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By Mahesh De Andrado

It’s raining outside. The weather is gloomy. You wake up and stretch your legs. You then go check the rest of your family and do your job. The only plot twist here is that you’re a cat. This is how you get acquainted with Stray as a player. Developed by BlueTwelve Studio and published by Annapurna Interactive, Stray was released for PS4, PS5 and PC on July 19, 2022.

What is Stray about?

Simply put, Stray is a third-person adventure/explorer game where you play as a cat. Separated from their family on a morning trip through a grassy city, this cat is horribly short of people and must now find its way back. When your journey begins as a cat, you get a mysterious cry for help and decide to find out.

As you travel through this seemingly empty world, you also find that it is in fact not empty. Tiny creatures called Zurks lurk in the shadows, waiting to attack unsuspecting victims, aka you. You can dodge zurks by sprinting and shaking them off. But you have to be very quick and shake them off. If they manage to overwhelm you, you die. Hard, but also shows that Zurks are dangerous.

Once you’ve escaped the zurks, you’ll find yourself in an apartment with a lab. Since you are a cat body and mind, you continue to knock things over and solve a few puzzles and eventually create a physical body for the person who sent you the message. That person turns out to be B-12 (a play on words for the developers of the game BlueTwelve), a drone that previously helped a scientist but now has amnesia and takes some time to recover. B-12 also decides to accompany you on your journey. During your journey, B-12 helps you translate the language of other characters and stores items you encounter along the way in a type of armor that you wear that acts as your inventory. You’ll also find snippets of B-12’s memories, giving you a timeline of what happened to the world you’re in.

You soon realize that the world is in fact completely devoid of human life. The only living creatures are Zurks and robots, some good, and some called Sentinels who will try to shoot you if they see you. As you progress through Stray you can use a tool called a Defluxor attached to B-12 which can be used to take out Zurks. The catch here is that it has a short run time before it needs to cool down and charge. Sentinels can be evaded by breaking their line of sight. Since you’re a cat, that shouldn’t be too difficult. As your story progresses, you’ll unlock more of the B-12 memories, which in turn help you recap what exactly happened in the world and why it is the way it is. I won’t ruin the story for you and tell you what happens, but trust me, the build of the story is well worth the time you put into the game. The small side missions become a challenge for those who are used to seeing a list of objectives on the screen (like me). So you really have to keep an eye on who and what you encounter and connect the dots.

My experience as a cat

Stray starts with me in the role of the protagonist cat. In true feline behavior, I meow, snuggle up against the other cats in my family, and proceed to wait for the storm. Daylight comes and we gather to explore the wilderness that is believed to be New York City or a similar urban city. While exploring, I have to jump on a large metal pipe. This is where things go south as the rusty pipe can’t handle the sudden weight shift of cats jumping on it, causing the pipe to break off and me falling down with it. I’m not going to lie, that moment scared me and I spent the next 5 minutes calming myself and gently moving my character to see if they were hurt.

When I saw they weren’t, I literally went “YAY” out loud, much to the amusement of my friend who sat next to me watching me play Stray. As I progressed through the game, I realized how much detail BlueTwelve Studios had put into the game. I’m not talking about the graphics, although the graphics are also pretty amazing considering it’s an Indie title. I’m talking about the actual gameplay of being a cat. You can meow, you can scratch carpets, you can even knock things over with your paws in a real feline way. If you find a nice, cozy spot, you can take a nap. When you see someone (in this case robots) you can rub their legs and see their little screen light up and it just warms my heart.

From the start it is apparent how much effort and detail has been put into the character models of all the cats. It’s true there’s no real-time ray-tracing or next-gen graphics, but the game is visually stunning to watch and I spent a significant amount of time just running around, looking at my surroundings, meowing and napping (I’ve become one with the cats). Stray is basically a Cyberpunk-esque cat simulator with an engaging storyline, and BlueTwelve did a fantastic job with it, paying great attention to detail and modeling real-life cat movements and behavior.

Stray is currently available on PS4, PS5, and Steam and costs $29.99 for PS4 and PS5 and $11.99. If that’s out of your budget, you can try playing it on one of your friend’s Steam accounts or console if they have the game. You can also try getting it from a torrent site, but I wouldn’t recommend it if you don’t know what you’re doing. Since it’s an indie title, the best way to help them is to buy the game. Trust me, if you’re a cat person, you won’t regret playing Stray.

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