It's ok.

I'm aware at this point that Stray has been dissected to hell and back, but I did want to get my thoughts out there in relation to a lot of the similar games that I've dubbed "Journey-likes" that I've also gone through somewhat recently. You know, those games where you travel from point A to B to C with tons of emphasis on atmospheric exploration and environmental storytelling with maybe some minor puzzles and other limited interactions involved. Keep in mind that this review may have minor spoilers in the form of me discussing gameplay and story design choices, but I'll try to make the discussion general enough as to not impact overall plot enjoyment.

While playing through the first hour and a half of Stray, I kept thinking back to this video by Matthewmatosis, in which he argues that an over-reliance upon context sensitivity in modern games both limits player control ("press X to initiate cutscene of action for every case") and player agency (that is, just walking around in an environment until a context-sensitive prompt tells you that something can be interacted with) and thus results in less interesting experiences. Granted, I'd like to think that I'm acclimated to Journey-likes at this point, and so came in not expecting too much difficult or deep interaction, and yet I still think that Stray goes too damn far in abusing context sensitivity as to significantly reduce meaningful engagement or difficulty.

The main gameplay loop consists as follows; as a cat, you walk around various environments, and simply perform the correct context sensitive interaction when you approach the relevant objects/individuals. There are plenty of walls and rugs to scratch that are marked by a triangle button prompt, plenty of NPCs to talk to that are marked with a square button prompt, and plenty of objects and ledges to jump to that prompt you to press the X button every time. The latter is easily the most problematic case here, because this turns navigation into what is more or less a task of walking forward until the context sensitive prompt tells you to press X to jump forward. There isn't even a risk of falling off ledges or jumping into the abyss; just keep moving forward until the prompt tells you to jump to the next object. Again, I understand that Journey-likes are generally not difficult at all, but this design decision oversimplifies gameplay to a baffling extent beyond other Journey-likes, and it could have been easily fixed if the game was just a regular 3D platformer; I know I'm not the only one who's brought this up either.

If the strict gameplay loop for the entire game was just what I experienced in the first hour and a half, I would most likely be even more disappointed than I am now. Fortunately, Stray eventually opens up to a few "hub" areas in its runtime where you can meander about to find scattered secrets and memories as well as chat up NPCs. However, it's not quite entirely removed from the Journey-like formula, as there are two caveats. Firstly, these hub areas are still governed by the rule of context-sensitive jumps, so exploration can almost feel automatic at times just walking around and mashing X to see where the cat will jump next. Secondly, while there are sidequests and main-story quests of fetching key items, talking to important NPCs, and solving some fairly basic visual recognition puzzles, there's really only one "solution" for every problem, resulting in what is ultimately a pretty linear approach for finishing the side quests and following the main story fetch quests in these hub areas. I admit here that I'm nitpicking, as this is probably the least significant case of railroading in Stray, but I do lament that there was a great opportunity here for more player creativity and that ultimately, it's just a well disguised case of sending the player down the preconceived path that kills a lot of the joy of discovery for me.

Let's quickly go over a few of the other more gameplay-heavy segments inbetween these hubs too. After the first robot city hub, there's a "puzzle" section where you have to outmanuever and trap these goo monsters (called the Zurk) to safely progress; while this section is not particularly difficult either, it's at least engaging in that successfully luring and shutting traps on the Zurk brings some degree of satisfaction since you can actually die (albeit still fairly unlikely). There are also multiple straight corridors where you just have to outrun the Zurk; again, there's not much difficulty once you realize that strictly holding down R2 and tilting the analog stick forward will allow you to avoid most of the Zurk, but it at least provides a nice rush thanks to the hurried and tense accompanying tracks and the scourge of Zurk just descending upon you.

As a counterpart to these running sections, Stray also features a more horror-game inspired survival section filled with dimly lit tight corridors, alien red pulsating webs, and sloshing sewer water infested with Zurk eggs. This is probably the most engaging section of the game, since you're provided with a zapper that can eliminate the Zurk, and since it overheats quite easily, you often have to kite and funnel Zurk to successfully dispatch them; it's a slight shame that you don't get to play with your toy for too long, but it most definitely does not outstay its welcome.

Near the end of the game are three forced stealth sections, one right after another. Nothing like a good ol fashioned "stay outside of the lit cone of sight" segment to slow the pace down a bit and get a bit more out of the price tag, right? Interestingly, most of the forced stealth is actually somewhat trivial, because there are really few lasting consequences to getting spotted by the drones. You can just run at max velocity through all of the stealth sections, dodging the bullets by maintaining your speed and rounding corners, and then just mash circle when you see the circle button prompt to dive into a cardboard box at the end of the segment and wait for the drones to deaggro and leave once they're gone. Which leaves me with this question: if it's this easy to cheese and disregard the forced stealth sections, then why were they implemented in the game in the first place?

I've mostly been lambasting the gameplay for the last few paragraphs, so I'll give the game props where it's due; I really do enjoy the ruined yet nostalgic backdrops of Stray. The ambient tunes that drop in and out as you explore the subterranean wastelands as well as the decaying posters and hastily scribbled graffiti on the concrete walls really help etch this feeling that while something great has definitely gone to pass, there still linger a few strays (no pun intended) that seek to find their own sources of hope in the sprawling underground. I do appreciate that the game really lets you take your time soaking in all the details here and there, with plenty of snug nooks where your cat can curl up while the camera slowly pans out to let you breathe in and forget about life for a while.

Ultimately, I find myself somewhat frustrated because as great of an idea as they have shown in the final product, I feel like they could have done so much more. I love the little moments like the cat walking on the keyboard to communicate with the AI or random jumbled notes being played as the cat walks across the piano keyboards, so why are these cute cat interactions with the environment so sparse? The interactions between your cat and your lil beep boop buddy are heartwarming and set up the mood perfectly, so why do the writers also insist on inserting so many side characters in an already short timespan that leave after an hour or so with not enough time to develop any strong lasting impressions? It's a ton of fun just mashing circle to hear meowing through the speaker while attracting Zurks, but why is that NPCs have no strong reactions to my cat's meow? There's a section near the end of the game where you have to communicate and cooperate with another big beep-boop without your robot buddy translating, and it's a fantastic subversion after getting used to just reading so many textboxes of translation from random NPCs, but this subversion is ultimately over within ten minutes or so, and I really feel like there was a fantastic squandered opportunity to force players to think outside of the box a bit more.

I won't dismiss the possibility that perhaps, I'm just a bit jaded after playing plenty of fairly structurally similar games over the last twelve months, with a few more potentially on the docket. That said, I can't help but lament that as fantastic as the concept is on paper, the way it plays out leaves a lot to be desired on my end. Even while considering the often hackneyed genre of Journey-likes, Stray feels too safe, too straightforward, and too scripted. As cute as it is jumping and scratching your way back to the surface, I feel like it could have been so much more compelling.

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Cyberkitty Oedo 808.

Stray was one of the initial PS5 games Sony revealed before the system launch and I've been looking forward to it ever since. I love both cats, owning one, and cyberpunk as a genre so it's a perfect mix right? Surprisingly so. You play the role of a stray cat that on a perilous jump is separated from their family and finds themselves in a forgotten dystopian cyberpunk city and needs to find their way out meeting a host of odd characters and unraveling the story of its existence as you go.

Far greater writers than I will talk about this game I'm sure, but what I really want to highlight is how great the animations are. You really feel like a cat. The way you scratch objects, jump, crouch, slink is perfect. In one scene the cat stares at something that catches their attention before padding over to it, it's something I've seen my cat do and it's that attention to detail in the game that really brings it to life. That same level of detail is brought to the environments, characters and rest of the world too. Make no mistake this is a very good looking title. Brilliant use of colour, lighting crisp image quality and art design make it a gorgeous world to explore, especially impressive as an indie game on a lower budget.

The actual game plays like an adventure game where you explore, talk, collect items. Being a cat you have in certain places more vertical exploration being able to jump up buildings, shelves, air con units etc especially in the hubs. The jumping itself is more contextual when you are near an object you can jump up the X prompt will come up. While it does make the jumping animations look far smoother and makes all your jumps perfect, with the agility of lets say...a cat, it also can be a little finicky at times.

Overall I had a great time with this little game. I got the platinum in 11 hours in two play throughs but most importantly I can press circle to meow!

+ Fantastic animations.
+ Gorgeous visual design.
+ Interesting world to explore.
+ Meow!

- jumping isn't always the best.

Pros:
- Gorgeous art direction
- Adored its cyberpunk atmosphere and detailed environments, they did a great job nailing the intrigue of this world for the short time you spend in it
- The music and audio design are exceptionally good and really sell the whole vibe of this game. For me it’s definitely a solid pick for best OST this year
- You play as a cat which is cute! Movement was fluid to control, it’s well animated, and seeing the world from a ground perspective was refreshing
- The more open areas are surprisingly dense, there’s a lot of rooms to explore even if there’s not much to find aside for a few collectables
- There’s a meow button, you can scratch things, and knock over important stuff like real cats

Cons:
- This is not really a platformer since there’s no jump button and all the climbing is automated, you can’t fall. While that may be an intentional design choice, it does make the game feel a bit shallow and restrictive to traverse outside of the cool perspective
- There are enemies (basically headcrabs from Half-Life) that chase you and you need to avoid. It’s fine, but not really a highlight either. And the stealth sections of the second half I could’ve done without
- Minor bugs like getting stuck in furniture and having to reload, though checkpoints are frequent so wasn’t a big deal
- No photo mode 😭

What a huge waste of time. For the player. For the devs. For the artists who designed the assets that make the world feel alive and detailed. What was the point of any of it? Why did they do all of this work, just to make a pretty mediocre easy-mode adventure game? It's frustrating. Couldn't they have worked on a nice little short film instead? Compete with Pixar for once? There's a ton of high quality stuff here! Stray tells a nice story about a lost cat and its adventures in a robot world; you go off and do favors for people as you find your footing, gaining a robot companion named B-12 along the way. The whole time I played it I was annoyed that there was not a jump button.

The lost cat, having slipped away from its companions and down into a dank, mysterious, walled city, has the obvious goal of getting out, of going "Outside." See there's a group of robots in that city known as "The Outsiders," the cat allies with these Outsiders and works in concert with them to develop the technology to get Out. Along the way you learn a little bit about the world you've found yourself in. There are comical story beats where your cat-activity of scratching up the furniture uncovers a secret, that kind of thing. The cat, though a little uncanny (I played on PS4), is convincingly charming if you're a sucker for that kind of stuff. It'll curl up into a ball at some spots, especially one, and you can see they're trying to go for the internet cat love thing. And it's well done, they deserve it.

But so why a video game? You don't need this to be a video game to get all of that. There's some stuff I haven't mentioned--Zergs, a jail segment, some minor stealth elements--that benefit a bit from the videogame format. There's a tension you just can't get to from a movie. But everything else, the world navigation, the "platforming," it is so easy it may as well play itself. This game is functionally a walking simulator, except instead of walking as a person you walk as a cat. Now walking simulators are not bad in and of themselves, I like quite a few of them myself, but realizing you're playing one when you wanted a platformer is disappointing. And even moreso, realizing how much the game would rock as a platformer dissapoints even harder. A lot of the game's navigation is about jumping on stuff, but you can only jump on stuff once there's a button prompt. This creates a disconnect--in a traditional platformer you'll learn your jump range, how high you can go, movement tricks--in this one there's nothing to learn, just look at where the green circle appears.

Does that kind of strict control sound cat-like? What do you know about cats. What are the like, known, essential traits of cats. Cats are known as being fickle or stubborn, they don't often do what you'd like them to do. They're agile, and fast, though occasionally goofy. The internet thinks they're adorable and is obsessed with 'em. They're great subjects for platformers, although it hasn't been done as often as you'd think. Good platformers enable quick, agile movement, and cats are--to some degree--thought of as being quick and agile. Super Mario 3D World and Rain World are probably the biggest examples of cat-based video gaming, the latter featuring a "slugcat" with really tight platforming. Rain World really immerses you in the feeling of being a slugcat. The controls are tight and difficult, and you look dumb when you mess up. The world is mean and unfair, and you feel on a deep level where you are on the food chain. It's might not be fair to compare Rain World and Stray too closely, they're clearly going for different things.

But both games decided to make the focus of their game a cat. A slugcat, in one, sure, but the choice of subject is interesting here. There is a sharp difference in approach and intention. Rain World wanted to put you in the shoes of the slugcat, to set up through its mechanics a kind of grammar to navigate its world. It's a simulator, to some degree. Though, it's worth pointing out that Rain World can be prohibitively difficult, to its detriment, and that Stray kind of exists at the other end of a spectrum here; Stray can be annoyingly easy, to its detriment.

That is all to say that Stray is not a simulator. Stray tells you a story and puts you on an audiovisual adventure. It's gorgeous, and kind of fun, and even has a little gameplay here and there. But on a mechanical level its boring, and maybe even a little lazy sometimes. And it's dumb to focus a "talk to guy do favor for him" game on a cat. People will play this game because its a cat doing cat stuff, and shit brother that's why I played it too. But on the whole. Eh.

I know Stray is really short but I don't mind because it was developed by such a small studio and it was their first game and that makes it even more surprising how amazing the graphics, atmosphere, lighting, sound design and particularly the animations are. Although the gameplay is basic and doesn’t offer much other than a little exploring, I find it refreshing because I never really had a chance to play as an agile cat before. It's really relaxing. Also there are levels with a lot of verticality and the Robots feel more human than the actual humans in other games, very good job on conveying the emotions. I was also surprised how deep the story actually is, it kinda reminded me of Soma.
Conclusion : really atmospheric game with a cool Cyberpunk setting, good sound design and soundtrack, smooth animation and an interesting story and characters.

Bonus fact: Cats are freaking cute but do I really have to tell you that?

Amazing work BlueTwelve Studio, I'm excited for your future.
Meow!

I saw a few folk disappointed in how gamey this is, rather than something more about just being a cat. I understand that, but if it was just a cat sim then fuckin' nothing would happen. A robot asks for help and you just lick yer baws? I'm afraid I want more for my £25.

Luckily what I got was a lovely adventure game about being a small dude in a city of robots. A city that is both grimy and beautiful in equal measure. The devs have somehow made a shithole that you'd like to visit. The robot inhabitants themselves are often charming, sometimes tragic. They're clinging to a dreg of humanity in order to keep that light from going out completely.

Enter, the wee man. A ginger cat. He's lost down here, and with the help of drone housing an AI, and a backpack he really disnae want to wear, he's gonna save this piece of shit city.

They've done a cool thing with the movement system where you're not free jumping all over the place, but instead get prompts on surfaces you can jump to. Think late Assassin's Creed traversal. Just holding a button and aiming the stick gives you a satisfying series of hops that feel like considered movements the way a cat does in real life. No shitty moments of falling into a pit because you misjusdged distance, or boucing off invisible walls until a surface lets you onto it.

In regards to story, despite it being about cats and robots, there's not much new here. Much of its beats are predictable, but for me that didn't detract from it. A recognizable tale told well with a new kinda setting and protag worked for me. Something doesn't have to be groundbreaking to be good. Sometimes there's comfort to be found in the familiar.

His name is Terry, and we all love him.

Fetch quests and "press x to jump up here" BUT as a cat.

The fact that they didn't realize how much potential they had to tell a story completely without words is honestly baffling. The whole story with the robots felt like somebody didn't want to give up on an old idea so they mashed it together with somewhat interesting cat mechanics and then they structured the whole game around that instead of the cats. I really wouldn't be surprised if this were once two different student projects.

Can't be bothered to finish all the fetch quests in midtown while searching for the right windowsill to jump on. Imma have to drop this one. Thanks tho ps extra

Stray is a game where you assume the role of a cat. This is the entire promise of its outward appearance. You control a сute furball navigating in a world proportionally large for your light presence. You can press B to meow and Y to cuddle with other cats. You can take a nap in allotted by game designer places. The cat mannerisms are meticulously animated and instantly gifable for twitter. An instant crowd pleaser of a concept, as Twitch and Steam numbers immediately suggest.

One of the first big puzzles you solve involves power outlets. You have to scout a room to find 4 cube-shaped batteries. You have to grab them with a floating button prompt and bring them to a computer. You have to MANUALLY (with paws?) plug them in power sockets. Surely, you already see a problem.

Stray takes place in a society of robots mimicking the images and idiosyncrasies of humans. Robots wear clothes, robots eat food, robots live in a police state – not because they need to, that’s just what we tend to do. The greatest irony of Stray is how it’s no different from the robots it portrays. It’s caught up in appearances, stupefied by feline oddness – and completely misses the essence of dubious little being.

Do you want to be a small rascal bumbling the way through, guided only by the most primal of instincts? Wrong game! And it’s mind-boggling to me how attentively every unique keynote of the whole premise is impaired here to create the most nothing hodgepodge of a modern action-adventure. You are pulled through a cat-sized theme park with the main attractions made up of the lightest of puzzles, dullest stealth sections and unlosable chase sequences. Traversal, which must pop with cats’ preciseness and unlimited agility, suddenly turns into a chore, because you can’t have a cat failing a jump, right? Even the animal inaudibility which opens the door for interesting environmental storytelling and silent interactions is undercut by the introduction of a companion drone acting as a translation layer between the feline friend and basically everything else in the world.

There are absolutely glints of creativity and good vibes here, and I decently enjoyed exploring the little hub levels where the game matches its title the best by letting the cat go a little astray. These bright moments though are far and between in this hugely underwhelming affair. Rain World: Downpour can’t honestly come soon enough.

Notes on Stray forcefully anti-intellectuals because it is necessary to think about video games outside the logic of video games or something like that

-I talk too much about spaces, their construction and exploration and I barely realize how important the height and size we use to move through it is, but I have always felt that small avatars are a little more interesting. Maybe because I'm 1.85, I have no idea.

-When Stray was released I saw a tweet that said something like "it's a game about being a cat but in BoTW you move more like a cat" or something like that. I found it a bit ridiculous because it seemed to disdain Stray's navigation based on pseudo-realistic logic, but in BoTW almost any surface is "sticky" and you can scale it like a lizard. That's not very catty bro

-The environments are excellent on their own, but they also seem to me to be an excellent architecture that reflects the dilemma of the automata.
There is a lot of beauty in walking around the district and just sitting next to any inhabitant, a robot, an npc, a mannequin. an inhabitant.

Why fool ourselves, if the game had been a cat Playground most of GamersTm would have been annoyed for not having objectives, "nothing to do".
goodoo.

-The complaint of many is that the game should have been a playground instead of a directed adventure with some freeform moments. I think so too, but against everything I believed, I ended up liking the direction, despite being quite conventional.

-Creating a fictional world through the aesthetic and cultural appropriation of countries with problematic political pasts (is there a country that does not have it?) can be problematic, but it is true that many countries have done it to a greater or lesser extent. It doesn't matter how; Turbo-capitalist revisions of Marie Antoinette of Austria, JRPGs with bucolic aesthetics or those martial arts movies where completely anachronistic techniques and movements are shown. Perhaps it would matter more WHO takes that culture to use it as background and decoration

-Alexis Ong's text isn't bad to be honest


-Sisi Jiang's text wouldn't be bad either. But back to the same.
It's not that I want to play the parry that we should be permissive with the romanticization (and appropriation) of a problematic aesthetic and culture for the sake of a freer and more experimental fiction... But if I'm doing it a little?? maybe?
Why complaining about the appropriation of pizza or the word (k)Otaku would be silly but doing it about Hong Kong architecture is smart?

-In the past, some Asian countries, by necessity or imposition, have also absorbed too much Western culture, now they appropriate it and, by necessity or because of the turbo-capitalism in which we live, they market their own culture.
I apologize if this may offend anyone but it is something that I see very real.

Stray is a very respectable game. For a game who's credits arent rolling long enough to demand multiple credits songs and 3 point font, it is astounding in terms of visuals, technical design, and to an extent game direction. It achieves seemingly everything it goes for with only minor "objective" issues. You could have told me that this game was made by naughty dog as a little side project and i'd only need two drinks in me to believe you.

And it really is a very ND-style game, down to the straight up game flow. Linear platforming where you snap from location to location, chase sequences, extremely light puzzling, general level-to-level structure and the occasional quiet bit where you just get to explore a very small area - it's like Uncharted 4 but drake is small and there's no ludonarrative dissonance trophy. Even has the very naughty dog thing of having a conspicous landmark in the horizon you always work towards in the levels. I swear im not crazy, it's really noticeable when you catch onto it.

The problem with Stray is that, for my money, you don't feel like a cat. Which is a pretty big issue for a game where that's the hook. There's a few good gags, the animation passes muster for the most part, but the behaiour of the cat and in particular the interactions it has with others don't. You could practically replace the cat with a small dog, hell, it would probably make more sense for the things the characters demand and how they treat you.

My favourite moment in the game, is, when in what is ostensibly a tense, high-stakes situation where you're meant to solve a puzzle, the cat can simply lie down by a record player in a comfy alcove, as long as you and they want. It's lovely. And there's just not enough of it. The adventures of cats are crescendos to lives spent revelling in comfort and warmth - even in wild and big cats - and you can let me meow as much as you like but the pure action adventure betrays the nature of cats. I feel like small creature. I don't feel like cat.

On top of that the sci fi narrative is very bland. Fortunately the environments are excellent and carry the game pretty hard. Again, the naughty dog influence is well integrated, with fantastic subtle signposting of areas that feels naturalistic whilst ensuring you're never really lost.

Again, the game is very competent, and a frankly remarkable facsimile of games with hundreds of times the budget. It's well paced and i appreciate it's brevity, and i would be remiss not to touch on it's excellent soundtrack. And it's that extreme competence that makes it dissapointing for me that it doesnt actually get it's hook. And without it, it's ultimately forgettable, as good as it is.

Before 2022, if you asked me what the cutest post-apocalytic game was, it would have obviously been Pikmin 3. But now we've got Kirby and the Forgotten Land AND Stray??

Stray is great! It felt at first like it was going to be a straightforward exploration-focused game, but there's a lot more Early 90s Sierra influence than I expected. The world is beautiful and just the right size; each time I started to feel like an area was too big to not get lost in, I would suddenly start to get my bearings. The environments are well laid-out enough that I could now point you towards any location of interest from memory. I still wouldn't have said no to a Metroid Prime-esque map, but it's not as harmful of an omission here as it was in something like Supraland or The Gunk.

Anyhow. Stray emphasizes that it's nice to go outside. That there's a need to escape from the city now and then. Which means THIS banger kept popping into my head during my playthrough (sorry @Alexizaki it's not what you're thinking): https://youtu.be/Yvg8p0wKiJo

From the outside looking in, art school seems like a weird experience. My partner dedicated several years to developing their degree and I’d get to hear first-hand details of just the bizarre petty problems it would entail. High school level cattiness, teachers who would see students as competition instead of talented individuals, cliques between different departments, so on and so forth. But out of all of it, there was one observation from my partner that really stuck with me.

“A lot of great artists don’t know how to write and a lot of great writers don’t know how to use art.”

Stray’s art direction might have, genuinely, one of the highest bars to clear I’ve ever seen. This is the new peak for me. Every single aspect of this game is firing on all cylinders. The world is vibrantly sharp in its beauty and structure. Each street corner, every nook, every room, every chair, everything feels personal and designed for that specific space. It's a game about the subtle beauty of an urban environment, about lived-in spaces and how people build their homes around themselves. You can easily beat this game in under two hours if you’re racing through, but that would be a disservice to the utter care and craft that went into building this world. Most playtimes last five hours and mine lasted longer just for soaking in all the visuals. I’ve never been someone who stopped to take pictures of impressive game visuals, but took numerous opportunities to take screenshots while playing this game. Every AAA game after this is gonna have to do a LOT of legwork to make me half as impressed with its visuals as I am with this one cat game.

The famous cat itself is of course the star of the show. The animation work done to nail the gamefeel of this cat is beyond compare. The Stray feels exactly as it should, fluid and seamless. The gameplay is perfectly designed around being a cat. I found myself genuinely surprised at a few points in the game because my expectations as a long-time gaming person clashed with the rules of being a cat. A single fence in your way? Games have trained me to think of that as an impenetrable barrier. I return to a quest giver to find the police blockade set-up? I’m not supposed to go in there anymore, the cops will see me. But that’s silly. A cat just finds a hole or climbs up a fence. The police won’t notice a cat passing them by. The real obstacles now are just doors or shelves that are a little too high off the ground. I had to retrain my brain over what was and wasn’t possible to accomplish in the gameworld.

People have sort of turned on accounts like Can I Pet the Dog for being a little too twee, and I do understand why. But I think people misinterpret the purpose of accounts like that. While there’s certainly a marketable wholesomeness to wanting to pet a digital line of code in a video game, the real core of Can I Pet the Dog is about encouraging more methods of interaction. Allowing players to personally interact in the game world in ways that make that world seem more real. It's the Who Framed Roger Rabbit animators making their job harder by making Roger bump into real world items constantly. It's Shovel Knight adding a useless crouch button that can’t dodge anything, just for the sake of giving players that option. The useless button or the useless interaction is one of the most subtle but beautiful ways to add a special polish to your game.

Stray is a master of this thesis. The game provides hundreds and hundreds of ways for the player to interact like this. Nuzzling random robots. Little cat nap locations that just pan over to the gorgeous cityscape. Knocking over boxes and paint cans. Places to claw at carpets. The dedicated meow button. The way the Stray lies on the ground or walks around in annoyance when someone puts an outfit on it. Standing in the middle of the road can lead to a robot completely tripping over you and collapsing into the pavement. All these details and nuances add so much life and personality to the world. Stuff like Catlateral Damage falls apart because it features one stiff movement as the main centerpiece of the entire game. It only offers one level of interaction across three hours of gametime. Stray offers so much variability in ways that speaks to something about the world and its protagonist.

It's in the writing itself that the game sort of wobbles. Don’t get me wrong, putting a cat in a cyberpunk landscape is truly ingenious. If it was just a cat game wandering through city streets, I think it’d be too lacking in personality to really shine. If it was just a game about a robot society living underground, I think it’d vanish into the forgotten sea of other simply alright sci-fi games. Combining them together allows unique gameplay elements and makes these ideas feel fresh.

But the reason it needs to be combined together is that the robot society element would likely be very dull when left on its own. The set-up of the robot culture is initially interesting. The robots have built their own language, their own history, their own religion. They’re certainly aware of humans, but only in a mythical sense. They’ve mimicked their creators to an extent, before passing down that mimicry through the ages and getting naturally distorted through the times.

Yet it's hard not to feel a little disappointed after a while that mimicry is sort of all that society is. The robots have just recreated the same social structure, same concepts of gender, the same jobs and hierarchies. Old robots complain about “kids today and their music,” while I’m trying to understand how kid robots even exist. When you have tiny robots repeating phrases like “That’s what I want to be when I grow up!” without detailing how growth and age works for robots, it's hard not to get a little confused. Robots get drunk like humans, have developed digestive systems within their systems… I’m not trying to Cinema Sins whine about something being illogical. I was just hoping that a game this creative could demonstrate a culture more distinct than just being Metal Humans.

The character work itself also runs into this problem. There’s occasional aspects of sincere depth. The cat’s companion can visit different locations and the game and speak emotionally about their surroundings. Reminisce about forgotten drinks and lonely nights and how those moments stayed with them hundreds of years later. But several character arcs can pass by so quickly it's a little jarring. Grumpy drinker Seamus acts as a disgruntled, bitter character for his early appearances. Yet it only takes giving him one journal from his father to make him completely 180 into someone with hope and optimism. It was a sweet storyline, but given the subsequent fetch quest you get sent on, it would also be easy to give Seamus some more time. Have your companion say “we should fix Seamus’ thing while he copes with this extremely personal item we gave him” and then have him express his change in demeanor after he’s had some off-screen time to process. Breathing room, you know? Another character decides to swerve to betrayal in the late game. But that character has had so little presence so far, I barely recognized who he was. He just didn’t stick out.

Even beyond that, the way the robots react to the Stray is hard to quite pin down. They all view the cat as an intelligent being and assume it’s just a particularly tiny, fuzzy robot. They try to have intelligent conversations with it, with your companion B-12 translating for the audience’s benefit. But they also don’t mind what they think is a robot stranger nuzzling up to them or lying on their chest. It's cute and I love those moments! But it gives you pause sometimes.

It's particularly weird with the character of B-12. B-12 knows what a cat is and shares a lot of emotional dialogue with the Stray. But I kind of wish B-12 talked to the Stray like a cat owner. Call the cat your stinky baby. Giving speeches about friendship and things like “I can’t believe you came to rescue me!” just feels… I’m not sure what I’m asking for. The game wants to convey its story but I think it created a weird necessary suspension of disbelief where the cat has to be both a cat and an intelligent silent protagonist that takes in character monologues. Its just a weird needle to thread and I think it makes the character work harder to pull off.

I think maybe the game could have experimented with no dialogue at all. Some of the game’s best segments are when there’s no translator and the story needs to be conveyed through visuals alone. And the visuals are so striking that the team is absolutely capable of doing so. Player goals are perfectly directed through excellent lighting choices and level design. Visuals alone can carry this game. Drop the players fully into the life of a cat. No words, no dialogue, just pure cat living.

Its hard to be disappointed with this one though. I might take another run at this game to get the last few achievements, just because I adored the world so much. Its a real marvel and easily high in the running for GOTY 2022.

(5-year-old's review, typed by her dad)

It's where you can play as a little kitty and you can MEOW MEOW MEOW and it's an exploring kitty game! And also you can pick up buckets which is very cute.

Ooohhhhhh No daddy, it's "awwwwww." That's it.

it's fine. it's cute. it kind of has no idea what kind of game it wants to be. there's one too many AAA elements lumped in almost as if they couldn't say no when someone asked "what about stealth?", "what about combat?", "what about a hub world?", "what about collectibles?", "what about side quests and a inventory?". it could have just been a Limbo or Ico esque minimalist linear journey but I guess you can remove the developers from Ubisoft but the Ubisoft from the developers.

I am also just a little sad that it's a game about robots. why feature robots if you're going to humanise them. just use humans. the "lore" just feels childish to me. a lot of Stray reminded me of Kentucky Route Act V, where you're also a cat, roaming around listening to - and soaking in - the lives of everybody in this town. it's very written first, gameplay-orientated second. whereas Stray feels like "okay we got a game where you're a cat, now let's fill in the rest quickly". but hey, they nailed the cat stuff. so good on em. i wish it were in service of something more though.

I did not care for cats until like 5 weeks ago, when my girlfriend decided to extend our family (we have a dog and kids) with not one, but two cats. I still have my reservations with those predators and would consider myself a dog person, but it definitely affected the hype (i already had) for this game. Playing a cat is a cool pitch, but this game didn't even need that for me. When you know me, you know that the pitch could've just been: yada yada cyberpunk something. And on that cyberpunk part this game devlivers beautifully. Stray pretty much feels like a polished first party playstation game, just on a way smaller scale and budget. The visuals are absolutely stunning and yet another showcase for the capable PS5. It's traversal and light puzzling sometimes feels a bit like exploring the beautiful environments of an Uncharted game. But it's not just that, the creators clearly saw the potential in the clutteredness and verticality of cyberpunk settings and amplified the great exploration options with giving you the perspective of a stray feline. The world is built with great attention to detail and its an absolute joy to traverse those narrow streets, the insides of buildings and rooftops. I'd go as far as to say that it's predestined to have a place like this ready to be explored by a cat, reminding me of my early childhood memories of stray cats in Istanbul. Stray doesn't do much new, heck it doesn't even do much period. There are passages that feel more like a walking simulator, the engagement with the world and its inhabitants is rather limited, but that is totally fine and also makes a lot of sense (you're a cat, dude). Still, the game manages to create a place with a history, and inhabitants with drives and dreams. The story is heartfelt and cute, but has the right amount of nudge into critical thinking about some of the things it foreshadows. I thoroughly enjoyed my time with Stray and I don't say too often nowadays, but I wish I could've spent more time in it.

Cute. But I'm more of a dog person.

Personal preference aside, Stray is a short and sweet experience. I didn't find it to be too short as I think there's only so much to tell about a humanless robot world that Wall-E hasn't.
The gameplay is the usual sparkly and simple puzzle-solving affair you'd expect from an Annapuuurrrna Interactive title. Although the freaky bug ridden 'eye' zones were a terrifying addition I didn't expect.
The music, whilst occasionally distracting, was unique enough to add flavour to the otherwise predictably hipster dystopian aesthetic and the kind of visuals that evoke 'lo-fi hip hop beats to chill and relax to'!