Mewgenics interview: Binding of Isaac and Super Meat Boy creator’s ‘impossible’ game is finally here

Mewgenics is a game that many fans have long-anticipated. Created by Ed McMillen, known for Super Meat Boy and The Binding of Isaac, before partnering with designer Tyler Glaiel in 2018, the game lets players raise a group of cats in order to progress through a campaign, battling other cats and surprises.

With the game launching on February 10 on Steam, McMillen and Glaiel sat down with Escapist Magazine to talk about what it took to finally get Mewgenics out the door, the potential for other platforms like Nintendo Switch 2, and why it took so long.

The Escapist recaps

• Mewgenics is the latest game created by Ed McMillen, known for Super Meat Boy and The Binding of Isaac, as well as Tyler Glaiel.
• The game launches on February 10 for PC, after being announced in 2012.
• Players must breed and raise cats in order to progress through a campaign that can bring many alternate paths, bosses, and more.
• In an exclusive interview with Escapist,  McMillen and Glaiel reveal what it took to finish Mewgenics, as well as potential plans for the title going forward.

Cat years in the making

It’s taken a long time to get to this point. Mewgenics was first announced in 2012, before McMillen scrapped it to work on The Binding of Isaac, and then re-announced it in 2018. Some players wondered if the game would ever come out, and it turns out that McMillen and Glaiel thought similarly.

“I thought the game was dead. I thought I would never get to work on it again. I thought it was canceled, that it would be impossible for me to get the IP and do anything with it,” McMillen revealed.

“So for many years, I thought it was impossible. Then, when I was able to acquire the IP and started to entertain the idea of doing it again with Tyler in a way that would be extra cool.”

Glaiel concurs, thinking it’d be out far sooner than 2026. “I think we both knew it would probably take a little bit of time, but not this long. I thought maybe four years. I thought we were going to do it in two years. I thought I was going to spend six months getting an engine working while Ed was finishing whatever else he was working on at the time, and then we would just spend a year and a half making content and release it,” he explained.

“From the point where we actually settled on it being a tactical strategy game, it took about two more years. The pandemic definitely threw a wrench in timings.”

Glaiel was quick to mention that Mewgenics could have been out even sooner. “We probably could have released the full game in 2021, roughly, and it would have been okay – probably pretty good. But we may have gone overboard. It just kept getting better when we kept working on it, so we didn’t want to stop.”

When Glaiel joined the project around 2018, he recalls the idea being sound, but the concept needing some work. 

“We had been talking about it for a while, because Ed liked the project. The concept was very good, even though it was not fully formed. This was something Ed really wanted to do. He was pitching other ideas that were similar, but without the cats. I said the cats are what make the idea appealing,” Glaiel recalls.

“There was a basic idea at first – breeding cats in a house and taking them as avatars into another game. When Tyler came on, it became more about asking what the game actually is. What are you breeding these cats for? What is the payoff?” McMillen explains.

“The original prototype was not fun,” Glaiel recounts. “Someone would want a very specific cat through random chance. That is not interesting,” Glaiel says. “Breeding becomes interesting when players can set their own goals.”

“Like in Pokémon, where you breed to combine abilities. That is what makes the mechanic interesting. We needed deep tactical combat so players could have self-directed goals and work toward them.”

Not feline finished yet

“But Ed, it could be better if we added another year or two of development?” Glaiel jokes. 

“Well, we kind of are,” McMillen replies, “Because we are going to keep working on this game.”

Some have drawn comparisons with Phil Fish’s Fez, another indie title that spent years in development, with its designer featured alongside McMillen in 2012’s Indie Game: The Movie

“Honestly, I think we put more pressure on ourselves than anybody would put on us,” he explained.

“I don’t feel much pressure. It definitely feels like a Duke Nukem Forever situation in the sense that it’s great that it’s done and out (as of February 10), but I don’t want to compare ourselves to that game, because it didn’t turn out well. I never played it, but from what I did play, the humor did not carry into that era. It did not work.”

Glaiel agrees, noting that many players thought Mewgenics had been scrapped. “I’m not too worried about that, and there’s not much from the original prototype anyway. It’s not like people have been holding their breath for 13 or 14 years – a lot of people thought it was dead! The people who were actually excited and waiting knew it was back in development.

Plus, everybody who missed that it was back in development despite us talking about it nonstop for the past six years.”

McMillen points to gameplay updates as a reason why the community at large maintained an interest in the project.

“If we had never shown gameplay, people would be more frustrated that they still can’t play it. Instead, they are getting spoon-fed, but bit by bit. We have fans who watch and think about what choices they would make, so they’re almost playing the game in their heads. They are desperate for another video – they just want another run.”

It also helps that Glaiel grew up with cats during his childhood. “One of our cats wandered off one day and came back with her eyeball hanging out and her jaw dislocated. We never knew what happened. We had to feed her through a tube for months. She lived to be about 18. She went out, had an adventure, and came back disfigured,” he recalls.

Here’s hoping your digital cats have a better time of things.

Making situations work

A big part of making Mewgenics was how personal it became to McMillen. “We originally planned disorders and injuries to the cats as just bad things that happened. I have a very vivid memory of getting a phone call and having to pick my daughter up from school. At that point, we realized school was not going to work for her. Her ADHD is very severe. We had her tested, and it came back very similar to me. She has a high IQ, but she is dyslexic, has ADHD, and is on the spectrum.

“That was frustrating for me because I am okay. I made it out okay. I realized that these things have silver linings. Other strengths come up. That is when we decided that all bad things in the game needed a silver lining that allowed you to pivot and make them work. They are not just a wall. It is a wall that, when you look closely, is filled with gold. You take the situation and make the best of it. Bad things happen. You need to persevere and adapt. That became one of the core concepts of Mewgenics, and it made it all personal for me.”

Would Mewgenics have been made differently had McMillen not been a parent, then?

“I don’t know if I would have been as invested, because originally, the concept did come from cats. My wife likes hoarding cats. And we had four cats, and she’s got all these weird freaky hairless cats that have issues. And I thought that was interesting in a weird, morally kind of gray way. And that became what Mewgenics was about.

“Then that door closed, and when it reopened, I suddenly had children. I don’t think it would have been the same game. I’m sure it would have been something different, and it would have mattered in some way because I can’t fully invest myself in a project that I’m not personally invested in, something that’s important to me.”

Boss fights with bite

A big part of Mewgenics is its bosses. You’ll come across stages where bigger, deformed cats will be on the board, with their henchmen ready to defend. This is something Glaiel acknowledges as one of the difficult points in designing the game. “That was probably the most consistently difficult part of the design,” he explained.

“Turn-based bosses do not have much wiggle room. You cannot just adjust speed or spectacle,” Glaiel explains. “If a boss is just a big meat bag that moves and attacks, it is not interesting. You need reactions, positioning, and things to think about. We got better over time, and some simpler bosses ended up being the most fun.” 

McMillen agreed, realizing early on that he had to change his approach to how he was designing the bosses. “Early on, I designed bosses from The Binding of Isaac. That only works once. Eventually, we realized bosses needed to use the same mechanics as everything else. When we think about a lot of these classic turn-based strategy games that we grew up with and played, there’s an element of nostalgia that is framing them in ways that they are not. And if you go back and play the bosses in those games, they just move and attack.”

“And that was fun back then. You can get away with it if the animations are really cool and over the top. Something like playing a two-minute cutscene of a meteor going through the solar system or whatever. We’ve gotta do that eventually,” McMillen says, and we’d hate to be the cat on the end of that.

“The first couple of bosses I designed had two moves, but it becomes kind of repetitive, and you’re not really utilizing any of the mechanics that enemies and your cats can use. So why shouldn’t the bosses do the same thing? And I think we found a really sweet spot.”

Glaiel remembers how the early bosses didn’t need much refining. “The first couple of bosses that I did would have been the Radical Rat and the Dividing Slime. And both of those actually are somewhat unchanged. They just worked out to start. I think we started trying to make them flashier at one point, and that’s when they started eating more big meatbags. We needed to adjust this fight so there’s play to it.”

“I think the simplicity of Boris and Chubbs, and Nubs was the big ‘aha’ moment. That was when we were like, “Oh!” And even the slime, there’s no reason why that boss should be as fun as it is. That was the first boss that I implemented. The first boss that’s in the game is the slime. It has a photorealistic eyeball and a big green cube – that’s a classic video game boss to me, and it’s a classic for a reason.”

Cat-astrophes to come

With Mewgenics featuring a user interface that seems perfect for a touch screen, we wondered if the game could make the jump to phones, tablets, or the Nintendo Switch 2.

“It is Steam Deck verified,” Glaiel confirms, ”But the Switch is probably the next natural step. Beyond that, it depends on the publisher.” McMillen concurs, but notes that Mewgenics probably wouldn’t work for smartphones. “Phones would be difficult. The UI is not designed for that scale.”

As for next steps in the PC release, could players hoard, trade, and show off their cats?

“That’s what DLC is for, right? We can see what people like, and I’m sure there are going to be aspects of the game that we didn’t realize that a lot of people would really enjoy more of. Now that we’ve done the hard part, we can pivot and see how we can lean into things that people like and make the game better with DLC.”

In an age where many games are released in Early Access states, both Glaiel and McMillen acknowledge how launching a complete game feels weird in 2026. “We are launching a complete game. That is a weird thing now,” Glaiel says, with McMillen adding to this. “I’m really not a fan of Early Access. I feel like it originated from people needing money fast. I’m not s***ting on people who do Early Access, but it feels strange to change the experience after people have already finished it.” Glaiel agrees, noting that there are moments where it’s justified. “There’s a handful of situations where it makes sense, like multiplayer stuff. Other than that, I feel like almost anything else would be better.”

McMillen feels that Mewgenics can offer something different for players. “I do love the way we took all these mechanics that are floating separately from each other in other roguelikes and do challenge runs and difficulty settings and all that type of stuff. Plus, re-rolling your dice is a thing that people do in Isaac. That’s how I play it too.”

McMillen was keen to finish on what Mewgenics stands for. “It’s a living thing. It’s like a whole big cohesive world, and that’s the coolest part.”

Mewgenics is available on February 10 for PC via Steam. Code provided by the publisher.

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References

1. Mewgenics on Steam (Steam)