The world we see every day can feel completely different when looking from another perspective. We love to marvel out of a plane window so we can see the ground in a new way, just as we like to see macro photography that zooms in on details we could never recognize with the naked eye. Animals have yet another perspective. The roads, paths, chairs, and everyday household objects we associate with specific functions are gone, replaced with simple objects. A platform, a scratching post, a bed, and of course, new paths open up to athletic felines that most people can only dream of. Stray is about capturing that new perspective in every way.
Cats are agile, with excellent balance, perform incredible jumps, can run up vertical surfaces with seeming ease, and sprint at speed with little effort. A normal alleyway becomes a tactile obstacle course, and that’s what makes Stray so interesting. Moving through the world seeing paths where anyone else would see walls, and communicating with that world without any words – that’s what you have to learn to do when playing Stray.
To be clear, Stray isn’t a challenging platformer. Instead, the way you move in Stray is built to highlight how agile cats are in real life. Cats don’t stumble over their own feet or trip up staircases – instead, they make walking on a precarious ledge look easy. As a result, you’ll be tapping the jump button when context-sensitive prompts appear. This allows the detailed hand-animated movements to flaunt their stuff, and truly capture the movements and actions of a cute kitty.
Cute is the operative word. Unless you’re heartless, it’s impossible to look at Stray and not feel a bit of a lump in your throat. The feline protagonist, based on one of the developer’s own cats, is posed in the most adorable little positions as it rides a bucket on a string down to the lower levels of a tower block, with the front paws peeking over the rim of the tub, accompanied by two wide eyes. It melts my heart, honestly.
There is a central narrative to be uncovered, but essentially cats are rare in this world inhabited primarily by robots. Over the course of the game you’ll be able to discover what made the world like this, and why it is that it’s such a struggle to find other felines, but the devs weren’t willing to share any extra details yet. Don’t expect quest systems – this is a more linear exploration game, with a bit of puzzle-solving along the way. You can expect to push all manner of things off of ledges – as cats are wont to do – such as paint cans, which can conveniently smash through a window to open up a brand new path.
Other puzzles include things like a platform that moves depending on where you jump onto it from, changing the momentum and direction of the movement, accessing new places, or dropping an item into a spinning fan in order to stop it. There are enemies that can attack and incapacitate your kitty crusader, but combat is not a major part of Stray. Avoiding threats is much more important than fighting them yourself.
Luckily you do have a companion, a small robot that will either stay stored in your tiny backpack or hover above you, translating signs and interacting with objects that cats can’t because of their lack of opposable thumbs and dexterous fingers. This will help you understand the world around you, with the added bit of intelligence a cat needs to get around.
But one of the best aspects of Stray is the visuals. The world has been lightly stylized in places, but for the most part, the team has aimed squarely at a realistic presentation, making it feel like you’re exploring a real world, our world, but very different. It’s the same post-apocalyptic tourism you get from The Last of Us Part 2, but with your eyes only a foot from the ground and climbing up the sides of buildings.
Stray looks set to be one of the unsung heroes of the 2022 line-up for PS5. It’s the most wholesome game of the year and everything we’ve learned about the game so far has us eager to start playing. It’s only a simple 8-10 hour adventure, depending on how much time you spend reveling in some adorable animations, but it might be the most heartwarming 8-10 hours the year has in store for us yet.
Written by Dave Aubrey on behalf of GLHF.
