Currently mewgenics has over 400 active and 200 passive abilities across the games many classes, with many more to come. lets go over a few and explain how they work.
Actives:
actives or spells as some may call them are unique abilities that can be used as many times as you want during your turn as long as you have the mana to activate them.
All cats (usually) start with one collarless active that they are born with and gain one class active when you assign them their class at the start of the adventure. cats will also gain access to another active ability when they reach level 2 and level 5. here are a few examples.
1. Toss: Toss is a fun tank ability that grabs something adjacent to you and throws it into an empty tile in the spells AOE. enemies can be tossed into glass, water or adjacent to the next cat in turn order.. you can even toss interactive objects in the level or if you want, you can toss your own team mates! just remember landing will cause a tiny bit of damage to whatever you throw.
2. Frost Blast: Frost blast is a mage ability that shoots a blast of icy air in a straight line up to 5 spaces away, freezing the 1st thing it hits solid. frozen things will lose their next turn, then thaw out. while frozen they become immune to all damage and will slide around when hit in the opposite direction. this spell also has a ice element tied to it.. but we will go over elements and how they effect things in a later post.
3. Zealot: Zealot is a cleric ability that allows the caster to imbue themselves with a holy shield. much like the holy mantle in isaac, holy shield will absorb an attack no matter how much damage is done.
4. Marked: this ability is a hunter support all star, marking an enemy allows all other cats attacking it a 100% chance of landing a critical attack against it. ( critical attacks deal x2 damage, they can be done naturally as well but their chances are very low and tied to your luck stat )
Passives:
passives are abilities your cat has that dont need to be activated, they are simply always on. you (usually) gain your first passive when your cat is assigned a class and again when it reaches level 3.
1. Gravity Falls: this hunter passive, rewards your hunter for attacking stuff as far away as possible, comboing well with abilities that give you more range or reposition you easily.
2. Thunder Thighs: this tank passive grants your tubby lil cat the ability to "trample". things that have trample can pass through other cats or enemies that are blocking them, dealing damage to anything they walk over or land on, also displacing them in the process. this passive combos well with abilities that raise your movement, dash you forward and also things that give your cat contact type status effects like thorns ( thorns = things that make physical contact with you take damage equal to your thorns )
3. Undercat: this fighter passive gives them +2 str ( more melee damage ) and +1 brace (brace reduces physical damage taken by a flat amount) for each adjacent enemy around it. this ability combos well with positional abilities that get you close to multiple enemies, like jumping or being thrown... it also works perfect with melee aoe attacks that hit all targets around you at once.
4. Tutor: this mage passive teaches the last spell you cast each turn to the rest of your cats, allowing you to temporarily multiclass your team into mages! this one combos with a lot and allows for some pretty cool planning ahead for some possible minor game breaking combos.. if you play your cards right.
Upgrades!
But wait, theres more! at level 6 you will be able to upgrade one of your actives, you can upgrade a passive at level 7 and an additional active or passive at level 9 ( if you make it that far ).
yes thats right, all 600+ abilities we have in game right now can be upgraded to gain unique effects that buff each one.. here are 4 examples.. i dont wanna spoil too much because upgrading late game and exploring what each upgraded ability does is pretty damn cool.
Marked+: Marking an enemy will also mark all other enemies of the same type ( ie. cat, bug, turd, etc)
Toss+: You can toss stuff onto objects and enemies, dealing high damage to both things
Thunder Thighs+: Your trample damage is increased significantly, also gain +2 con.
Tutor+: Your teammates learn the upgraded version of the abilities you teach them (the students become the masters!)
and that about sums up the basics of actives and passives. i touched a bit on leveling up but ill do another post explaining that in more detail since we dont really do it like other games do.
but enough about how the game functions, lets move on to whos making it function!
MEET THE TEAM! ( or at least some of them)
In the past ive been known to have a strangle hold on everything in my games. outside of programming and music, id just do everything myself, period.. but im all old now! having 2 kids and not being able to work as much as i used to has forced me into this gross thing called "working with others"... turns out it makes your life easier and your games better! over the past few years of dev we have had many different and amazing artist come in to help, today ill go over the 3 illustrators actively working on the game and show you why im so glad i could loosen up my anus and just let other people who are better illustrators than me work on the game.
Sony-Shock:
Sony is an amazing artist who i was first introduced to when making four souls, his isaac fan art always made my jaw drop so i knew i had to have him do some promo cards for us. you may also know his work from one of the early Unboxing of isaac Tshirts ( and one of the most successful ).
When i hired Sony to work on Mew i knew i had to have someone with a very different style than my own, i put him on background and non interactive objects because his painterly style against my thick chunky cartoon outlines would clash in a way that would make it obvious what things you can and cant interact with. also that juxtaposition on style reminded me a lot of backgrounds in old cartoons from the 40s where the backgrounds were painted or even sculpted to look more realistic so the cartoons would stand out even more on top of them.
Vivian Voss:
Vivian Voss ( Aka HamBerry ) was another prominent artist for Four souls who did a ton of work for the latest expansion Requiem.
Vivian has a very bold cartoon style that worked perfectly for establishing shots for game chapters as well as non-combat backgrounds. She really worked perfectly within that flintstones/jetsons atomic cartoon background style we had been referencing and has been churning out tons of art for the many many chapters of this monster.
Tikara:
Tikara is yet another very familiar face in the isaac art community, she has worked with me on many projects and was the artist for the binding of isaac tarot cards and creator of nearly every loot card in Four Souls.
Tikara was one of our first artist on mew, she started out doing simple UI backgrounds and eventually moved onto class icons and status effect icons. She also did quite a few enemy portraits.
but this isnt everyone, we also have been working with some seriously amazing animators as well, but ill save them for another day...
in 2 weeks we will finally address the elephant in the room, death, dying and the afterlife ( or lack there of )
see ya
-Edmund