Mewgenics starts pretty simple. You set up a squad of cats from the strays that come into your house each day and see how far you can make it through the zones. However, as you unlock new mechanics, you’ll quickly realize that the best cats are locked behind breeding.
Breeding a male cat and a female cat leads to a new kitten. Sounds easy enough. In reality, there are plenty of variables that decide whether breeding succeeds, and what kind of kitten you end up with. There is some randomness involved, but you can control many things, and not all of them are explained well. In this guide, we’ll give you a quick rundown of what you need to know about breeding in Mewgenics.
For more information about the game, check out their Steam page here.
Table of contents
How Does Breeding Work?
At first glance, breeding in this game seems pretty straightforward. You put two cats of different gender but compatible sexual preference in one room and pass the day. They’ll do the dirty and give you a Kitten the next day.
Breeding gives you a Kitten that inherits some of the stats from its parents. When you pair two high-stat cats together, you increase your chances of getting a kitten with higher-than-normal base stats. Strays that show up at your door can only have a maximum base stat of 7 in any attribute. Through breeding, however, it’s possible to push beyond that limit.
There are two important factors to consider here.
- Gender Compatibility
- Sexual Compatibility
That means, you’ll have to pair a male cat with a female cat in the same room. They also need to prefer each other. There are gay cats in this game. If you put a gay cat with a straight cat in the same room, you’re not going to get a Kitten. Instead, they might fight and lead to a cat getting injured.
But that doesn’t mean you can’t breed the gay cats. You’ll sometimes notice some of the strays or even the Kittens come with a “?” as their gender symbol. These are gender fluid cats and can be paired with both male and female cats.
When paired with a male cat, the gender fluid cat will act like a female cat and give birth to a kitten. When paired with a female cat, it will act like a male cat. So if you’ve got a gay or bisexual cat with excellent base stats that you want to pass on to a Kitten, look out for gender fluid cats.
Understanding Room Attributes
The House where you manage all your cats plays a major role in the quality of cats you get, whether through Breeding or by taking in strays. You start with a single Room, but after finishing the tutorial, you unlock the Attic. As you progress through Frank‘s questline, you’ll gain access to even more Rooms.
Each Room in your House has four primary stats that affect how it functions.
Comfort
Affects how often cats will breed or fight.
High Comfort increases the frequency of cats breeding as you pass the day. On the other hand, if Comfort drops very low, especially into the negatives, you’ll start seeing more fights break out and more injuries.
Having more than four cats in a room starts negatively affecting the Comfort. Leaving poop uncleaned also lowers it, so regular cleanup is important if you’re using that Room for Breeding.
Appeal
Affects the quality of the stray cats that show up each day.
While Appeal doesn’t really affect Breeding, it’s still an important stat to focus on when you’re trying to build up your cat squad in Mewgenics. The Appeal of a Room affects the entirety of the House. With a high Appeal room, you’ll see the quality of strays getting better.
Stimulation
Affects the quality of newborn kittens.
Stimulation is another stat that affects Breeding directly. Higher Stimulation causes the kitten to inherit the higher stat value from its cat parents. So if the father cat has only 2 Strength and the mother cat has 5 Strength, high Stimulation in the Room makes it more likely that the kitten inherits the 5 Strength instead of the lower value.
Health
Affects lifespan and chance to develop or cure disorders each night.
If the Room Health is low, you may suddenly see your cats getting infected with diseases when you pass the day. As long as it doesn’t go in the negatives, you’re fine. Keeping Health stable ensures your breeding cats stay alive long enough to pass on their best traits.
To change a Room’s stat, you’ll have to add furniture. You can buy furniture once you unlock the NPC, Baby Jack. You’ll have to send him injured cats to unlock new furniture in his store.
Some furniture comes with an additional stat called Mutations that can cause Kittens to be born with genetic mutations. Mutations give the kitten a boost to certain stats while lowering others.
Progress Through Tink’s Requests
Tink serves as your encyclopedia when it comes to breeding knowledge, and you’ll want to complete as many of his requests as possible. By sending him enough Kittens, you’ll be able to see more information about the cats in your House.
When you send him 1 Kitten, he rewards you with a Fancy Bow. However, after this, each 10 Kitten you send unlocks new mechanics to help you breed the strongest cat. Here’s a quick list of all his upgrades:
| Tink Questline | Upgrade |
|---|---|
| Tink Reward 1 (1 Kitten) | Fancy Bow |
| Tink Reward 2 (10 Kitten) | Unlocks Base Stats and Bonus Stats to help you breed cats |
| Tink Reward 3 (10 Kitten) | Unlocks each cat’s ancestry tree to avoid inbreeding. |
| Tink Reward 4 (10 Kitten) | Unlocks the Gaydar. |
| Tink Reward 5 (10 Kitten) | Unlocks shapes that you can use to organize your cats. |
| Tink Reward 6 (10 Kitten) | Unlocks a cat’s aggression level. High aggression means the cat is more likely to get into a fight at night. |
| Tink Reward 7 (10 Kitten) | Lets you see how a cat feels about another cat. |
As you can see, all of Frank’s upgrades are catered towards understanding your cats so that you can pair them well with each other. If you want to focus on breeding cats, then make sure you progress his questline as quickly as you can.
Inbreeding & Birth Defects
Tink Reward 3 is extremely important when you’re getting into breeding. Inbreeding has a high likelihood of Kittens being born with Birth Defects.
A Kitten born with Birth Defects will have a lower stat. To avoid this, you’ll want to keep a close watch on which cats you’re pairing together. Tink Reward 3 lets you check the family lineage so that you can easily avoid this.
This concludes our guide for Mewgenics. For more interesting articles related to indie games, check out the links below:
- Into Indie Games Homepage
- Dragon Quest 7 Reimagined – Walkthrough Hub
- I Hate This Place Complete Walkthrough Hub
- MIO: Memories In Orbit Walkthrough Hub
- Cairn Walkthrough Hub
Muhit Rahman lives off two things: gaming marathons and endless cups of tea. He writes guides, reviews, and occasionally forgets that real life doesn’t come with checkpoints. His favorite genres are Soulslike and Metroidvania, with Dark Souls III, Hollow Knight, and Dota 2 forever holding top spots on his all-time list.
