Exploring a city populated by robots as a cat holds many dangers – good that you bring more than one life into the new adventure game.
“Meow”, it sounds from the Playstation controller. At the push of a button, the player can elicit the typical animal noise from the nameless cat, who is also the protagonist of the game “Stray”. At the beginning of the approximately six-hour adventure, you don’t know what purpose this function serves – just like you have to explore many other secrets of the dark cyberpunk world first.
Despite their huge popularity, cats are rarely found in the role of avatar in a video game. The joy was all the greater when “Stray” was presented for the first time two years ago. The indie project already shone with impressive, neon-lit environments and realistic cat animations. Stray was released on July 19, 2022 for PC, PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 5.
The Stray Launch Trailer:
Cyberpunk cat
“Stray” is above all a puzzle game with a very dense atmosphere. At the beginning of the game, you lose sight of your cat family and crash into an unknown world populated by humanoid robots. Now it’s time to explore the secrets of this strange environment and at the same time find a way back to his family.
A cat’s options are limited. First and foremost, you walk through the narrow alleys and packed rooms of “Stray”, you can pick up small things with your mouth and overcome many an obstacle with subtle scratching movements. The greatest strength of the cat, however, is its jumping ability, with which one can also go to higher levels in the area. This is how you jump from tin roof to tin roof, from an external air conditioner to the next small ledge. Timing or dexterity is not important, as you can only jump to certain places and the jump will then be carried out automatically as soon as you have pressed the right button.
Equipped with these possibilities, you slowly but surely get to know the world better and after a short time you meet B12, a small robot who will help us to communicate with the inhabitants of the city in the future – they are also only robots. In this way, you gradually learn about the history of the city, why there are no longer any people, and how barter deals are carried out in this world. The puzzles of the game contain not only small jump passages and quests but also the finding of certain objects, which, by passing them on to the right person, brings the goal of the game a little closer.
A little bit of action
Most of the time, the game, which is mostly linear and only rarely opens up to larger surroundings, runs very smoothly. You have time to explore and find the next piece of the puzzle. Only occasionally do adversaries appear, which it is better to escape from before they pull the skin over your ears. It’s only later in the game that you learn how to effectively stand in the way of these “Zurks”. Both these somewhat more stressful interludes and the rest of the game are accompanied by wonderful, mysterious-sounding tones that quickly draw you into the dystopian world.
You can’t fault the game visually either. The manageable length of a maximum of six to eight hours, the lack of elaborate cutscenes, and some graphic errors don’t let you completely forget the indie roots, but the game easily makes up for that with the dense atmosphere and shows how little it sometimes takes to create such to create a mood.
Conclusion
“Stray” has become a wonderful experience that cat fans in particular will quickly pick up. The loving animations, even if the animal curls up in some places for a short nap, are adorable. The game itself is sufficiently interesting that you want to know how the mysterious story ends.
If you consider the very long development time of almost six years, you might have expected a somewhat more complex game, but given the very small team, you shouldn’t be impertinent either. Instead, as a player, you can enjoy the fact that the developers have apparently been given enough time for their heart project.
Extra and Premium customers of the Playstation Plus subscription can happily clap their cat’s paws because the game will be included in the subscription offer. The game is also available on Steam for PC players.
Buy it on Steam
Buy it on Playstation
Written by Jacqueline Beckmann
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