Video Gamers Podcast - Mewgenics [DEEP DIVE] – Gaming Podcast

Episode Date: March 2, 2026

Gaming hosts Josh, Ryan and Ace are diving claws-first into the wildly unique gameplay of Mewgenics for a full deep dive you won’t hear anywhere else. Is this bold design the kind of risk that pushes video games forward, or is it too weird for its own good? The guys break down the turn-based combat, long-term progression, and how its layered systems could redefine what depth means in gaming. If you love video games that experiment and shake up the formula, this is one gaming focused episode you don’t want to miss from the Video Gamers Podcast!   Thanks to our MYTHIC Supporters: Redletter, Disratory, Ol’ Jake, Gaius, Jigglepuf, Phelps and NorwegianGreaser, and Dettmarp   Thanks to our Legendary Supporters: HypnoticPyro, PeopleWonder, Bobby S.   Connect with the show: Support us on Patreon: ⁠patreon.com/videogamerspod⁠ Join our Gaming Community: https://discord.gg/h2cHKAvSmu Follow us on Instagram:⁠ https://www.instagram.com/videogamerspod/⁠  Follow us on X:⁠ https://twitter.com/VideoGamersPod⁠  Subscribe to us on YouTube:⁠ ⁠⁠https://www.youtube.com/@VideoGamersPod?sub_confirmation=1⁠    Visit us on the web:⁠https://videogamerspod.com/⁠ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Happy birthday To Happy birthday Happy birthday Happy birthday to Yeah I got to say that's a Thank you

That is a significant improvement over the last time you all sang happy birthday on a stream That's hey dude it's your 70th birthday We got to step it up All right, pal We can be older than Leon Kennedy here 26, thank you. All right.

Well, that's a start of an episode. Now, let me get to this real intro here. Meow, meow, fellow gamers, and welcome to the video gamers podcast. Mugenics is out. It's all the rage, and we've been playing it. What the heck is this game about? What's with the weird art style?

And is it really all about cats? Well, we've got all the info you need on this deep dive episode. But before we get to the fun, some introductions are in order. I am your host, Josh. And joining me, if he was a cat, he'd be the dumb, stupid one you can't help but love because, well, that's actually him. It's Ryan. Meow. Meow.

God, you meow, meow. Ryan, you should have put an audition in. You could have done it. I should have. Scratch, meow. And joining us, he's an awesome guy because unlike Ryan, he loves cats. Even if his two cats are legendary turds who terrorize him and knock over his shelves, it's ace.

I love them, even if they don't understand that I love them. she's she's right there to the left of me sleeping because she wouldn't leave dude i am waiting for her to just jump on your oh it'll it'll happen it'll happen at some point i cannot wait this will be the perfect episode for that too but also yeah your cats are little demon spawns ace that's all i that's what i hear when i hear about your cats one is still screaming at that door by the way that i shut and the other one that snuck her way in because one's in and one's not yeah what the jealousy is palpit the jealousy is palp Oh, guys, Mugenics is out.

We have been playing it a lot. We have everything you want to know about what the heck this game is, if it's worth your money. Is it the hype that, you know, Steam ratings and things would have you believe? Who's it for? Who's it not for? We're going to answer all those questions. But we have to thank a couple people before we get into that. So a huge shout out to not one but two people that upgraded.

not only were they already supporters of the show, but they upgraded from being rare to epic. So a massive shout out to Lighthouse Bengal for going epic and Sergeant Donut for going epic. Two longtime supporters of the show. We know you both have been around for a long time. Thank you for just being even more glorious. Thank you guys.

You're awesome. We appreciate that. Also genuinely like every time we see somebody sign up, Like it pops up. We have notifications on our emails. And so like this person signed up for this status or that status. And we see it come through. It every single time it brings the biggest smile.

And either I send it to Josh or Josh sends it to me or I send it to Ace or Ace sends it to. You know, it's like we all are so stoked every single time it happens. We see everyone, same as the reviews. Like all of it really genuinely means so much to us. So thank you everybody for your support. and thank you for upgrading. Yeah. Yeah.

Honestly. We couldn't do this without you. Honestly, we say that all the time, but we wouldn't be able to, you know. Let's be honest. A show of this caliber takes, you know, fine. I like how we all start chuckling after you say that. We're like, oh, okay. You know, this guy.

It's like the nervous laugh when you know you're lying. Yeah, I couldn't. I couldn't say that with a straight face. Sorry people. So I'm just going to say this right now. Ryan and I are going to fight. Normally we do not share our thoughts on a game before we do the deep dive. But Ryan felt the need to come out swinging on Mugenics.

Now, I will say this. We knew from the game that this was not Ryan's style of game. So this is the only nice thing I'm going to say about. Ryan all episode was that this was, we knew that this was not his type of game. And Ryan was like, no, no, I'm going to play it, guys. I'm going to play it. It looks good. It looks good. Yeah, yeah, it looks good, man. Yeah, I'm going to play it. And then, uh, I think, I don't know, Ryan, where were you like 15 minutes in where you were just like, this game stupid. No, no, no, no. Initially, I did put time in multiple, multiple hours, but initially I made it five minutes. I, I did the

tutorial, like part of the tutorial. And I was like, this is the stupidest thing I've ever played in my life. And I clicked out. And I wouldn't played something else that we were playing. So lucky you. We had Overwatch too. That's my own. Yeah. Yeah. So, you know, all right, Ace, I'm going to throw this to you.

Actually, no. You know, no, no, no. Yeah. Ryan. Lay it on me. Why don't you just summarize what Mugenics is? For somebody that's never heard of this game, has never seen a video, has never seen a trailer. What is the Ryan definition of Mugenics for somebody.

Oh man. So if you want to, you know, time is finite. In this world, we only have so much of it. If you want to waste any part of it, then you would boot up this game and then you would watch cats, you know, sleep with each other and kill each other and throw them down tubes and attack each other and fight blobs and then knock over trash cans and poop and do anything and everything that is the most stupidest stuff you can play

in a video game. And then that's the game. Cool. That's cool. I'm glad that's what you got out of eugenics, Ryan. That's pretty much what you can get out of megenic. Really, genuinely, though, genuinely. I will say, obviously, they've spent a lot of time of this.

I don't want to... Twelve years. Yeah. Oh, God, it took them 12 years to make this game. Oh, no. It's two people. Two people that made this game. It could be a thing.

It could be a thousand. It wouldn't matter. Oh, my God. That didn't help. That didn't help. That it was... I would have, I mean, two people, you could have said a year, and I've been like, oh, man, they wasted their time.

But anyways. So, so... No, this is a, this is a tactic, like, tactical-based, like, kind of turn-based combat cat game where you, um, there, there is a lot. There's, there's kind of, um... a lot within this world. There is, you know, there's breeding of your cats and your characters that you play. There's genetics.

There's tactical combat. There's items you can use. There's events. There's unlockables, like different things as you progress with each run. There is a lot to this game. I know it's not my favorite in the moment, but I can recognize what this game has. And there's a lot there. And I'm sure Josh and Ace will expand on, like, the parts that they liked.

mostly about it. But there's a lot there. It's definitely a tactical-based combat. I don't know. How would you describe the way that the board is laid out? It's a CRPG. What would you call that? CRPD.

It's a CRPG. Yeah, CRPG, yeah. You have the tiles and you have the limited amount of move space before you can attack. It's a CRPG. That's what, it's a turn-based. CRPG implies like Baldersgate 3, Divinity Original Sin, like, Rogue Traitors. It counts for like Firemum as well, though. And Firemum is basically this game, but not cats.

Because there's really no story or anything involved. Like most CRPGs have a really... There's not. What? Yeah, I guess there's no story. You can't really call it an RPG. But it's a tactics game, I think, is what you would call this. A turn-based tactics game would be the easiest definition.

So... So, all right, Ace. Uh-oh. For somebody that's played this game and doesn't hate it, How would you describe eugenics just? 12 years. Eugenics is a quirky, if not a little bit off-putting, turn-based roguelike RPG where you breed cats to gain their different traits.

You give them collars that give them different classes and you set them off on their adventure as like a little, almost like D&D party. And they take on the world and you get items and you go through like random events. It's a roguelike. So, you know, you experience all. these things totally at random. You never know what's going to happen. And it's got some of the most banging music I've like ever heard for the boss fights.

I really enjoyed the boss fight. The music is so catchy. Cat fight, cat fight. What's that smell? What's that smell? What's the crispy thighs? Yeah. I don't know the lyrics, but that one gets stuck in my head all the time.

The music and the tune to that one was really good. Oh, man. Yeah. I love the boss fight themes. So here's the thing with Mugenics. You know, Edward McMillan is the developer for Binding of Isaac and another game that I'd never heard of. But this guy makes really weird art style games, but also makes really good gameplay games. I think the first thing with Mugenics that stands out to people is the art style in this.

And it's this weird, gross, like off-putting art style. I'm not going to lot. Like, it is not pleasant, but it reminds me of kind of like the Renan stimpy days. I was going to say, yeah,

it's very, SpongeBob. It's new grounds. If you, if you guys are familiar with New Grounds animation anyway, that's where like all the, like,

new animators go to, like, test their projects and things. And that's, it's new grounds animation. So it's very rough. It's, okay.

New grounds. It's gross. It's ugly. But yet it kind of sort of somehow works. Even for somebody that's like a graphic snob like me, like I don't mind the graphics

and the art style. in meogenic at all. In fact, I kind of oddly like it. Fits the world. Even though it's gross. Like, you know, like, everything's just gross. The monsters you fight are blobs. The, they're saggy and blobby and fat and gross and I don't know, dude. Like, it's just a really, really weird art style. Sounds fun. It sounds awesome, man. It makes me feel bad, though. It's unique. And honestly, in a world of like, just, you know, blandness and lack of innovation, like, I'm a kind of. like that Mugenics stands out, man.

And even if it's a gross standout, it's at least something unique. Like, name another game that looks like Mugenics. You can't. Binding of Isaac, maybe. Like, because it's the same guy. I mean, binding of Isaac and Super Meat Boy because they're made by the same people, but that's the only reason.

Because the art styles match. Yeah. Yeah. Right. Yeah, exactly. So, you know, I am a huge fan of turn-based tactical combat, right? Like I've said this time and time again, to Ryan's credit, he hates these styles.

of games. And so we kind of knew where this was going to go when Ryan was like, oh yeah, totally. I'm going to play Mugenics guys. And then we went, okay, well, this would be good to have a, this would be good to have an opposite viewpoint on this episode. You can just pencil that in right away. I will say this. I do not think Mugetics is for everybody. Like, I'm going to just come right out and say it. I do not think this game is for everybody. Now, we're going to talk about what works in this game and what doesn't work in this game so that you can kind of form your own opinion on it and we'll obviously give you our thoughts on it as well but i'm just going to lead right off by saying i don't think this game is for everybody

what i do think is if you enjoy this type of game meugenics has a whole heck of a lot to offer you if you like this style of game so um why don't we go ahead and just kind of start breaking down the gameplay a little bit on this one um so you know the basic premise you i think you guys touched on most of it the basic premise is you have your house you get these cats. You have a stray cat show up. Your cats make kittens. You know,

we've joked around about it being kitty horns. They can censor it. You can censor it. Every night, if you're lucky, your cats get together and they make kittens. It doesn't always happen. And so there's this mini game of how do you keep your house

comfy for your cats and entertainment levels? And there's this kind of house management thing where, you know, you're trying to get your cats to breathe. and to have babies because the babies get the stats from their parents and there's this whole mini game there. You then take your four cats and you go on an adventure with them. You can take four at a time and ace you touched on this one

where you can assign them classes. They have stats that matter. They get skills that you don't get to control. And then you go on this four cat adventure and you make it as far as you can until you die or you decide to go home. And then when you go home, that's it. Those cats are done. You don't ever get to use those ever again.

Yeah, they're retired. You two, I got, man. Look, because everybody knows this is not a professional podcast. All right. And I didn't even look. I'm not, listen, listen, I just, I want people out there to understand what I have to go through as host sometimes. Okay. Because I'm, I'm sitting here trying to do the best I can.

And all I see are little Discord message pop-ups with links and gifts. And then I see you two knuckleheads just start losing your stuff and chuckle it. And I'm like, I can't click it. I can't click the link while I'm trying to describe. I click the link. I click the link. And I like, oh my gosh, you too. All right.

Anyway, you can make a lot of jokes. This game is so, this is so professional, this game, you know. Yeah. If there's one game where we have to break professionality, it should be this one. Also, kudos to you both for. some really good funny gifts that have to do with cats mating, apparently. Hey, it's good enough for Mugenics. It's good enough for us, right?

Pardon us. Anyway. So, yeah, so you go out with your four cats. This is where the turn-based combat goes in. This is like 80% of the game, in my opinion. And honestly, where the game shines. Yes, this is the fun part. When you are done with your adventure,

and I actually really like this feature because I would abuse it otherwise, your cats are out. Yep. If you have a successful adventure, your cats retire and you can't ever use them again. And to me, that's actually a terrible decision on paper, but in gameplay, it actually works really well because I would just keep trying to use this optimal party of cats over and over again. Yeah. And you can't do that in this game. So I really like the gameplay loop of select these four cats, take them on their adventure.

They level up quickly. You get new skills. You get new passives. You find gear. Your cats go through a plethora of horrid. horrible, horrible injuries and death and things like that. They get disfigured. They start to suck because every time you get injured,

your cat's injuries become permanent. Your stats go down. And you just kind of hope for the best at that point. But the randomness and the fact that every single run that you do in Mugenics feels unique to me. I don't know, Ace, I know you've done a lot. I've seen you play in this game. Yeah, yeah.

A good bit. Am I off base? Do you feel like that's a fair, like a very? valid point that every single run in this game feels unique to you? No, I think that's very on point. Every run feels very unique because every run you have a completely different set of cats with a completely different set of skill sets. And you kind of have no real control over what traits kind of pass over from the past generation into the new cats, which is kind of one of my complaints. But I think that adds to it as well.

Yeah. Ryan, not you, Ryan. What did you think of all the cats? Would you think about how many runs and how this game evolved over its course of runs? And, uh, you know, maybe after like your 20th run, you know. Oh, I didn't do 20 runs. No way. No, I know that after the after the first run and I didn't lose a cat, I didn't have a cat die or I think maybe one broke a leg or something dumb like that. But like it was, uh, they went back and then that's when I found out though, like because they just wrecked house on them.

like bro i got a sweet squad you know and then there's like they're all retired i couldn't put them back in the box to go back out and i'm like oh what the heck man and they're they're dunzo so you got you got to try to get new cats so i do think that is a cool feature as as much as it would be easier to use the elite squad that you kind of can build um having to re kind of make a new squad every single time you want to go out with the new ones because you get the new the new kittens and then they have to take a day or whatever to grow up yeah they have to grow up and then you get their their stats and then you can put them in if you want and uh i i do think that that's neat that they they did do it that way i it's it's one of those things where it's like man i wish it was this way

because it'd be easier for me but it is cool to have it you know to where you have to do that but with the way that the, I forgot your original question. I was just asking you about how many runs you went on. Yeah, it was more just to troll you. Yeah, no, I know. I figured you were just trying to troll me. I put time into this game, dude. I may have not liked it, but I put time in.

You did. Ryan, I think you were just shy of four hours. Yeah, I was like, way more than I thought you were going to make. The first time I quit, I quit in five minutes. Like the first time when I'm like, all right, I know we don't say it, but I'm a professional. and I put some time and I put four hours of my life into this game.

You'll never get back. I wish I had back, but you know, here we are. All right, listen, we're going to break down some of the gameplay elements for you guys out there to kind of give you a little bit more idea about what Mugenics is, but we're going to do that right after this break. All right. We're back. We're talking Mugenics.

You know, we're doing our best to break down what this game is for you guys. There's a lot going on here, and I'll be honest. I am 20 hours into Mugetics. And I am barely scratching the surface of this game. I have seen many a report that says that this game is easily 200 hours for people that want to try to get like 100% or platinum the game or something like that. This is a game that apparently 40 hours in you'll start discovering new things and things you've never seen before, which honestly for roguelike is really, really impressive at the same time. So we've talked about the basic premise of the game.

you have your house, you get your cats, you send your cats on an adventure, they go out. If you're lucky, they survive the adventure and they come back with food and money. And then you can spend your money on upgrades for your house. Your cats need food every night. So, you know, that's the basic gameplay loop on this. Now, I want to talk about because this is a smaller part of the game, at least right now, for me is the house management and the upgrades and the weird sending cats to these really creepy characters.

Yeah, there's some weird characters in this game. That's for sure. It's really, it's gross and it's weird, but again, I kind of like the originality on this one. So Ace, you know, like, I don't even know where you start. I don't know where you start with that. It's like you, you have your cats. They're retired.

You can't do anything with them. If you're lucky, you're retired cats that have good stats breed with other cats that have good stats and they make a kitten that has really good stats. If you're lucky. Down the tube! Down the tubes, right? So, you know, what you don't want to have happened is having 30 cats pooping in your house. So there's a way to get rid of these cats.

And A's, what is that way? Cats are basically currency in this world, I guess, where you can trade them away to several different vendors for different upgrades. And this is where your permanent upgrades come from within this game is the only place I think your permanent upgrades really come from. Yeah. Because you'll trade them to like the bandit guy. to get a blank collar that unlocks the cleric the first time you meet that, that goal. Or you'll trade it to the kid who breaks bones

because they're going to grow back stronger. You trade him injured cats. He's like, I'm going to break all their bones and they're going to come back stronger. And I was like, hmm, don't like that. All right. Yeah. No. Or you have the ugly goblin thing that lives under your house

who has your name for some reason. And wants to eat the dead cats. And wants to eat the dead cats. But he insists he's your like steam name. so he'll always call himself that. Yeah. It's a very weird thing, but it's also, like, needed because if you get your house, like, too overcrowded with cats, then they just start killing one another.

Yeah. Like, genuinely, they will start killing one another, maiming one another. It's bad. It's so bad. I never got to that. You never got to that? No, no. The second I realized that my cats, like, were useless after I couldn't, like, use them again,

I was like, see you. I just dropped them all in the tube immediately. Yeah, 100%. Right, you monster. What purpose do they serve? Good stats. They have a chance to breed in good stats. How about just a life of happiness in retirement?

They went on this adventure, man. They brought back food and money for you and then you just dump them down the pipe. Have you ever bred Pokemon, like in Pokemon games, Ryan, to get the better stats and do EV training? I haven't played a Pokemon game since 1999, dude. Okay, you have no idea what I'm talking about. Actually, Pokemon Go, I played Pokemon Go. You can't breathe in Pokemon, go. Yeah.

So, Ace, you know, this is the permanent progression. I am not a fan of like base management type stuff. Cult of the Lamb, right? Like, I liked a lot of Colt of the Lamb, but the base management stuff is just not necessarily my jam. So this is the part of the game where it's like, okay, I get that this is necessary. And yes, there's some fun upgrades and I like progression in games. But the, like managing the house.

house part isn't my favorite part of this game. For some people, for some people, I think it will be. Like, I think that that challenge of like, how do I get all my cats to be happy? How do I get this like mutation level and comfort level and appeal for the house level up? Because then you get more strays and stuff like that. Down the tube.

Yeah, down the tube is what Ryan says. Down the tube and then you got a clean house. It doesn't poop in the house or it gets the tube. It gets the tube if it poops in the house. Yeah, there you go. So, you know, and so this is a fully fleshed out part of this game. It's very in depth. I just don't love that part of it.

So I don't dabble in that a whole whole lot. I kind of just go for the upgrades and that's that. To me, where this game really shines is the combat and when you're on the adventure. So we're going to kind of move into that part of it now because this for me is, honestly, it's so good, dude. I love this part of the game. This part's fun. I mean, it is the game, you know, but like, I. I'm a big fan of turn-based tactic games.

I like the whole like if I move this guy here and then he absorbs that blow and then I can use this ability on that guy and so on and so forth. But Mugenics gives you thousands of options in the way that you can approach the combat. And this to me is where this game really stands out

because there's this weird surface level of gross graphics and cats and why are you sending these cats on an adventure and then they go and it's turn base. But dude, there is such a robust and in-depth combat system here that it's honestly kind of shocking to me like how much you can wind up doing in this and i'm 20 hours in dude i'm 20 hours into this game and i am finding abilities that i've never seen before i'm fighting enemies that i've never

seen before i'm getting passive abilities that i've never seen before i get crazy builds on a run that I've never had like work out before. Like this is why I say every single run feels like a brand new game to me. And I don't know how these two dudes pulled this off, man. Like, where do we even start, Ace? When you have thousands of possibilities in combat, like, how do we even begin to like explain that to people? It's darn near impossible to narrow down just how much is in this game. Because not only do you have your cats have all their starting stats and things like that.

Like you have your starting stats. you're starting, you know, passive ability attack, thing like that. And then you give them a collar. And now that is like bound to a different stat and a different kind of like whole thing. Like if they had a melee attack and you give them the ranger collar, now it's a ranged attack because of course. Right. But on top of that, while you're out doing this like quest, basically, you're picking up

items that affect how your attacks are, you know, altered or you're getting new passives that like, whenever you get hit, you spawn a familiar. It's like, this is crazy. And it has that rogue-like charm where you can get overpowered really, really fast. And I love it. Like, I'd arrange you. This is one of the things that I love. I was going to say, like, real quick, anytime a game lets you break the game, I'm a fan of that, especially in rogue-like games.

And Nugentics lets you do that. Like, honestly, they let you do that. And in fact, sometimes I think they kind of encourage it where, you know, you can just get lucky. a certain set of skills and passives go together that you're just like, okay, I want to see where, like, where this goes. You were saying something like you had a Ranger. I don't know. That was my first crew. My first crew I walked everybody the whole way through. And then I'm like, oh, this game is easy. And then the next one. No, no, no. It's not. It's not. It's not. Now, I had a Ranger who had a passive, or he had a, he came with a skill where he

could flip a coin and he could up his crit percentage by like 12% every, like, turn or something. that. So I was just upping the crit percentage like every free action I got because I wasn't using any of the mana. And then I were just from downtown absolutely annihilate people.

It was like so satisfying. And then I got a item later on called the third eye, which meant I never missed range attacks. I got that one too. Game over. Yeah. It's really interesting to me. because you have these passives that you don't know what they are until once you have to lock in the class that you want your cats to be before the game reveals what their passives and their abilities are which I think is also kind of neat.

Yeah. But once you do, that's where the fun is because it's like, all right, well, let's see what this crew, this rag tag crew of cats has got. And then it's weird to me because some runs, I think this is a terrible crew. But then they level up and they get an ability that just pairs perfectly with like either their passive or somebody else's passive. And then it's like, oh, we're off to the races, man. And it's really exciting and fun to see how these combos work together. And like as you go on these adventures and you go through these maps and you do these fights, almost every time you have a fight, a cat levels up. Yeah.

And then it's like, okay, well, and then you get to pick, this is the rogue like nature. You get to pick one of four abilities for your cats to have or to learn. And then occasionally you can stat up the cats and say, hey, well, I want this cat to have more health. and so on and so forth. But... Stat full heel. Right. Yeah.

Yep. Between the party composition where there's multiple classes and the abilities that your cats get, there are an infinite number of permutations and what your party composition can look like. And then how that changes throughout the adventure that those four cats are going on. And I've said this, you know, a dozen times already. But that unknown and that replayability of each adventure is what to me. makes meugenics shine, right?

Like, you know, yes, it's turn-based combat. There's nothing unique about the turn-based combat, and I think this is kind of what puts Ryan off, right? Is it's like, okay, well, I'm just waiting to take my turn, and I move this cat here, and then the enemy moves here, and I blow, so on and so forth. You've seen this a million times, but this infinite possibilities of what could happen

and how it sometimes does happen is what makes Mugenics shine, in my opinion. And, I mean, I'm 20 hours in, and, dude, I can easily see putting another 40 hours. into this game because it's just so chill at the same time. Yeah. Like anybody that's been listening to this podcast for a long time knows how much I love and hate Harstone because like Harstone is my comfort game where I just kick back. I put my feet up on the desk.

You know, I've got food or I'm doing something. And it's like, I don't need a keyboard. I can just play with the mouse, you know, and I'm kicked back doing my thing. And Mugenics is that game for me now. Like I actually think like, I think this is replacing Harstone for me because I can just play a run or two. And then that's it. And you can save in between combat

so I can just come back to a good run and there's my cats. And it's like, all right, man. Like this cat's kicking butt. This cat sucks because he's got injured four times so he's the dead weight on the team. And maybe I just let him die and then maybe I let his corpse get eaten,

you know, or something like that or explode so that I don't have to worry about this guy anymore. But yeah, I, there's something magical about this game and how it never feels the same to me. It never feels the same. And like you said, you're able to save and quit in the middle of a run.

So, like, I would be playing Mugenics. You guys would be like, hey, do you guys want to hop on Overwatch? But, oh, heck yeah. I can just save and quit and go, I can play that. Yep. And I love that.

I love having a game that you could just kind of have passively in your, like, library. Something like, I don't know what I want to play. I'm going to run, do a few runs on Mugenics. Then someone says, hey, I want to play this.

Like, oh, all right. Yep. Yeah. It's great. for like chill pastime game to me honestly like it really is I mean we can try to break down all the little subsystems and everything else but honestly we

just don't have time to do that you know this is the type of game if you want a chill game that you can play at any given moment you can do one you can do one battle and oh there's the cat yep we knew we knew she was going to make appearance popped up on my lap here for a second

yeah um put her down the tube she is not going down the tube You know which cat is Ace's favorite because he let this one in the room, by the way. So favoritism there on this play. Everyone who knows me knows that's my favorite cat. Yeah, if you, I'll say this.

If you're a fan of turn-based combat, if you're a turn of rogolikes, I think Vigenics is absolutely like a must play. It's a must. In my opinion. Like, the art style is weird. It's gross. There's cats humping all the time.

You are feeding cats to weird underground sewer creatures and you're giving them to people that are breaking their legs and stuff like that. So there's this weird like uncomfortableness. It's very morbid. To like this game. It's very morbid. But it just works, man.

And Ace, you touched on it. The soundtrack is one of the catchiest stupid soundtracks I've ever heard. That's the best part of the game. That's that smell. Crispy legs and juicy thighs. Yeah. Legs and juicy thighs. Oh, my.

It's, they're so catchy, dude. It's so good. I really think like, yeah, Mugenics is a must play for anybody. It's not for Ryan. And as much as I have been trolling Ryan on his takes on Mugetics this week, it's like, I get. And we started off by saying this game is not for everybody. It's understandable. It's for a lot of people because on Steam currently, out of almost 17,000 reviews, this game is sitting at a very positive 91%

on Steam. What percent of those people do you think own a cat? I don't know. It's already sold over a million copies, Ryan. No, there's, it's got to be, it's got to be like 90% of those own a cat. They're like cat people. I don't think this is not like a, if you're like, most cat people would be pretty upset seeing cats

get like dismembered. I know, exactly. No, they like to, but they'd like to like play, you know, with, with the cats and they do, oh, no, there's horrible, horrible. They say, I dismembered a kitten. Like, I felt bad at them. you should feel bad about that. See, I never did that, chat.

You know, chat. Chat, chat. Ryan's been streaming too much. That was, that was, I know. I never did that. Chad, I didn't just remember the, what I can say, what I can say is, is from somebody, because obviously, Josh, you like, you like turn-based combat.

You love that style. And I understand that. And I understand that, um, that, that regardless of kind of what the world is like that style is something that resonates with you i i can i can feel that this game that there's something there for people who like it just the same way like expedition 33 i could tell it was a good game this one for me i just i could not i didn't have a part that really i felt good about playing and i wanted to continue but when i played i liked the music i thought it was great i thought the um kind of the weird nature of of the graphics and all the

stuff was kind of off-putting like we had mentioned. But the, if you like turn-based combat, even though I don't, I know that this is for you. Like this is, people who like that style, I can tell that this is something, there's a lot there. I did enjoy some of the strategic, strategic nature of like, like you said, like pairing up with, oh, you generate three fleas now. And so then you use your attack and then boom, you can go hit them with, oh, then that actually killed that guy so he can't he can't attack you and then there's only one left and you can circle around and so there's there's so much there and everyone's unique and everyone's every run is different

but um if you if you like that style this game this game will be for you um i like to talk a lot of crap about it just because it's not for me but uh but this game is is is genuinely a decent game for for an indie style like turn base kind of combat game it's it's pretty cool All right. I want to rate this. I want to give this an official rating because I think this will be fun. Oh, here we go. This lets Ryan give his rating too. So Ryan, since you don't get any context, what is your rating for Mugenics? Oh, man. Now, your rating, you're not rating in what you think the game should be. No, no, no. For you. Based on my interaction, I put three and a half just under four hours because I really just had no desire to play anymore. To me, this was like a,

a 7-1. Like it's... That's higher than I expected from you. No, it's an overall, it's an okay game. I'm sure a lot of people have a lot of fun. To me, I did enjoy some parts of it. Some of the just crude, disgusting humor made me laugh, which is...

And then that and the music was probably what kind of built it up for me. But overall, like, if you don't like turn-based combat, you're not going to like this game. If you do, you probably will. And that's kind of the simplest way to put it. What about you, Ace? I think it lands right at nine for me. I do have minor gripes.

It's really good, dude. And I would sucker for a rogue leg that just never feels like it gets old for one thing. Like, that's something that matters to me. Where it kind of falters for me is I don't feel like permanent progression was that impactful. And I also felt like for a game that centers so much around. the breeding of the cats to get, you know, good cats. I would have liked some way to, like, influence that so I could get good cats. But yeah, I think it's a nine for me.

So that's funny, Ace, because you and I feel pretty similar. I, you know, for me, I feel like this game was designed to be like a hundred hour game. And so, you know, they went, hey, you know, let's kind of slow down some of this discoverability that you're going to get and some of these unlocks and stuff like that, like the progression. So I'm with you. I feel like the permanent progression is a little bit lacking. I think that the combat and the temporary items that you can bring back home that like you, you know, your cats have gear slots. So you can put like a collar and glasses and a hat on them and stuff and you can, they do wildly different things. Totally changes things. So if you are a

person that loves builds and like that variety like Mugenics is fantastic, um, but there is some randomness to that as well. I'm going to give this like an eight. I'm going to say eight I find myself really enjoying doing runs, but I also don't find myself craving to play this game. Like, if that makes sense. So that's, you got like 20 hours. I know. But like, but I don't like,

I'm not like thinking about meugenics when I'm not playing megenics. All right. If that makes sense, you know what I mean? But again, this is my like comfy, like, familiar game now. It's kind of like that's my thing. It fills the slot for me of a casual game that I'm just playing. And it's like hard for me to say that.

not worthy of a nine if it's worthy of that much of my time in the future that I'm willing Yeah, that's why what's that's what's wild is because when I'm like, oh, I got 15 minutes to kill, I'm like, I'm going to go just get killed on Stella Montes and Ark Raiders. Like I'll just go load up on some PVP. Yeah, I get that. It's just a different vibe though, you know, like I said, you know, you got to be kind of semi-sweighty, you know, like paying attention when you're playing Arc Raiders. Like I said, I can kick my feet up on my desk.

I can eat a burrito with one hand while I'm, it doesn't require. Clicking. You know, right, exactly. It's just a chill. It requires a mouse. That's fair. That's fair. You don't have to remember where you were when you come back.

You're just like, oh, yeah. Yeah, honestly, you don't. Yeah, there's very little thinking as far as that goes. So yeah, 8-8 for me. Pick up Mugenics people. It is a very unique game. It is, it offers a lot. I mean, for somebody that wants 200 hours of gameplay, I mean, boy, you're, you can get that

no problem, like no problem at all out of this game. So, and it's, you know, we talk about innovation. this is unlike any other game that I've played. Like, yes, it's a turn-based tactics game, but like everything else about this is about as unique and terrible and glorious as a game. It's not always a good thing to be unique, bro. I mean, sometimes it is.

All right, well, listen, that's going to do it for this one, everybody. Thank you for hanging out with this. Go check out Mugenics, a 9 from Ace and 8.8 for me. And honestly, a 7.1 for mine, which is way higher than I'm going to do. Way higher than expected. So, yeah. So apparently Ryan does. I told you I recognize when it's good.

It's just not for me. Yeah. And I get that 100%. So all right. Listen, if you're not part of our community, join our Discord server. There's a link in the episode description. If you want to be like Sergeant Donut and Lighthouse Bangle and support this show and get a shout out, there's a link in the episode description for that as well.

We need your support to keep doing this. We appreciate it. We try to give you a lot of perks to say thank you. Plus you get just the knowledge of knowing that you're bringing. an awesome podcast to the world at the same time. So that's going to do it for this one, everybody. Until next time, meow, meow, baby. Oh, God.

Yeah, follow that up, Ryan. Follow that up, Ryan. See you. Oh, God. Cat fight, cat fight. Peace out.