Game Review: Stray

One thing I’m always on the lookout for when playing video games is new and unique experiences. Variety is the spice of life as they say and there’s a plethora of video games out there which offer some very distinct experiences when compared to other games. Stray for example is one such game that on the surface can come off as a simple game in which you play as small cat who wanders around; however, under that initial layer is a world and story filled with quality and nuance which offers players something for more complex to think about when you reach the end of it’s runtime.  

Stray was developed by a small studio based out in southern France called BlueTwelve Studio and published by Annapurna Interactive. It follows a ginger stray cat who ends up split up from its family of other cats while traversing the outer walls of an enclosed city. The cat ends up falling into the underbelly of the enclosed city in which it comes to learn this city is infested with a swarm of creatures known as the Zurk. In the areas which aren’t infested the cat comes across the city’s inhabitants who all happen to be robots. Along the way you’ll meet a bunch of friendly characters one such including an AI companion who will serve as your translator and technical support to help deal with bigger problems a cat can’t. There’s an underlying mystery behind what happened to the city and its human inhabitants which the game tasks you with finding out as you endeavour to navigate the higher levels of the city and escape to the outer world.   

The story of this game is told in an interesting way. As you play a small animal who doesn’t have the ability to talk or influence interactions in the most conventional of ways, the narrative has to be expressed through the world around you. I like the idea you are witnessing this world and its deep story unfold through the lens of a simple cat. It’s stakes and dramatic revelations are heavy all the same but being a cat allows you to interpret it from a far different perspective.  It puts more responsibility on the world to be able to tell a story from a more visual level rather than rely on dialogue. On that note; the world itself does a fantastic job in projecting a clear narrative that the player can follow. It’s a world teeming with a lot of beauty as well as tragedy and it is easy to piece together the clues which are smartly layered throughout the runtime to determine the sad truth that lingers behind this enclosed city. I think being made to see this world as a cat helps its scale and depth feel way larger as well. You’re so small and the world towers over you to make you feel like a miniscule witness at times. That scale helps you soak in the storytelling even more, especially when you are given opportunities to influence this world towards a larger potential future. 

What helps the world building to be delivered so well in this game can be found within its visuals. There’s a serious amount of detail littered across every single environment and character model across this game. As I noted you are a small component of this environment, so the fact this game is able to shower you with an impressive amount of visual fidelity is noteworthy. The way reflections and light bounce off surfaces to imbue the scenery with a great sense of depth gives this game a really distinct tone and feel. I love the overall design behind the robots that inhabit the enclosed city. They all feel unique in their own rights and despite being robotic frames, they each have designs which help individualise them and make them all stand apart from one another. Their charming and endearing designs helps balance the games overarching dystopian tone both visually and thematically as well.  Even the cat itself feels beautifully animated and realised. The way it moves and reacts to situations is so realistic in the way actual cats behave, I don’t doubt the developers took their time ensuring the mannerisms and posture of the cat were as accurate as possible and that hasn’t gone unnoticed. 

While the story and its visuals feel incredibly realised, I find myself struggling to land on how to feel about the title’s actual gameplay. I appreciate the gameplay offerings of the game are limited by the scope of it’s set up; I mean you are a cat after all. You’re not going to be able to get much combat out of the game and instead are expected to navigate and sneak around dangers as apposed to confronting them. I appreciate that this was as much as you can really do when your main character is a cat, but I can’t help but feel there’s a lacking aspect behind the gameplay even still. I wish there were more options to influence the environment around you. The game gives you small glimpses of this potential when it pops you in large scale districts within the city and let’s you run loose and help the robots in side missions, but these elements are few and far between with the remaining chapters offering a more linear focus. This isn’t a bad thing however, because its linear chapters are still meticulously built and designed for you to overcome; I just wish there was a more notable balance between these open hubs and the linear sections.

I think Stray is a far more impressive game than a lot of us were expecting it to be. Going back to my original point in the opening part of this review; this game can come off as a rather simple experience when you look at it from a surface level perspective. What I and many others probably didn’t expect though was to find a world and story beneath that layer that offers so much depth to get invested in. This dystopian world is beautifully realised and being able to explore it all as a small, intrepid cat makes soaking up all it’s complexity and nuance so much more unique. You will come to Stray for the cute cat but by the end of your playthrough you will have experienced something truly introspective and though-provoking; that to me is the true success of this game.