Some of what makes the success of Mewgenics – a game that blew through its creators' expectations and became the biggest roguelike in Steam history – so gratifying is the feel-good nature of its story. It's the result of two long-time collaborators reuniting on an idea lost and rediscovered over the course of 15 years, eventually releasing to rapturous critical and commercial success. But, set back by cancellation and copyright complexities, the road to its release has not always been smooth – not least because its creators didn't know what to do with it once they got it back.
"When we got the rights back from Team Meat, we knew we wanted to start over from scratch," Mewgenics's Edmund McMillen tells me. When we speak, McMillen and his co-creator Tyler Glaiel have just discovered that the years they put into this extremely long-awaited project appear to have paid off, its critical success making Mewgenics the best-reviewed game of the year so far. That success, however, was the product of more than a little uncertainty about what form the game would even take.
