Stray Review — Through The Eyes Of A Cat

Stray is the first new game to be released day one to the new PlaySta­tion Plus, and what a delight­ful sur­prise it was. Upon see­ing Stray first being announced, I assumed it would fall under the cat­e­go­ry of “just anoth­er indy title.” That isn’t to say that I was­n’t intrigued by the premise, as I am a huge fan of cats in general.

How­ev­er, once the game began, I found myself absorbed into the sto­ry and world this sole cat has found itself in. As I don’t real­ly want to ruin the beau­ti­ful sto­ry BlueTwelve Stu­dio has made for this game, a slight descrip­tion is needed.

The orange feline pro­tag­o­nist in this title lives on the sur­face of the earth, and an unfor­tu­nate event caus­es this fur­ball to fall down a con­crete chute to a dead city deep under­ground. The cat sees these small, one-eyed crea­tures, which run away at first. This creepy city also con­tains a mys­te­ri­ous stranger who’s guid­ing the cat through wind­ing alleys and aban­doned apartments. 

The crea­tures who were once afraid gain in num­bers and begin chas­ing the orange tab­by, who, again, gets assist­ed by this mys­te­ri­ous stranger. The feline ends up in an apart­ment that has a tiny robot inside–which you prompt­ly nudge to life–with it wak­ing and explain­ing it’s name is B‑12 and how it end­ed up in this fate. Short­ly after, the bot attach­es a back­pack to the cat (for the robot to be car­ried in), and the two of you begin the long jour­ney back to surface.

Along the way, the duo comes across sev­er­al cor­doned off small cities. Most of them are inhab­it­ed by sen­tient, human-like robots. There are a vari­ety of ways to inter­act with these cit­i­zens, includ­ing rub­bing agains them (which typ­i­cal­ly caus­es the robot to flash a heart across its screen-face), giv­ing items, talk­ing, and even tak­ing a nap on one. The orange stray is a per­fect­ly por­trayed cat. The small flick­ers of the tail when run­ning, the chest infla­tion when purring, knock­ing items over that are right on the edge, the way they curl up when they get ready to sleep… I mean it’s spot on.

I’ve had cats for most of my life, with my last one hav­ing passed on four years ago–so see­ing those man­ner­isms brought huge smiles to my face through­out my playtime.

It’s not just the cat that has a beau­ti­ful design. Stray, in gen­er­al, has an amaz­ing atmos­phere. It just imme­di­ate­ly sucks you into it with its neon sig­nage, shops and restau­rants to explore, robots to talk to, and rooftops to reach. The col­ors from the signs hang­ing from the shops are in great con­trast to the dark­ness of the trash and nar­row streets that lit­ter this cities. Most of the robots have unique phys­i­cal fea­tures, mak­ing them easy to iden­ti­fy when try­ing to solve a prob­lem for one of them.

Of course, there are mul­ti­ple lev­els to this game, each with a dif­fer­ent type of set­ting. For instance, once chap­ter is ded­i­cat­ed to the sew­er, while anoth­er is just the pair pass­ing through tiny town that gets a sin­gle ray of light from the surface.

The music also plays a major part in the atmos­phere of these areas. Enter­ing cer­tain sec­tions while pro­gress­ing through the sto­ry will trig­ger cer­tain musi­cal effects, and beau­ti­ful­ly cor­re­sponds with what is hap­pen­ing on screen. While not all of the tracks are my favorite in the world, I was still impressed with the atten­tion to audio shifts throughout.

Because Stray’s world is so inter­ac­tive, it’s super easy to lost with­in it for hours–talking to local bots, find­ing items, or help­ing the city by solv­ing some of its prob­lems. None of the “side quests” give the sense of redun­dan­cy, even though they’re just typ­i­cal fetch quests, but it does­n’t feel like typ­i­cal fetch quests. How­ev­er, tense moments with the crea­tures (seen at the begin­ning of the game) known as the Zurk, as well as dodg­ing Sen­try bots that are will­ing to zap to kill, real­ly breaks up the calm­ness seen dur­ing cer­tain por­tions of the game. I believe these ene­my addi­tions bring a great bal­ance of peace­ful­ness and tension.

Also, the con­nec­tion that grows between B‑12 and this orange tab­by is smil­ing induc­ing, as the cat takes the time to give this lit­tle robot his mem­o­ries back. I was shocked how emo­tion­al­ly absorbed into Stray I actu­al­ly was, which made the sto­ry that much more intense. Plus, the DualSense gives par­tic­u­lar feed­back for cer­tain actions the cat does, like scratch­ing car­pets or purring. 

With­out a doubt, Stray is one of the best games to have arrived from an indy devel­op­er this year. It’s even out­shined recent titles I’ve played from major devel­op­ers. The sto­ry and envi­ron­ment are com­plete­ly unique. How­ev­er, the game­play and mechan­ics are com­plete­ly gener­ic. But it’s how it’s pre­sent­ed to the play­er, shown through the steps of a four-legged stray cat, who has no arms, can’t talk, and relies on the kind­ness of robots. It’s an expe­ri­ence that one does­n’t see often in the gam­ing world, as focus­es are put more on play­ers being able to inter­act with the world around them freely. 

I would high­ly rec­om­mend Stray, espe­cial­ly if you’re a cat per­son. If not, it’s still a super inter­est­ing expe­ri­ence, dri­ven by an amaz­ing sto­ry, and played out in a fan­tas­tic setting.