Tactical cats, undercover aliens, and lunar mayors

I am sitting here late on Friday night, exhausted from a week of intense work and battling the flu. Despite the tiredness, there is a ridiculous smile on my face because I also have managed to sink a few hours into Mewgenics, and I am not going to lie, that has been an incredibly good time.

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There’s another reason though… we got our logo sorted! If you didn’t notice it at the top of the page, Pat has been working tirelessly between fighting fires at work to get something together that we are both very proud of.

The idea behind the logo was to marry the idea of deliveries, and gaming. Why deliveries? We got stuck on the idea of telegrams, and newspapers, and then we were talking about race car liveries from the 70s and 80s, and then we started jamming on this idea here. I think it started when we started talking about DHL and FedEx, and somehow Pat concocted this magic.

The colours are classy and warm, heavily inspired by the colour scheme of the Famicom. I’m really proud of what we have here, and I hope you all agree that Pat deserves a beer or two.

We also changed the name of the newsletter to be Indie Dispatch. Pixels for Breakfast still lives on, but we feel this name better reflects what we are doing on a weekly basis.

Anyways, enough about the logo, let’s look at what you all came here to see.

Developer: Edmund McMillen, Tyler Glaiel
Steam rating: Overwhelmingly Positive
Store link

I can’t believe after over a decade of waiting, Mewgenics finally arrived this week! The next release from dream team Edmund McMillen and Tyler Glaiel of The Binding of Isaac fame, surprisingly mashes up the grotty vibes of Isaac with the tactical mastery of Into The Breach, starring the most batshit crazy cast of cats you’re ever likely to see.

Mewgenics has you breeding a bunch of kitties, and then sending them out on a cat adventure as you fight other strays and random beasts in the world. Along the way you will find items, and level up your cats, all in the hopes of getting them back home so that they can retire in your modest abode, get their freak on, and shoot out a prodigy that hopefully takes the best traits from their parents into the next run.

Like The Binding of Isaac, Mewgenics has a seemingly endless number of items and surprises that will make each and every run unique. For better or worse, Mewgenics is VERY McMillen coded. If you can’t get on board with the grotesque and dark humor of his hack catalogue, you ain’t going to change you mind here, despite the cats. A lot of people (including myself) are very into Mewgencis, and Glaiel announced that they made back development costs in just 3 hours via Bluesky, so it’s nice to see such a success story in a year where constant layoffs are still plaguing the industry.

Developer: Crowbar Collective
Steam rating: Mostly Positive
Store link

The folks behind the excellent Half-Life re-creation Black Mesa have just released their next wholly originaly game, a 4-player co-op shooter called Rogue Point. Your squad will set out on intense missions as you need to plan things out, adapt to the ever changing conditions, and survive.

You start your mission by planning out a strategy, ala Due Process, and then you set out with nothing more than a starter pistol and armored vest. Through teamwork and a laser focus on completing your objectives, you’ll earn much needed cash to upgrade your arsenal and build out your Rogue. The game is really emphasising teamwork, so work with your pals to compliment each other’s loadout to get the operation done successfully.

In the Early Access there are four environments, and it seems that the game procedrually generates the levels to make each mission’s layout unique. With plenty of gear and attachements to unlock, it seems that Rogue Point is already off to a good start and should keep players busy for quite some time.

Developer: Luminous
Steam rating: Very Positive
Store link

Small Scale RTS seems to be a thing these days, and Circle Empires 2 looks like a pretty interesting entry in that space. Taking place in a world made up of round battlefields, each world is procedrually generated with unique flora and fauna, which will change the battle conditions each time.

I have never heard of the original game, but the Steam page says that this sequel includes a boatload of new units, improved AI strategies, and co-op or competitive multiplayer to really spice things up. There’s a demo if you want to try before you buy, but this does look like a bit of fun for strategy fans looking for something a little lighter.

Developer: Cybernetic Walrus
Steam rating: Very Positive
Store link

Grab some friends and run a gas station as undercover aliens is a pretty compelling pitch, and that’s exactly what Roadside Research is selling this week. Pretend to be very normal humans as you set up and upgrade a roadside gas station, and then gather as much data on regular human activity as you can without raising the suspicion meter too much.

At night you will begin to plan for the next day, managing two upgrade paths. You need to keep adding facilities to the gas station to entice more humans to stop by, while also upgrading your alien tech so you can get more data on how to be very cool humans.

This looks like a good bit of fun, and while the Steam page does say you can play this solo, I just don’t see that being the goal here. All I need is a free weekend, and some friends to check this one out with.

Developer: Darts Games
Steam rating: N/A
Store link

I found this one digging through the release calendar on SteamDB, and it spoke to me. Lunar Ascendant is a sci-fi political simulation were you are filling the shoes of the first mayor of ARTEMIS, a Lunar colony. You’ll be making decisions and fulfilling the needs of the colony, shaping policies and laws that will effect citizens, the use of AI, and dealing with interplanetary issues.

This looks like one of those “we got a lot of menus and text for you to read” games, but the theme and strong inclusion of fake corpo logos really got that part of my brain that is obsessed with Netrunner firing.

This is a bit of a punt on my behalf, as there are no Steam reviews. However the studio’s first release Do No Harm has a Mostly Positive rating, so here’s hoping that they handle the political content with nuance, and have created something compelling here.

If you somehow don’t know, there’s some real shit going on in Minnesota right now. As a non-American, I sit here in disbelief that the country that is supposed to be the leader of the free world is doing this to their own people. If you want a succinct look at what’s going on, I suggest this great video from the folks over at MinnMax, and the latest episode of the excellent Heavyweight podcast.

Anyways, if you want to support those in need and grab some great indie content at the same time, head on over to the No ICE in Minnesota itch page and for $10USD or more, you can get over 1,000 items and support a very worthwhile cause.

Patrick Klepek always manages to get an interesting take when he does an interview, and maybe it’s a bit of bias here because I have been lucky enough to chat with McMillen myself and I know he’s a genuine person, but this latest interview on Remap Radio was particularly insightful. McMillen talks a lot about the creation of Mewgenics, and how real life often got in the way, but also drastically informed the game design, and despite his stature in the industry, he was still nervous whether or not this game would be successful enough. You already know it managed to cover it’s dev costs in just 3 hours, so I am guessing he is probably a little relieved, but I thought this was a great interview and it is well worth a listen. Note, the article is paywalled but the audio version there is fair game!

Thanks so much for reading, and please tell some friends to subscribe! We are also trying to raise some money for server hosting costs and a few games, so if you enjoy the posts perhaps consider buying us a coffee. Got something that we should be playing? Let us know on the forums or shoot us an email below - we do read them!

See you next week - Steve