After 20 hours spent training necromancer cats and raising an army of sentient rocks, I can safely say Mewgenics is one of the best roguelikes I've ever played

The cowboy cat from the desert in Mewgenics

(Image credit: Edmund McMillen, Tyler Glaiel)

Mewgenics is as different from The Binding of Isaac as you can get, though both roguelikes from creator Edmund McMillen have gotten under my skin for the same reasons. Mewgenics is a cat-breeding tactics RPG, whereas The Binding of Isaac is a Zelda-like dungeon crawler with twin-stick shoot 'em up controls. Both, however, thrive on a bold love of chaos that few other roguelikes are bold enough to court.

Over 20 hours in, I'm still uncovering new combinations of cat powers, and stumbling across events that can help and hinder my strategies unexpectedly. I've still barely touched Mewgenics' Act 2, instead focused on perfecting my runs through its earlier zones (and getting ripped to shreds – sometimes literally – by super bosses in the process). Every time I talk to a fellow player, we've got new anecdotes of surprise discoveries, or bizarre synergies we managed to put into play once only to never be seen again. From one of my best fighter cats temporarily disappearing down a hole, only to come back painfully messed up but more powerful, to a tank feline able to convert damage into a legion of sentient rock allies. There's a reason we called it "a dense, detailed, and hugely varied strategy roguelike" in our Mewgenics review.

Lifting the grid

A chaotic fight with Guillotina's third phase, with multiple sentient rocks, cleric clones, and enemy maggots — (Image credit: Edmund McMillen, Tyler Glaiel)

There's enough unpredictability that you can never make order of its chaos.

I've been a roguelike lover for many years, and it's the moreish experiences of The Binding of Isaac and Spelunky in the early 2010s that really had me hooked. Since then, I've run the gamut from deckbuilders to action-adventures. Many of those I've loved, and yet I always find myself coming back to those original loves, in a way I don't with some more recent entries in the genre where I end up more quickly reaching an end point where I feel like I'm done with them. Mewgenics' runs, grid-based scraps punctuated by the chance to improve each cat fighter, has the same hold on me, which is a surprise as I usually bounce off tactics games in general – the likes of Final Fantasy Tactics or even XCOM 2 being a bit too much for my poor brain to handle.

Again, it's about the chaos. While Hades 2 is a phenomenal roguelike that's given me tens of enjoyable hours in its own right, I find its high degree of design polish can sand down the game's friction a tad. With its neatly designed system of weapons and godlike boons that always come with the option to 'pick three' upgrades, I tend to find my preferred method of play and stick with it doggedly through repeat playthroughs. Many modern roguelikes have a similar framework, where a litany of options can be all too easy to pare down, a massive amount of variety becoming a blur of letters in a wordsearch where I look for optimal solutions and struggle to break that habit.

While Mewgenics does have tactical decisions to make – be that which gear you equip or the new abilities each class of cat can acquire as they level up – there's enough unpredictability that you can never make order of its chaos. As cats retire after each run, only sticking around long enough to (hopefully) pass along some of their skills to a new generation, I'm never completely sure which stats I'll have to play with for my four-cat party on each playthrough (or if some disastrous random chance will see my star ranger's dexterity ruined). Even gear can't be counted on for infinite re-use, a chance to break after each adventure meaning I have to fill my backpack up each time.

A cat encounters a hole similar to Junji Ito's in Mewgenics — (Image credit: Edmund McMillen, Tyler Glaiel)

At times, it means Mewgenics can feel a little unfair. You might be on a run with cats particularly susceptible to debuffs only to encounter a weather event that means fire is breaking on each map in a zone constantly. But, equally, you might butt heads with the first zone's bomber rat boss while it's raining, meaning his explosives are completely nerfed. Compound this across a huge amount of shuffled encounters, goodies within chests, ability synergies, and random events, and the structure of any run is completely amorphous.

Looking on in as despair as I misjudge the distance of a shark that'll instantly kill my bleeding kitten who's been backed into a corner, or my cat literally exploding to a boss right at the end of a run throughout which said kitty had to escort a quest item to the final screen, I've had some foul, unlucky runs.

The party fights a gigantic spider boss in the Caves in Mewgenics — (Image credit: Edmund McMillen, Tyler Glaiel)

When these fresh-faced, all-too innocent felines set out, I truly have no idea what they'll encounter next.

But, with the right combination of upgrades, I've had even more times where I feel like I've broken the limits of the game right back to storm through dicey encounters, nudging chance ever so slightly in my favor – resulting in the power to play with death using a necromancer to deal massive damage to mobs, or filling up the turn bar at the top of the screen with an almost endless amount of spawning allied units. Which, then, may equally become my own Icarus-like undoing when my strategy plays into the hands of another strange group of enemies.

Mewgenic's run-by-run evolution is pure chaos, but I always feel like I have a chance to, at the very least, barely make it through, my cats crawling back home to help usher in the next generation. And, when these fresh-faced, all-too innocent felines set out, I truly have no idea what they'll encounter next, how I'll stomp the enemies, or be obliterated in turn – and that makes for a roguelike I simply can't say no to another run playing.

Take a look at our best roguelike games for more purr-fect recommendations for what to play next!