Hello there kiddies! It's me again, a monthish older and a monthish closer to this game's release and my eventual demise! But before either of those things happen I should probably do a blog update explaining a MAJOR aspect of the game that we have glossed over for the last year or 2... furniture!
We have alluded to the fact that Mewgenics takes inspiration from Animal Crossing, and many of you asked how the hell that's possible... well, for one, there are currently over 700 unique pieces of furniture to decorate your ever-growing house with. These pieces range from large, sprawling bedframes to collections of rare bottles and taxidermy animals. I tried my best to make a range of flavors to allow players to express themselves as they wish... but as you might assume, most pieces lean towards the odd and mysterious.
"But what is the point in all this!?" you ask... Well, in the world of Mewgenics, each piece of furniture is special and imbued with special stat-boosting goodness!
Comfort:
The comfort level of your room affects the odds of your cats getting it on. Comfort also affects the general mood of the room, making aggressive cats more manageable... but keep in mind a crowded room or dirty room will also lower this stat. Comfort also raises the odds of cats birthing multiple kittens.
Stimulation:
Affects how well your kittens inherit the higher stats of their parents as well as any mutations they may have. Stim also affects the odds of a kitten inheriting a classed ability from one of its parents... the key to multiclassing in Mewgenics.
Appeal:
Appeal affects the overall appeal of your house as a whole. A high appeal house will raise the odds of stronger strays with special inborn active and passive abilities to appear more often.
Now let's look at a few examples of how these stats appear in set pieces.
Microwave: +1 Comfort
Toxic Waste Barrel: +4 Stimulation, -2 Comfort
Touched Toxic Waste Barrel: +8 Stimulation, -4 Comfort
Oh wait, what was that... Why, that last piece of furniture looks a lot like the one before it... and its stats are all wackadoo!? Well, that's because all 700+ pieces also have a rare alt version with boosted stats and a unique and usually animated or spiced-up look!
You can find random pieces of furniture on your many adventures, but the best way to start your hoarding is to visit Jack's Shack.
Jack starts out selling 2 items every week, refreshing his shop on Sundays, so be sure to check his shop often. Jack also collects cats with injuries (he feels kinship with them), so sending him your injured masses will level up his shop over time.
The furniture aspect of Mew was a hard nut to crack, so we didn't want to force its design. We had originally assumed each piece would have unique stats and effects that would have a small % chance of affecting cats born in the room with them... but this was not only a ton of work (1400 unique designs) but also it became obvious that making specific pieces with specific stats would mean there would be an ideal number of set pieces to place in your main rooms and everyone's house would end up looking the same. I really wanted people to have some creative freedom with how their houses looked, so using a more generalized stat setup felt not only more elegant and less work but also would allow you to express yourself!
--------------------------------------
General updates:
Our goal of having a content-complete build by New Year's is looking very good. I'm currently finishing up the 3-4 "final bosses" art-wise as our animators churn out the remaining enemies/bosses. Outside of the game dev side, we have commissioned a filmmaker to start working on a little teaser trailer for the game's "rerelease press push" late this year that I'm quite excited about, and we hope to start testing the game on Steam with friends and devs. Once the trailer launches, I hope to replace these monthly blog posts with "let's play" gameplay videos of the early game chapters so you can get a real feel of how everything works.
See you next month! -Edmund