Mewgenics News

I think it's time to finally introduce (or reintroduce for those of you who were here from the jump) you to the NPCs of Mewgenics! Boon County is riddled with eccentric weirdos who want things and will pay you handsomely for getting their needs met. Others are there to sell you things. So either way, everyone's getting something from this exchange! Let's meet some of them!




Dr. Beanies is the creator of a crazy concept he calls... Mewgenics! A firm believer in the forced evolution of the greatest species known to man, the domesticated cat! Beanies only has a few cats left and is willing to let you choose one to start your Mewgenics adventure. The doctor is your primary contact in Mewgenics. He's there to push you down whatever path he feels is best for the future of humanity and will reward you handsomely if you follow his directions!




Butch is a real man, a true man's man. Butch runs the underground cat fight ring in town and may become a serious asset when it comes to understanding how to braid razorblades into your butt hair, just in case someone attacks you from behind! Butch is a great source for tips and will also dish out a few side quests for you if you play your cards right.




Do you like junk? One man's trash is another man's junk and Baby Jack has all kinds of garbage for you! Need some rotten food to decorate your vintage table? He's got that! Want a taxidermied raccoon to give your cats fleas? How about an old TV and a skeleton? He's got those too! Baby Jack has literally all your housewarming needs, and each purchase gets him a bit closer to freeing his Nona from the giant hoard that trapped her in their basement years ago.




Tink runs the local cat beauty pageants and is great with a camera! A bit of an eccentric, Tink deals in some pretty specific challenges that you'll never forget!




What do you get when you remove 70% of Tom Nook's brain? FRANK! That's right, Frank is the only remaining architect in Boon County and your only hope when it comes to expanding your little shack. Frank lives in the sewer under your house, and your voice really carries through those pipes. So not only does he know and understand your needs, he's also there to support you in all your horrible life choices!




Tracy is the last remaining employee at the local P-Mart. So, whether you like her or not, you will need to deal with her if your cats need to be fed or cured of some rare disease.


These are the 6 initial NPCs you will run into in Mewgenics. They range greatly in what they have to offer and each one has a very distinct flavor, the flavor of trash juice!

Boon County, here we come!

-Edmund

Q: Will famous cats or other game cameo type cats appear in game?
A: We will have stray cats that look similar to characters you might know. Heck, we may also have cameos of real-life wild animals that you might be able to crossbreed with your cats. Cameo strays will be very rare though, so keep an eye open for them!

Q: Will the cats have special death animations? Like dying of poison or being burned?

Q: Is it run-based (Isaac, Gungeon), i.e., progression affects playthroughs but the primary goal can still technically be achieved within one playthrough, or campaign-based (Darkest Dungeon, Rogue Legacy), i.e., you work towards the goal over the course of several playthroughs?
A: It's both. In Mewgenics, you will push out further from your house with specific points of interest that, when completed, will yield unlocks like Isaac. But regardless of hitting those goals, coming back to your house hub with loot/food/mutations will build up and create more of that "campaign" based long play you mentioned, like Darkest Dungeon.

Q: Can we see some background art? a nice desert piece by HamBerry

Q: Having worked on a roguelike game before in Isaac, were there any lessons learned for how to make a good game in the genre that you're now implementing in Mew?
A: I learned a great deal from the last 10 years working on Isaac. Mew is a lot like Isaac, but where it differs is in its living world "hub" that you always return to. Allowing this hub to be unique to the player was super important and the primary focus for me when it came to taking things a giant step further. People have lived in Isaac's world for years now, but it never changes. It's always the same kid doing runs that are unique. In Mewgenics, we are trying to allow you to have control over "Isaac's downtime." We want your game to feel alive, we want the choices you make in a run to affect what you come home to, and we want you to have stories and experiences with your cats and cat families that feel as unique as a run does.

Also, we are making sure there are item and ability descriptions ;)

Q: What inspired the concept of breeding and mutating war kittens?
A: Originally, Mewgenics was inspired by having four cats and buying a few from breeders. Danielle and I, at one point, had three sphinx cats (hairless), and the whole breeding cats thing felt so odd. It seemed wrong in many ways and interesting to explore in a game. As the years went on, and the cats thinned out as we started to have kids, Mewgenics became more about genetics and what you pass down to your children. Having ADHD and dyslexia came with huge challenges, but with those challenges came strange small silver linings its those silver linings that really made me who I am. Now I'm experiencing this in third person as I watch my daughter grow up with similar experiences. It's wild, and I really wanted to bring that into the game as much as I can. Themes of nature, nurture, hardship, and perseverance interest me, and I think they come through well in Mew.

Q: Does the game have explosions?

Q: You said that Mewgenics is related to the Isaac universe. Will this be explored in depth, or will it be more low key?
A: It's something you need to play to understand and appreciate. All you need to know is it's set in the same world.

Q: Some time ago, there was a call for cat names where people could enter their cats' names. Will all of those be in the game? Or did only some of them make it?
A: We did call for cat names using an online forum, and people submitted great names. We will do another one closer to release, so keep an eye on my Twitter!

Q: Do the cats have emotions? (Like happy, sad, angry, etc.)
they have a huge range of emotions! ( they look even better when tied to animations with sound!)

Q: I don't know if this was answered, but will there be a way to set up remembrances for dead cats?
A: They will be remembered in your hearts and minds (and photos). Or maybe as zombies.

Q: Do we see the cats give birth?

Q: Were elements around from the start, or were they introduced later to provide more complexity and variation?
A: We started out with basic Pokémon elemental stuff, like fire elemental enemies being weak to water attacks. But it felt limiting. If water elements dealt more damage to fire enemies, shouldn't water also put out fires on the board? And if fire set grass ablaze, shouldn't water also help grass grow when applied? Tyler went in-depth implementing these combinations, and I think we've nearly covered all our bases when it comes to elemental logic. When you get the game, experiment with elements; I think you'll be pleasantly surprised. There's a lot more to say about this, its not a simple rock-paper-scissors, but we will elaborate more on that in a future post.

Q: Is an online mode planned? Now that we'll see an Isaac online multiplayer, I was wondering if Mewgenics would have an online versus mode or something similar.
A: Online vs isn't planned but isn't 100% off the table for something we might explore in the future.

Q: How much gore is there in the game?

Q: Can you cannibalize cats?
A: If a cat dies in your house and your other cats are hungry, cats will do what cats do. However, there will be dangers to doing so.

Q: Can you give the cats costumes?

Q: Are there weather effects/modifiers that may help/hinder the course of battle? Such as rain putting out fires or lightning setting fire to terrain.
Mewgenics features TONS of weather global modifiers that combo using the same elemental logic I talked about above.

Q: How "friendly" will the game be for newcomers to the game style? (Both roguelike and a tactics game) Will Mewgenics have a similar flow like Isaac in that regard?
A: The goal is extremely friendly. You should be able to jump into the game's intro, learn the basics, and get tossed into the full game quickly and easily. Mewgenics also has an interesting "head home" mechanic, where the cats you took on an adventure have points where they can head back to your home hub with the items and food they've collected if you feel things are going badly. This mechanic will provide beginners with softer goals and allow them to "stock up" on goodies to help them brave the harder areas further from home.

Q: How long is it to go from beginning to end when starting of a run?
A: Every run in Mewgenics start to finish lasts 1-2 hours. They span 3 chapters and it saves after every combat encounter, so you can quit and continue at almost any point you want.

Q: Will there be merchandise of Mewgenics?
10 years ago we actually made t-shirts and comics! These will definitely make a return after release. And maybe some other stuff too. We got ideas.

Q: Will the game be translated into other languages?
A: Yes, Tyler set everything up so things can be translated easily. Either at release or very shortly after, depending on how the schedule works out.

Q: How many hours is the gameplay, and how much will it cost?
A: The gameplay is infinite. I can confidently say that Mewgenics will be as replayable, if not more so, than Isaac. It's hard to put a number on the hours it takes to "finish," but there will be "endings" so you can stop and still feel accomplished.

The game will be about $30.

Q: Peashy?

Q: Can you discuss how we can acquire furniture and give examples of their effects on the world? Also, will there be something like run modifiers that apply a constant condition to all battle encounters in an adventure?
A: I'd love to dive into this topic here, but let's save it for its own post in 2 weeks!

See you next time!
-Edmund

So, as many of you know, Mewgenics started as a game jam prototype that went into development 10 years ago, but was sadly canceled 8 months into development. During this time, a large chunk of music was made, and the track we are unveiling today was one of the first.

We present to you "Kat Fight", a now 10-year-old song that will finally see the light of day, accompanied by well over 40 more fully produced and jaw-droppingly good bangers by the amazing Ridiculon.

Enjoy,
-Edmund

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

Hey, Tyler here! I'm covering the blog post this week and I wanna talk about, THE HARD PATH.

In (most) of the chapters on an adventure in Mew, you fight a miniboss at the half-way point, and afterwards are given the option of continuing along the normal path to the chapter boss, or taking THE HARD PATH instead.



What fun awaits you on the hard path, you ask? Well let me tell you!
The hard path has one more combat encounter in it than the easy path, and in all of the combat encounters along the hard path, enemies have a chance to spawn as a Champion instead.


(you vs the cat she told you not to worry about)

Champions are beefy upgraded versions of regular enemies. And they all have unique art too! In addition to increased stats, champions have double health, move farther, do more damage, and take an extra turn every round. If you are not prepared to deal with these champions, they will be your demise.



I mean, some enemies are still not very threatening when upgraded into champions



But some champions are absolutely terrifying to go up against.



So, obviously, if you're risking this much by taking the hard path, there should be a pretty good reward for doing so, right? Fortunately, that is absolutely the case. The treasure chest on the hard path has rarer items in it than the one on the normal path, plus you also get extra food to help with cat breeding or a furniture piece to decorate your house with. But also, very importantly, that extra combat is also a huge reward in itself, and here's why:

Lets quickly recap how cats level-up during an adventure in Mewgenics. Every time you win a combat encounter, your lowest-level cat levels up (randomly chosen if there's ties for lowest-level). When you level up, depending on which level it is, you are given a set of abilities, or passives, or upgrades to choose from. Some of the options you are given at higher levels are extremely powerful, but you will not reach those levels normally. Taking only the normal path, at the end of your adventure, you will have 2 level 5 cats and 2 level 6 cats.



Now, that one extra combat on the hard path? That's one extra level up. And there's a hard path on every chapter. You add those extra level ups into the mix, now your whole team can reach level 6 before the end of an adventure. If you're bold enough to do all 3 hard paths, now one of your cats will reach Level 7 as well. Without spoiling, Level 7 is a pretty big power spike for cats, so if you're trying to make the strongest cats you can, well, you'll need to take on the hard path.

The choice of whether or not to take the hard path is not a trivial one, however. If your team is not playing together well, or you ran out of consumables, or a cat got depressed, or one of your cats already died, or the miniboss left you particularly beat up, you're much safer just taking the normal path. So many of my losses are from being like, "I think my team is maybe strong enough to take hard path this time" followed by immediate regret. And there's nothing to blame except my own ego.



Till next time!
- Tyler

I've gone on record saying that Mewgenics is, in a lot of ways, a sequel to The Binding of Isaac, but not in any of the traditional ways. This confuses many. So, I'm going to attempt to break down why, in many ways, Mew is a successor to Isaac and the things I think I failed at with Isaac that I'm improving upon with Mewgenics!



As you can see, a majority of Mewgenics' core elements are quite similar to those in Isaac. It's these elements that make me feel like Mew is a continuation of a great number of ideas I explored in Isaac but explored even more in-depth this time.

But today, I want to focus on those 3 major differences between the two for a bit.

[h2]Genre: [/h2]
The most obvious change here is that Mewgenics is a turn-based strategy game. Coming off of the release of Meat Boy, my mind was very much still in that dexterity-focused mindset for games. But after the release of Wrath of the Lamb, a big part of me wondered if Isaac would have been better if it was less of a twitch reflex type of game and more focused on strategy. I even have a few designs for a more traditional turn-based roguelike remake, but once the game took off, those ideas fell to the wayside so I could focus on "MORE ISAAC".



The general design always kind of haunted me: What if Isaac was turn-based? What if it had all the same mechanics but was more of a "thinker's" game where you could relax a bit and take a breath? Mewgenics is very much this in so many ways. Turn-based strategy games are a pretty huge genre, but they are still a bit niche. If I post a pic or a gif of Mewgenics, someone will always say, "Oh, this reminds me of 'Into the Breach'" or whatever the last (or only) grid-based tactics game they played was... so excuse my explanation.

For those that have never played a turn-based strategy game, it's best described as "chess with more pieces." That is probably one of the most alienating ways to describe it. But if I had to use a similar analogy, I'd say Mewgenics is "chess with 1000s of pieces and each piece has a bunch of unique abilities that combo in very interesting ways. Oh, and also you get to draft your pieces!"

Now, you are probably thinking, "WTF, that sounds stupidly complex! In fact, every time I read one of these posts, all I'm thinking is... How the hell am I supposed to understand what is going on in this game and how things work?!!??"

Well, that brings me to the next big difference between Isaac and Mewgenics.

[h2]Information: [/h2]
If you were to ask me what I thought the biggest flaw with The Binding of Isaac is, I would 100% say it's not explaining what each item does on the HUD when you stand next to it. In fact, I believe this so much that once online multiplayer is totally finished, I have asked Nicalis if they could look into doing this as an optional HUD in the future. When I created Isaac, there were 100 items, and I had no idea how many more would be created in the future. To me, Isaac was mysterious, and the lack of info on items complemented that; you were forced to experiment and see what items did by using them... 700+ items later, this idea simply doesn't work at all. I remember after Wrath of the Lamb was released, people would always say, "You can't play Isaac without a browser open on your phone." I hated that that's how everyone played for so long... and still plays (unless they download that mod).



My #1 for Mewgenics was always, "We need as much simple and to-the-point info as possible." If I'm expanding on Isaac and adding more items than it, as well as more abilities than items, everything needs to be very clear-cut. That isn't to say that there won't be a few bits of hidden info here and there for you to discover, but the core idea of every element of a game like this needs to be there at the wave of your cursor at all times. And this is how we do that!

If you check out the game's HUD, you can see in the upper right the turn order of all your cats, enemies, and non-enemy elements.



In the top left is the current cat/enemy's HUD, showing the current and max HP as well as mana. In the bottom left, you can see your cat's basic attack, movement button, and a slew of abilities you acquire over the course of your adventure. Each ability has its damage number and mana cost shown, and if you mouse over the ability, you'll get a popover detailing exactly what your ability does, as well as its range on the playfield shown via a tile highlight pattern.





This mouse-over effect is applied to all elements of the game. Mousing over an enemy will show you its health and movement/attack range, mousing over a pickup will explain what you gain when you stand on it, and mousing over other tile elements will detail out what they are doing there and why you might not want to walk over them.





[h2]Legacy: [/h2]
Isaac, in all its vastness, is still a very contained game. The runs are unique, but your 100% save file is basically identical to the next person's. In Mewgenics, we really wanted to try to allow each person's game to not only feel unique but also wanted the choices you make and things you discover to make your experience even more your own.



The most obvious way this aspect plays out is through your cat's bloodline. The cats you find and the bloodline you try to breed will be 100% unique to your game. The web-toed, 4-eyed, extra-large, hairy DNA strand you've been passing down through the years in your game simply won't be the same as your buddy's. The furniture you acquire, how you configure your house, what upgrades you choose, and in what order all allow for your Mewgenics experience to feel that much more your own. There's a lot to unpack with this one, especially when it comes to your house, so I'll save that for another post, but trust me, your game will feel like it's YOUR game.

And that sums up my powerpoint presentation.

See ya,
-Edmund