As a man who likes cats, I'd been keeping an eye on Stray from its reveal. Finally having played it, after the delay of the physical release from launch to several months later, I'm glad to say I had a decent time with the game. Its story, while somewhat minimalist, kept me engaged enough to want to keep pushing forward, and I often found myself lost in the visuals of the city and the occasional catchy musical stings as I explored.

That said, there isn't much there on the gameplay front; you're a cat. You can meow on command, jump at specifically designated points, solve some puzzles, communicate with NPCs and find various knickknacks throughout the environment... and that's kind of it. The game's sense of scale as you traverse huge environments is something to be praised, as you can tell the dev team had a lot of love for the title they were making. But I wish there was a bit more to the game, as it doesn't feel like I'm really able to take advantage of the agility a cat should have in these kinds of scenarios, due to the inability to jump on command, for instance.

Stray's overall one weird game, and while I'm more conflicted on my feelings towards it than this review probably conveys, I can at least say I don't regret my time with. It's relatively cheap considering its short length, too, so your wallet won't hurt too bad over the few hours the campaign will take you. Give it a shot.

Reviewed on Sep 25, 2022


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