PC, PlayStation 4 and 5
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MY VIDEO game-playing career is littered with incarnations of the post-apocalypse, a setting that is such a clich茅 that I have probably explored the ruined wastelands of most US states in various guises. But I have never done it as a cat.
On the face of it, Stray鈥荣 premise 鈥� you are a cat trying to escape from an underground city populated by robots 鈥� sounds like a meme-worthy gimmick, but developer BlueTwelve Studio has done such a fantastic job of creating a realistic feline experience that it can鈥檛 help but feel fresh and exciting.
When the game opens, your unnamed ginger cat is in an overgrown tunnel with three others, and the attention to detail is obvious as you play with and snuggle against your companions (anyone who has owned a cat will recognise these behaviours). From there, you begin running and jumping, getting a feel for navigating the world through the perspective of a cat, until you are separated from the others and end up in the ominously named Dead City.
After some more exploration and light puzzle-solving (the cat has a talent for lateral thinking, it seems), you meet a friendly drone called B-12 that decides to team up with you, equipping you with a backpack to keep it charged. The moment the cat puts on the backpack is incredible 鈥� walking slowly with an arched spine and sullen demeanour, it looks exactly like it has had some anti-flea medicine coated on its fur and couldn鈥檛 be more angry.
Once the cat settles down, you find that B-12 can help you speak to the various humanoid robots that inhabit Dead City. From here, the game is ostensibly a mix of exploring and fetching items to help you unlock the next level, but really it is just a game about being a cat.
Whether it is pushing objects off ledges with a tap of your paws, scratching against a door and demanding to be let in or even just hammering the dedicated 鈥渕eow鈥� button (which serves almost no gameplay purpose, but is a joy to use), Stray gives you every opportunity to live your best cat life. I actively found myself role-playing as a cat, seeking out places to curl up and snooze, or objects to bat about.
BlueTwelve Studio seems to have fully understood that letting players occupy the cat mindset is as important, if not more important, than the fairly routine story it is trying to tell.
The only way Stray disappoints is by having strange, blobby creatures called Zurks pursue you in various sequences throughout the game 鈥� distressingly, they can attach to the cat with suckers and kill it, though thankfully you can just reload the game.
Sure, these creatures help build out the world, apparently the result of bacteria gone wrong, but from a gameplay perspective it smacks of a developer panicking and adding enemies to a game that really doesn鈥檛 need them. The low point of Stray is a level in which B-12 is equipped with a UV light that can destroy Zurks, temporarily turning it into a frustrating and dull shooter.
The game is short, only taking me 5 hours or so to finish, but that just means it doesn鈥檛 have a chance to outstay its welcome. On PC, fans are already adding the ability to transform the cat into a breed of your choice, or even into a famous cat like Garfield, so I think that Stray is destined to become a cult classic amongcat-lovers 鈥� and rightly so.
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