Features & News

Mew-Genics’ Latest update confirms that it’s actually a game

February 24, 2013, Author: Matt Parker

I promise there will be no cat puns throughout this post. With that out of the way, it’s time to take a look at Team Meat’s latest game – Mew-Geneics.

Edmund McMillen and Tommy Refenes have been updating their blog with weekly updates about the game, but it wasn’t until yesterday (the 17th week of updates!) that we finally found out how the game plays. Kind of.

Team Meat, the makers of the superb Super Meat Boy have been busy bees of late. Edmund McMillen has been cranking out project after project (go check out The Binding of Isaac right now) and it seems that Tommy has been coding Mew-Genics, which is sounding like their biggest and most ambitious project to date.

Mew-Genics, according to McMillen, is ‘a cross between The Sims and Pokemon with a sprinkling of Animal Crossing and a dash of Tamagotchi‘. It seems like they’re creating a whole new ‘Cat Lady Simulator’ genre.

It's meant to be black & white. Plans for a 'Colour DLC' are unconfirmed...

It’s meant to be black & white. Plans for a ‘Colour DLC’ are unconfirmed…

One of the best ways to convey what it is you’ll be doing within the game is to provide you with an excerpt from Team Meat’s blog, were Edmund explains what happened during a (short) playthrough of the game;

‘Last week I was playing a game with Puddle, a fat female cat I had been working on earlier that day, I thawed her out of her Cryo-cube and placed her in my current single story house along with her newly generated companion Champ. I had been focusing my time on Puddle due to the fact that she seemed to have a very unique tail that I believe had helped her place 2nd in a cat pageant in a previous and I needed to breed her so I could continue her bloodline before she got too old. Sadly Champ wasn’t up to snuff and Puddle made this obvious by repeatedly kicking him in the face, I separated them quickly by putting champ in the attic but when I tried to feed him.. something odd happened. See, Champ was a dullard and when Puddle kicked him he just happened to also be eating and now associated the trauma with food instead of Puddle herself, he was scared of all food.. and sadly died in the attic shortly after.

It wasn’t long after though that I caught sight of a solid black stray cat named Goon, before he had a chance to run I grabbed him and pulled him inside. Goon was a much better fit for Puddle and before I knew it the humping started and puddle was pregnant! I put her in the attic with plenty of food and a bed, but quickly noticed that something was up with Goon, he seemed to be constantly falling asleep. As it turned out Goon was a narcoleptic and as you might have guessed Puddle gave birth to 2 sleeping kittens, one of them fat like his mother and black like his dad and the other small but with his mom’s markings and that amazing forked tail that helped in the last pageant, but sadly both kittens were narcoleptic like their father…

Goon acted aggressively towards the kittens so I let him back out into the yard and he eventually ran away. As the kittens grew up I did enter the small one (his name was Dot) into a pageant but sadly he just fell asleep on the stage and didn’t win anything. To add insult to injury Puddle also acquired feline aids from Goon and I couldn’t afford any of the expensive treatments Dr. Beanies was offering so I put her back in the Cryo-cube in hopes that in the future I might have a cure for her disease once I finish a few more of the Doctor’s missions.

It's Super Effective!

It’s Super Effective!

I wasn’t able to save Dot because I was arrested by the local animal control shortly after I put Puddle in the cube, probably because of letting Goon run away.. and the whole giving my other cat aids thing… or maybe it was the dead cat in the attic.’

If the idea of playing as a mad cat lady hasn’t sold the game to you yet and if Edmund’s fantastic art style didn’t win you over, wait until you hear what this thing will sound like.

Team Meat have enlisted the help of ‘Ridiculon’, a two-piece band who have been charged with making a whole lot of music for the game. Suffice to say, it’s sounding real good.

The game doesn’t have a release date. It’ll be out this year on Mac, Windows, iOS and Android. Other than that, there’s not a lot else to say other than keep your eyes on this one. I have a good feline about this.

Ah, damn it.