Mewgenics PS5 Review - Breed, Battle & Break Reality with Cats

Mewgenics, developed by Edmund McMillen and Tyler Glaiel and published on consoles by Nicalis, is a deeply tactical roguelike strategy RPG and life-sim hybrid. Players build and refine an army of cats through selective breeding and genetics, then send parties of them on procedurally generated, turn-based tactical adventures filled with combat, events, items, and escalating threats.

The game is set in the rundown, eccentric world of Boon County. You play as a cat lady guided, or rather, bossed around by the eccentric, cat-obsessed mad scientist Dr. Thomas A. Beanies. He tasks you with gathering and improving cats through breeding and eugenics-style experiments. Your ever-growing household of unique felines (each with stats, traits, mutations, personalities, and even celebrity meow cameos) forms the core cast. Surviving cats return home to retire and breed the next generation, passing on abilities, strengths, flaws, and genetic quirks. The story starts light and absurd but expands into increasingly bizarre and dark territory involving threats to the house, time travel, and confrontations that escalate far beyond the neighborhood, all delivered with McMillen’s signature irreverent, grotesque humor.

The main menu in Mewgenics is straightforward and functional, offering access to new or continued saves, options (including accessibility toggles and a “safe” mode that sanitizes breeding animations), and the expected console-friendly navigation. In-game features center on the house hub. A customizable, expandable home where cats live, interact, age, develop mutations or defects, and breed. You manage rooms, storage, furniture, and relationships with quirky NPC neighbors who trade upgrades or quests for specific cats. You can pet the cats, listen to the in-game radio station (WMEW 99.9), and prepare parties by assigning class collars and equipment.

The Gameplay ...

The core gameplay loop is addictive and multi-layered. Select up to four adult cats, equip them with unique class collars (Fighter, Mage, Tank, Hunter, and many more unlocked later, each with dozens of abilities), and send them on multi-stage roguelike runs across biomes such as alleys, sewers, caves, junkyards, and stranger locales. Navigate branching paths with battles, random events, loot, and bosses. Survivors return with experience, items, and injuries. They then retire to breed the next generation, creating a long-term genetic progression system where good (or hilariously broken) traits compound over dozens or hundreds of hours. Failures and permanent losses feed into the next cycle, ensuring constant experimentation.

Gameplay mechanics center around deep tactical combat on isometric grid maps. Cats act in turn order influenced by stats (Strength, Dexterity, Constitution, Intelligence, Speed, Charisma/Luck, etc.). Each can move, use a basic class attack, and spend mana on multiple spells or abilities per turn, with passives, items, environmental interactions, weather, and synergies adding layers. Injuries persist, mutations create trade-offs or wild effects, and genetics introduce inheritance, inbreeding risks, and daily chance mutations. The systems support endless synergy variety and emergent chaos while remaining approachable early on and extremely complex later.

The Presentation ...

Presentation leans hard into McMillen’s distinctive hand-drawn, thick-outlined style with a deliberately drab, desaturated “technicolor hellscape” aesthetic and film-grain screen filters that evoke old cartoons and set a dreary, off-putting mood. The crude, exaggerated animations and visuals match the gross-out humor (blood, dismemberment, bodily functions, stylized breeding). Sound effects are punchy and cartoonishly nasty. The prominent complimentary features  is the soundtrack by Ridiculon (Matthias Bossi and Jon Evans), packed with catchy, genre-blending tracks as well as instrumentals for exploration and full lyrical boss songs that feel like twisted Broadway or radio hits.

The Verdict ...

On PS5, the game is highly playable. Console-optimized controls (including a dedicated “Console” cursor mode that limits free mouse-like movement for better pad usability) work well with DualSense support, load times are short, and performance is solid. Replay value is exceptional thanks to the massive scope (200+ hour campaign potential), procedural variety, genetic depth, hundreds of items/abilities/enemies/bosses, and secrets. Note though that this is a mature game not meant for kids. It features blood and gore, crude humor, sexual content and innuendo, language, and drug references.

Mewgenics on PS5 is best suited for fans of The Binding of Isaac or other McMillen works, players who love deep turn-based tactics and roguelikes with heavy meta-progression, and anyone who appreciates dark, absurd humor and high replayability. If you enjoy strategic experimentation, long-term investments, and don’t mind the gross-out tone, or some religious sacrilege this could be the raunchy roguelike for you ...