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Edmund McMillen, the developer of The Binding of Isaac, has taken some time to talk about his next major release, Mewgenics, which is a game about breeding cats and having them fight one another in turn-based combat. Originally announced back in the early 2010s, Mewgenics has gone through a number of revisions and revivals over the course of the past couple of years, though its core gameplay loop now appears to have been nailed down.While The Binding of Isaac may have defined McMillen's game development career for the longest time, he and his team have now fully moved on to the production of Mewgenics after their previous title, The Legend of Bum-Bo, didn't end up achieving the same heights that Isaac did. Mewgenics, instead, is supposed to be the developer's major new project, with the team wanting to make a game that could keep being updated for years on end."I really see Mewgenics as the sequel to The Binding of Isaac," said McMillen in a recent talk with Polygon. He proceeded to explain that Mewgenics is all about taking "something like Isaac and [making] it into a bigger and better thing." The infamously obfuscated story of The Binding of Isaac may receive a new and updated parallel once Mewgenics is out, though the cat sim is designed to stand on its own two legs. Whereas Mewgenics was initially supposed to be a side-scrolling brawler game, the final product will instead take its cues from Into the Breach, with players breeding their cats to perform specific roles in combat.
Mewgenics is being made by a two-person team consisting of McMillen himself and Tyler Glaiel, with the two having worked together on The End is Nigh. In comparison, Mewgenics is a substantially more complex game that appears to be intended to go beyond even the likes of 2021's DLC The Binding of Isaac: Repentance, which is in a class all its own. Glaiel has explained that he needed to create an AI that ran thousands upon thousands of battle scenarios just to playtest all the different DNA combinations players could breed their cats into, so as to avoid potentially unwinnable situations.
McMillen and Glaiel also make note of the fact that Mewgenics is supposed to be very modular. Players that enjoyed finding the very best Binding of Isaac mods and learning their ins and outs should, theoretically, have a field day with Mewgenics a s well, with long-term content plans already having been announced.
Those who are disappointed by the potential lack of breeding in new Pokemon games may wish to look into Mewgenics, as McMillen and Glaiel specifically compare Mewgenics to Game Freak's seminal hit. The team estimates that Mewgenics is roughly 18 to 24 months away at this time, though it's worth pointing out that the game has no release date just yet.
Mewgenics is currently in development for PC, with other platforms still unconfirmed.
Source: Polygon