Mewgenics Podcast Review: The First S Tier Roguelite of 2026
2026-03-04 · By Danny
David and I both bought Mewgenics on release day and had a goal to get a podcast recorded about ten days later. For most games this kind of turnaround isn't too hard. You fire up a couple runs and lose quickly while you get a sense of what the game is, then you hone in a bit on some strategy and begin to progress farther in the game. After a few hours you have a decent sense of the game and if you're having a good time you push a little bit more and try to get whatever the simplest version of the win is. This was absolutely not going to happen in Mewgenics.
Mewgenics is massive for a roguelite. It's probably the biggest game we've ever covered in terms of sheer content. Without delving into spoiler territory, you have ~1-2 hour runs where you make it back to your house and what you've really accomplished is unlocking even more game to play. The core game is a tactics RPG, think Into the Breach but with Binding of Isaac level build variety, and the metagame revolves around breeding your surviving retired cats to make stronger and stronger starter cats with whom you can embark on your next adventure.
The raising difficulty requires you to play sharper and sharper. What feels like game-breaking builds and synergies early in the game begin to feel necessary as you progress through more difficult acts and begin to navigate more complex enemies and bosses. It's kind of devastating to lose a deep run because you're not only losing your time, but you're losing your items you could have brought home and your cats that could have become great breeders.
We talk in the podcast about some gripes we have, mainly focused on UI issues. Within combat it's difficult to see everyone's health, it can be hard to figure out if you'll be in range for spells after you move, and the game is unforgiving with misclicks. In the house managing your cats there's no good filtering system and it can become tedious to find the best cat among 30 for a given mission. The Newgrounds humor is kind of off-putting, but that is just part of the deal here. These nitpicks aside, the game is just so fun to play. I sunk more than 20 hours into it in the ten days we allotted ourselves to play the game before recording the episode.
I'm happy to report that we found our first S tier game since Balatro, and it's an absolute banger. Best of 2026? Let's see what happens when Slay the Spire 2 releases tomorrow.
RoguePod LiteCast is a podcast project started and hosted by David and Danny, just two guys who like rogue games. We play a different roguelite or action roguelike every other week and add it to a tier list where the games are all stack ranked against each other. We talk about lots of different roguelites, if you are interested in such conversations we'd love to have you in our discord!
This post complements the Podcast Episode "Mewgenics" on RoguePod LiteCast. Listen wherever you get your pods!