One of the most common questions we get asked when play testing Mewgenics is.. "but will my cats die permanently?"
yes, yes your cats will die, like everyone you know and will ever meet, your cats will eventually die.
This harsh reality may catch you off guard, but death is a very very important part of mew, maybe the most important because without that risk, there is no actual reward.. but how does death actually work in mewgenics? why let me show you!
This is April, a fresh young cat ready for adventure!
but sadly April was attacked by a group of kittens in an alley and was "downed".
When a cat is downed it suffers a minor injury to a random part of their body, this is shown visually and represented as a permanent stat down for the cat in question.
When a cat is downed, they fall to the ground writhing in pain and are inactive till the match ends or they are possibly revived by some act of god or cleric.
downed cats have "death armor", the number of times that cat's body can take damage till it's destroyed completely, dont worry though MOST enemies dont care too much about downed cats.. but you still gotta make sure your living cats dont accidently knock an allies body into a river or cactus.
If at any point in your adventure all of your cats become downed, they have failed their mission and are considered lost forever.If you make it through your adventure any remaining cats return home, forever changed by their experience!
Cats that have completed adventures are considered "old", old cats can no longer be taken on adventures and once an old cat arrives back home it triggers an unseen clock that starts counting down its remaining days, but dont worry you have options.
mewgenics is a game about legacy, not just in how you change the world as you play but also in what you do with your bloodlines. When 2 cats get busy, they make a kitten and that kitten shares the DNA of its mother and father. Not only will your kittens look/sound like their parents, but they may also inherit many other mechanical features.
Let's say you breed two basic strays, level 0 collarless cats ( no class ). When they have a kitten, that kitten has a chance to gain a starting collarless active from either parent or randomly roll into a totally new one... this concept also works for old cats who have survived long adventures. So even though your cats may be old and retired, they can still get busy and have a chance to give their offspring one of their many active and passive abilities.
That means there is potential here to have a fresh new cat with a Tank ability like Toss that you can then class into a mage and basically give access to something a mage can't ever have naturally.. you get what im laying down here? multiclassing brother!!
but in mewgenics most of the time when something survives an adventure it's not all sunshine and rainbows.. sometimes they come back quite different, they have seen and experienced some real shit, and with that may come a smorgasbord of mental and physical disorders, parasites and even curses that could potentially haunt your family for generations!
Of course every mental illness has a silver lining ! and we will go over all that in 2 weeks!
see ya
-Edmund