“After a very small and fun sample of what's apparently a 200-hour game, I'm inclined to trust McMillen's judgment when he says that Mewgenics is his best yet.“ -PC Gamer
SEE! I TOLD YOU! Go check out this PC Gamer Preview now!
(Fun fact: Tyler only has 3 fingers on his right hand apparently.)
The PC Gamer article touched a bit on IRL disorders that we are bringing into the game, and autism was a big one that people seemed to love seeing represented. But the article also touched on dyslexia as well.
By far the most common disorder we get asked about is ADHD, one everyone in my household is VERY familiar with... it took a bit to get the perfect design for it and it's just too fun not to share.
Faster, smarter, very easily distracted... here is a little video of ADHD in action!
Don't worry, we will add your disorder by the end of dev!
DEV BLOG UPDATE!
The game releases Feb 10th, that means roughly 6 more months of dev!
- The final boss of the game is fully animated and being implemented this week. All other bosses are done, but 5 bosses still need to be balanced and polished.
- All the game's NPC dialogue is complete but still needs to be edited.
- All the game's ability tooltips are complete and half edited; we still need to do a pass over items once they are all in.
- There are 6 to 8 more cutscenes to animate (depending on how the timeline is looking), but the majority are finished, scored, and ready to roll!
What have we been focusing on this month?
Item Rarity!
In testing, we noticed people struggling with what items to keep or toss when their inventory was full after returning home from an adventure. We also noticed our current rarity icons made no sense to people and were too subtle, so this month we fixed that.
Now I think rarity is obvious, but I’ll break it down for ya.
No icon – Common
Grey circle – Uncommon
Yellow diamond – Rare
Red triangle – Very rare
There are also icons for other item types.
Blue square – Story items
Green square – Quest items
Purple splat – Cursed items
Also, for those wondering, the tiny icons at the top of each item inform the player on what item slot this will fit into.
Sword – Weapon
Hat – Head Armor
Necklace – Neck Armor
Glasses – Face Armor
Flask/Ring – Consumable / Trinket (these occupy the same slot)
Once we locked in the new rarity system, we realized that the pools were unbalanced and we needed 30 or so more common items...
So we added those. I won’t say what the exact item count is right now... but I will say at this point it’s bigger than the current number of items in Isaac.
The next big milestone for us is Halloween. Our goal is to have all the game's text finished by then so we can start localization Nov. 1st. That means all items, events, NPC text, abilities, etc. need to be 100% done, edited, and ready to roll by then. So basically, content complete for everything that involves text.
After that, we will just be polishing, tuning, adding cutscenes, and coming up with ways to push this game to people while the localization folks do their thing.
Oh, speaking of pushing the game to people, check this out: The Mewgenics comic version 2.0!
(Full front and back cover by the amazing Sony_Shock!)
So for those out of the loop: 13 years ago I started working on a prototype for this game, and I loved the vibe so much I decided to make a comic about it (well, a comic/activity book hybrid anyway). We handed them out at PAX that year, and then the game was canceled alongside another project of mine, Camdrome (that also premiered that year at PAX). Shortly after the canning of the projects, my soul left my body, and a few years later my body followed it, leaving Team Meat and taking my IPs with me.
But I LOVED this comic. And what's more fun than promoting your dream project with an art project? So, 2 months ago I remade the old comic, now in full color and with tons of special guest artists like Jhonen Vasquez (Invader Zim), Tom Bunk (Garbage Pail Kids and MAD), Rich Werner (Plants vs. Zombies), Alex Pardee, and a few others I’ll keep secret. It was a lot of fun to make.
We will be giving them away at the cons we demo Four Souls at later this year and sending them to the press (hit me up on Twitter!). But for those who can’t make it to cons, we will also be selling the press pack to fans. It comes with a ton of cool shit. More details later this year. But if you happen to somehow be at Gen Con right now as I type this, YOU CAN GET THE COMIC TODAY AT BOOTH 1109! (With purchase.)
Sept. is the month we start gameplay videos! So stay tuned for that. But till then, I leave you with a little Q&A with questions from my Twitter followers.
Q: Do you plan on every Mewgenics run being winnable if you play well enough, or will there be some unavoidable run-enders if you're super unlucky?
A: I put the RNG of Mew on par with Isaac. You can get unlucky and bad things can happen in events, but never enough to totally throw a run. We try and make sure anything really bad that could be so debilitating you lose a run is tied to a choice you make.
Q: Would there be Mewgenics cards for Four Souls sometime after release?
A: Yes! We are actually making a promo pack for the merch drop mentioned above!
Q: How many mutations can a cat accumulate?
A: There are 9 core body parts that can be mutated, so usually the most you may see is 9. But there are very rare cases of asymmetry, so it is possible to have 15 mutations at max. I personally haven't had more than 6 or 7 mutations on a cat at one time.
Q: Will the game have multiple save files and a cool thing for 100% all of them like Isaac?
A: There will be 3 saves, like Isaac. We currently don’t have anything cool for 100% on all of them. It takes 200 hours to beat the game’s story, so we have a while before anyone does all 3 ;).
Q: Will the pathing be similar to Isaac where you can take different paths in order to fight different bosses like the Beast and Mother fights?
A: Yes, each zone splits and ends with a unique final boss. Beating said boss will get you a “check mark on your Post-it note” for each class that has beaten said final boss. Unlocks are given out similarly to Isaac, but in Mewgenics, when you unlock an item, it gives you the item then.
Q: Just how replayable IS the game—does every run feel more or less unique than it can in The Binding of Isaac?
A: The game is designed to be replayed and is far more infinite in terms of unique runs compared to Isaac. Example: Isaac features 700 items and each run you gain a small number of these at random. Mewgenics also features 700+ items, but the main focus of each run isn’t these items, it’s the abilities you draft. Mew features totally unique abilities and each one of these has an upgraded version. Just based on those numbers, you can see how much more unique each run can actually get. But shit gets really bonkers when you factor in multiclassing abilities via breeding and saving items for future runs. It gets into this really neat always-different, yet you-have-some-control-over-the-starting-build system that feels pretty unique. I have 165 hours in my current save and I'm discovering new combos in literally almost every run I do.
Q: Will the cats be gay?
A: One of the many behind-the-scenes stats of each cat is “Gay Factor.” When a Gay Factor is mid, the cat will be categorized as bisexual, and when it’s high, it will be flagged as gay. But you won’t know this till you unlock Gaydar. Well, you’ll have an idea by what your cats do at night, but it won’t be spelled out for you till Gaydar is unlocked.
Q: Wait, so straight cats might have gay sex?!
A: Two other stats we track are libido and charisma. So it’s theoretically possible for a totally straight cat that is extremely horny to be charmed by an extremely charismatic gay cat. Hell, if you lock two straight cats in a room that are both horned up and high charisma, with enough time, you never know what will happen.
Q: Wait... am I gay?
A: Yes.
See you next month!
-Edmund