years. But we will reserve the true ARG level stuff for DLC.” (thanks, Polygon).
While the base game’s absurd length should tide players over for a long time, McMillen also said the team is planning on beginning work on the game’s DLC in the next few months, with a planned release around a year later. McMillen also hinted that a Switch 2 port might be on its way. The game is currently only available on PC.
From delayed development to the top of the charts
Mewgenics was announced all the way back in 2012, but the project entered a long period of development hell (and was even cancelled at one point). Despite the game’s wildly tumultuous development cycle, it’s apparently pretty good. It’s currently the highest-rated game on Metacritic for the year so far. If Binding of Isaac‘s trajectory is any indication, this is only the start of a long and wild post-launch life for Mewgenics.
I haven’t had a chance to pick up the game yet, but I’ve been having a blast watching players share their freakish findings online all day. Even McMillen couldn’t resist sharing some of his own discoveries in the AMA—he wrote: “my nephew Eli had one where he could punch one of his other cats in the face and it would send out 1000 sparkles to totally destroy all enemies instantly…the game is so insane man, you don’t even know.”
