Mewgenics News

As some of you know, Mewgenics will feature vocal cameos. These cameos range from friends and family, to iconic streamers, to full-on icons that you all know and love! It's honestly pretty crazy how many people agreed to be a part of this, but before we jump into all that, let's break down what a cat vocal pack actually is.

In the game, when a cat is born, it's assigned a vocal pack from the 100+ that we currently have, pitched up or down and locked into place. Every vocal set has a series of vocalizations that are tied to these categories:

• Normal meows
  
• Happy meows
  
• Angry meows
  
• Sad meows
  
• Hissing
  
• Purring
  
• Being hit reactions
  
• Dying (this is where people really get to showcase their VO skills!)
  

Here is a video of all those meows in action:

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

Speaking of cat meows, this game features TONS of crazy cameos from a lot of people you know and love. A few years back, I mentioned to an Isaac streamer how we were doing cat vocal sets and he asked if he could make a set for us. We said of course, and then started getting DMs from other streamers asking to do the same. Once the word got out and a few pretty significant people were jumping on board, it was pretty amusing to think of all these iconic voices meowing like cats. So, I just went for it and started asking celebrity friends, people who inspired my work, and just very iconic voices to contribute. Nearly every single one I asked said of course and sent me their meows. Now, I'm still not sure how/if we want to showcase all these voices outside of a credits roll list, but I thought it might be fun to give you all a few hints that I may or may not confirm are correct in a later post...

Mewgenics features meowing by the following people (and many many more):

[h3]

1. A movie director who inspired my work greatly

2. A famous movie/series actor

3. A legendary game developer

4. Someone from the cast of Buffy the Vampire Slayer

5. A rap icon

6. A legendary cartoonist

7. An iconic religious voice from reality TV

8. A controversial public figure

9. A very controversial public figure (this one might not make it into the final game)

10. A bad movie legend

11. The voice of a classic viral music video

12. A rock star

13. A Newgrounds.com icon

14. A famous YouTube personality

15. A very well-known animator and voice actor... who is weird...

16. An '80s scream queen

17. A spawn of Boognish

18. An internet celebrity impersonator... or is he?

19. An actor so famous he asked me to hide his identity!

20. A popular female podcaster
[/h3]

But this list is just the tip of the iceberg. There are SO many more amazing cameos from many other people we all know and love... or at least I love them, and that's what matters, right? As you may assume, I'm personally having a lot of fun with these vocal cameos, and I hope as development closes I can acquire a few more fun ones. So if you have any suggestions on who I should reach out to or who you would really want to hear meow, just let me know!

I can't end this post without thanking our amazing sound designer Joey Kuras (Earthworm Jim and Roblox OOF SFX extraordinaire) for cutting and editing all of these vocal packs. It's a thankless job, and his time could be better spent making actual in-game sound effects, but without him, this dumb idea of mine wouldn't be possible.

As an extra tease just to add fuel to the fire, here is a little video of 4 amazing cat cameos you just might be able to guess... just listen... listen very hard...

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

See ya,
-Edmund

This week, lets let the smooth grooves of Ridiculon quench your thirst! We present you Crystalline Dreams, the music track for chapter 3, The Caves.

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

see you in 2 weeks!
-Edmund

So when designing enemies and bosses for Mewgenics, we approach them from many different angles. Sometimes they are purely based around a chapter's theme, like obviously a graveyard should have undead, rotting things. So, we design from those aesthetic choices. But other times, we will design from a specific mechanic or thematic element for an area. We have also designed things from a "wouldn't it be cool if" angle. For Zodiac, the original design came from a simple "cat" enemy prototype that had a gun. The basic line of thinking here was, "A cat shooting a real gun is funny," and it's true! Here is the proof!



So we knew a cat with a gun was funny, but since this was going to be a boss/miniboss, I didn’t want to take the easy road and just use the cat model. I wanted it to be a bipedal cat, and I wanted it to look cool.



We needed a mini-boss for the desert, and a gunslinger seemed perfect for that. Designing around the western mysterious stranger trope combined with a psycho serial killer, Zodiac was born!

Once I’m happy with a character's design, Tyler and I mull over the specifics of what it will do so I can start rigging up its pieces. I’ll let Tyler explain the design process because it was a fun one.


-------------------------------------------------------------

Hey, Tyler here!

Zodiac started off as a prototype miniboss that I whipped up one day called "Gunslinger." The basic idea was, "he shoots at you and you have to take cover." His initial gimmick was whenever one of your teammates ends their turn, that’s when he shoots. So you could go up to him, hit him all you want, and as long as you could get to cover before you end your turn, you'd be safe. The cover in his level is destructible, so the longer the fight goes on, the harder it becomes to take cover. On his turn, he would simply reload (which was flavor only and didn't do anything) then move to a new spot.



While this design was fine and all, two things that bothered me were 1. his reload doing nothing, and 2. having him trigger when you ended your turn really didn't feel much like he was "reacting to you," as was the design intent. But if I gave him limited ammo... he’d never usually run out since most of the time there are just 4 cats. So I had another idea for an alternate design for him where instead of shooting at the end of your turn, he would shoot whenever anything moved, but only have 6 shots loaded at once (and would only reload if he was empty). That way, you could bait out all of his shots early in the round, either by moving yourself or knocking things around, and then have a few free turns to beat on him while he’s out of ammo and can’t respond.

As it turned out, that second design was far more fun and interesting, and really makes him feel like a trigger-happy lunatic, so that’s what we went with.

Anyway, I’m handing the post back to Ed to talk about the art and animation.

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So, with the basic design locked down, I start drawing up Zodiac's "pieces." I try to envision each pose he might do and draw enough alternative pieces of him so that Marty can easily make him come to life.



Here is what I sent to Marty for direction. As you can see here, I also gave Zodiac an extra attack just in case. I tend to ask for 1 extra something for each boss we do, so if the design is feeling a bit flat, we can pull another trick out of our bag.



Here is Zodiac animated—pretty cool, huh? Marty did an amazing job on him; his personality really comes through in all his animations.



We recently got to a point in testing the desert with people that we realized that Zodiac's design and character shines pretty bright in the desert. In fact, he easily overshadows the final boss in that area. So, we are bumping him up! Will that extra animation find a new home in Zodiac's final boss form? Probably. What else might we need to add to make him harder and more "final bossy"? It's still a mystery to us, but the guy needs beefing up, and Hamberry will start on his boss art soon.

Here is a little in-game video of Zodiac in his "mini-boss form" for your viewing pleasure!

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

And that's how it's done, folks!

Next post, maybe we'll show the process for another enemy? More dev stories? Or maybe another music track? Who knows! See you then.
-Edmund

OK, first let's get these ability icons out of the way. Quite a few of you on Twitter actually guessed their functions as well as their names, so kudos to you! (And kudos to me for drawing icons that made sense to a tiny fraction of you!)

[h3]1. Steal Kidney! (Thief)[/h3]

Deal 1 damage to an adjacent unit; this ability has a boosted crit chance. If this ability crits and you have an open pocket to hold a trinket, you steal the victim's kidney!


Kidney: 1-use consumable item, when used it heals 10hp and cleanses all debuffs.

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[h3]2. Diversion! (Hunter)[/h3]

Toss a 1-damage pebble onto a unit or tile within range 5, all units within AoE 3 around where it hit move towards that unit or tile.



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[h3]3. Muscle Memory! (Fighter)[/h3]

An 8-damage melee attack that costs 8 mana, this spell's damage is reduced by 1 and mana cost reduced by 2 each time you use it.

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[h3]4. Boned! (Fighter)[/h3]


A passive ability that makes it so anytime this unit kills another unit, it steals one of its bones to use as a weapon if you have an empty paw to put it in.



Bone Club: A melee weapon that deals 8 damage but has a 15% chance to break each time you use it.

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[h3]5. Learn From Me! (Mage)[/h3]

This passive allows the caster to teach whatever the last spell they used to all other allied units. So if you cast Fireball, all other units will gain Fireball in their bonus active slot.

Pretty cool, huh!?

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Now on to a little status update.




Tyler is currently working out a rough draft of our in-game tutorial. Mewgenics definitely needs a good but brief tutorial to show you the ropes, so this one will be getting a good deal of attention and revision over time. Once we have this tutorial laid out, we will start testing on a few 100% noobs and people who don't play these kinds of games (my mom will be one of them!) so we can really nail down something that is as close to perfect as possible, as well as fun visually and gameplay-wise since this will be the first impression the game will give to everyone.



Animation-wise, everyone is churning out the remaining bosses and enemies while Kaylan chips away at animating NPCs, especially Butch who will need a few custom poses to be used during the tutorial.

Oh, I just realized I never introduced Kaylan, she's our latest addition! A skilled animator and illustrator who has been working on short cutscenes and NPC animations, as well as drawing the last remaining bits of furniture we have added.

Sony Shock is working on custom backgrounds for the tutorial. This area is kind of a scenic route from city back to your house, so the area will look a bit more rural than what you've seen in our screenshots.



Matthias and Jon are working on the 3 remaining late game tracks, but we are considering doing a custom tutorial track as well, so they will probably move to that once they are at a stopping point.

But what about me? What am I doing? Well, I'm writing this post, right? But earlier this week, I was working on mutations, specifically the really bonkers ones like peg legs and radar tails... they do what you might assume.



But what would you assume this mutation did?
I'll cover it in my next update, and we can compare notes!

And that concludes this blog post! Next week, I'm going to go over the full process of making an enemy in Mewgenics, from concept to final product. Stay tuned!

-Edmund

Alright, folks, so full disclosure, at this point in the dev blog saga, we assumed we would be showing in-game footage and pushing towards a trailer reveal, but due to unforeseen circumstances, we have lost about 5-6 months of dev over the last 2 years and aren't ready to start pushing in-game footage nor do we have a trailer ready. So! From here on out, we will be doing some actual dev blog updates, NO HYPE! Just realistic behind-the-scenes info on where we are at, what we are doing, and where we are going. So, let's start by going over where we are.

Don’t obsess over these % numbers, I'm trying to factor in a bunch of things to find those numbers... also, I’m bad with numbers.

[h3]Enemies (85%)[/h3]
We are on the homestretch with enemies right now, all but 5-8 enemies are 100% artwise, about 25 still need to be animated, and about 36 need to be implemented (out of about 200).

[h3]Bosses (70%)[/h3]
This will be the biggest hill to climb over the next 8 months. Bosses are large and take lots of art/animation and programming. Defeating each with different classes yields unlocks, so they all need to feel unique, challenging, and cool.

[h3]Environments (85%)[/h3]
Art for all the game's chapters has been done for a while now, the few remaining areas just need to be painted and implemented alongside any special mechanics for that chapter.

[h3]Items (20%)[/h3]
OK, so this number looks low, BUT! that's only because we have kind of been sitting on items for a while waiting for the perfect person to show up... and that person is showing up May 1st! That’s right, Vinh is coming along for the remaining ride! For those of you who don’t know him, Vinh was the lead programmer for Isaac: Repentance and creator of the Antibirth mod. He has come to bless us with his obsessive attention to detail and amazing brain! On my end, about 80% of all the item art is complete, it just needs to be implemented.

[h3]Events (45%)[/h3]
Another content barrier we are going to be chewing on for the remaining months. I have the art for about 90% of the events finished, but implementing them does take some time since there are so many different outcomes to them. Vinh will also be helping with this aspect of game dev as well.

[h3]Music (98%)[/h3]
This would be 100% but since they finished ages ago, we recently commissioned a few more tracks for some special events in the game, so basically, music is done but they are on call in case we need anything during the remaining months of dev.

[h3]House Hub (80%)[/h3]
The house hub is still missing the house upgrades alongside a few house events and some UI polish but it's very close.

[h3]Furniture (75%)[/h3]
So this aspect of the game is one of two elements that I’ve avoided talking about in-depth because there are aspects of them that we still don’t have nailed down in-game. For furniture, all of it has been drawn and added to the game, but the actual properties of them have not been defined yet. There are a few aspects of these properties we still need to make sure work and function in a way that complements how the game plays now, and not how we assumed it would play. Knowing how much the game was changing as we worked on it, I thought it was important to keep these properties undefined... so they remain that way currently, and once they are defined I’ll do a post about them :)

[h3]NPC's (20%)[/h3]
Another aspect of the game that has been held for the end of dev so we can complement what the game has become over the years. The visuals, animations, and dialogue programming stuff is basically ready for these guys, but the specifics of what they will say, challenges they will offer, and any possible dialogue tree type elements are still undefined and will probably remain that way till later this year.

[h3]Abilities (100%)[/h3]
The biggest, most fun, and honestly most important aspect of development, currently Mewgenics has over 1000 unique abilities across its many classes. To speak in hip indie game analogy, abilities are basically "cards" you draft into your deck of cats! Each class has many unique archetypes you can draft into as you level them up and many archetypes also have interplay between different classes. Take into account your ability to multi-class and the fact that all 1000+ of these abilities can also be leveled up to gain boosted or even totally new effects makes this horde of content nearly infinitely replayable.
To segue off into a tangent real quick, let me show you what I’ve been working on this last week.

[h3]Ability icons![/h3]
Originally just had the names of each ability on their button.. but that just looked ugly, so I decided to draw icons for all of them! I wanted to come up with a simple visual style that could easily convey to the player roughly what each ability would do and tried my best to reuse as many established iconography as possible.

Let's play a little game real quick, I’ll show you some icons and you guess what they do!

[h2]1.[/h2]


[h2]2.[/h2]


[h2]3.[/h2]


[h2]4.[/h2]


[h2]5.[/h2]


Wasn't that fun!? Not as fun as drawing 1000+ icons I bet! Eh honestly, drawing these icons was fun, it was coming up with unique titles that was difficult... I don’t envy Wizards of the Coast.

Anyway, post what you think each of these icons does, and next blog update I'll post the answers and we can see how miserably I failed as a visual designer.

Back to work! See you next time.
-Edmund