Swirling in toilet humour, but brimming with depth and heart, I was distraught when my Mewgenics preview access was taken away

It takes approximately two minutes before Mewgenics shows you two cats, somewhat ironically, raw-dogging it. Within seconds, an oozing kitten is shot skidding onto the carpet, a car crash of various traits from its poorly-groomed parents. It will, in a matter of days, become a mage that can cast fireballs. It will also develop feline AIDS.

That, as a tone setter, is Mewgenics. Itself the lovechild of Edmund McMillen and Tyler Glaiel, the game is crass and violent, gross and off-putting. It is also a ludicrously deep turn-based RPG, a devilishly funny adventure rooted in the raw depiction of cats, and to me a frankly-heartwarming message on the value of even the most abhorrent creatures.

I have battled through haunted graveyards and dark caves within a handful of hours. I have battled zombie kittens, hippos with heart problems, and literal shit. Even within this narrow sliver of the game, though, you see the sheer possibility of Mewgenics vastly expand. This preview has been like peeking through a crack in the door.

In The Binding of Isaac creator’s latest, you gather up a party of four cats, and assign each a class. This could be a tank, a rogue, a fighter: each benefit from certain stats a cat may have. My cat, Catsune Miku (randomly generated, thank you) has lots of intellect, so I make her a mage. Miku gains a basic fireball spell, but also has a passive ability which is part of who they are. Maybe they inherited it from their parents, maybe they just have it. In Miku’s case, her burns are stronger. Convenient! Let’s say you have another cat – Fred – who is tough but stupid. You make Fred the tank.

These are somewhat basic examples but you can create some truly monstrous synergies right here. If you spot a cat with a passive that boosts minions, you can give them items that spawn or further boost minions, and snowball a cat into a powerful archetype in the run.

So you go off on your adventure through the city streets, which start linear as you progress down a sequence of tiles with various events present. You land on a loot space, granting a stone that improves your intellect – great find! You slap it on Miku because, in combat, intellect determines how much mana you regenerate a turn. You also get a headbrace that increases toughness but drastically lowers intellect. Fred is now a brick wall, but his intellect stat has fallen below zero so sadly can no longer read. Swings and roundabouts.

You come across random events, too! These are RPG-style skill checks which pick out one of your four cats and have them face a dilemma of some sort. Miku finds some money on the ground and is smart enough to pick it up. Fred later has the same opportunity, but is so stupid the text is jumbled leaving you unable to determine which option is the right one. You pick wrong and Fred gets hurt. Money, items, stat boosts, and food are the main resources you’re hunting for as you progress through Mewgenics.

You finally arrive at a battle, and this is where Mewgenics gets bananas. You’re dropped onto a grid made up of squares on which you can move, attack, and generally cause mayhem. Your squad is placed down on one side, as are foes and miscellaneous junk, food, poo, etc. Early on these enemies are simple – fat rats, other cats, maggots, and flies. This so far is a gross-but-standard TRPG battle system, and should be of no surprise coming from McMillen himself.

However, it’s the environment and item systems that take Mewgenics to another level here. Let’s say Miku throws a fireball at an enemy and sets some nearby grass on fire. Fred, in melee range, can use an ability or equipped weapon to push an enemy into this inferno. Or let’s say an ice spell is used instead. This grass then becomes sharp grass, which again acts as a hazard.

Items and abilities interact with the environment so ravenously that it kept me constantly thinking about inventive ways to interact with the battles I’m in, beyond just killing all the enemies with the spells and attacks at my disposal. The closest, admittedly ham-fisted, comparison I can think of is Divinity: Original Sin and its similarly obsessive passion for messing with your surroundings. Mewgenics even goes so far as to change bosses depending on random weather conditions, giving them entirely different move lists. Wild.

After beating these enemies Miku levels up, providing you with a selection of four active abilities or passives to choose from. Here’s where you evolve your build on the fly, doubling-down on your original approach or pivoting to a different strategy depending on the whims of chance. Miku is offered a passive that improves her damage when at full mana, which means her first turn will be spent not casting her fireball so she can hit that limit and nab the buff.

You pass a fork in the road: the easy path or the hard path. Each level I played had this choice available, tempting you with honeyed loot locked behind tougher fights. You take a chance and go for it. The good news: you get a shotgun, which Fred loves. The bad news: Miku is downed in one of these tougher fights. This doesn’t mean she’s dead, it just means she’s suffered a broken leg and a permanent decrease in dexterity.

Despite this, you eventually reach the end of the level, and beat the boss. Now you can choose whether to continue on to another level, or head home with your loot. You head home, taking your ill-gotten gains with you. Your food and money is stored away and your cats can relax at home, retired.

After ending the day, Fred and Catsune Miku have sex and a kitten is born. It inherits Miku’s burn boost passive, which is lovely. Miku can then be kept in your home base – a disgusting house filled with rancid cats – or sent off to one of many NPCs who will give you permanent unlocks, side quests, and other goodies in exchange. But it doesn’t have to go that way. Maybe Miku has twins, what a score! Maybe she’s asexual, or just doesn’t get on with Fred at all. Maybe she gets permanently disfigured in a fight with Fred, or maybe she’s just gay? All of these are possible, and all of these have significant consequences to how you approach your next excursion in Mewgenics.

It sounds like a lot, because it is a lot. I can only promise you that the game does hold your hand through the learning process. Even if all your cats die, a stray cat will show up at your house every day. Despite its complexity, Mewgenics (at least in its opening chapter) is not an overly challenging game. It’s mostly balanced upon how well you can exploit your cats’ strengths, and as such your task as the player is to identify how to best use your gaggle of horrid little furballs.

What McMillen and Glaiel have done with Mewgenics is create a game about cats duking it out in which there is no such thing as a useless cat, and they’ve done so in a game where you can truly do horrific things to your cats. You can have a disfigured, unlovable cat, who is too stupid to read and cursed with some horrid, inherited disease. Some would look at that cat and see garbage, but look closer and you’ll see that cat is hella tough. That useless cat looks like a five-star tank to me!

And with that we arrive at what I feel is a powerful message at the heart of Mewgenics, especially as someone who owns a cat: cats are not purfect princes who do no wrong. They can be loud, messy, greedy things. And yet, every good cat owner will tell you that in spite of these quirks and genuine harrowing problems, they do still love their cat. They see the qualities their cat has, beyond all the issues.

That is the heart of Mewgenics, both in its opening narrative and overall design. Every freak cat that crawls to your door has the potential to run a blazing streak through the game given enough love and attention. They can fend off ghosts and spiders and venture out into the desert, or maybe defend your home from outside intrusions. Once they’ve returned, it doesn’t matter how much they’ve been beaten up, they will have a home with an NPC. Even past their prime they have value. That, I feel, is a pretty powerful message. Even in a game swirling in toilet humour. In fact, maybe because of it.

In case you can’t tell, I came away deeply excited for Mewgenics. When my preview access was taken away I was distraught. It looks to be an absolute banger. After years-upon-years of development, I can only hope that the developer duo can nail the landing on what could be a bombshell release next year.

Mewgenics will be launching on 10th February, 2026 on PC.