Author: Rich Meister
Stray could’ve coasted and likely succeeded on gimmick alone. A game where you play as a stray cat was enough to get me and many others in the door on day one, but Stray is firing on all cylinders from the moment it starts. It would’ve been easy to phone it in on this one, and while I usually start a review by posing whether or not a game delivers on its premise, I’ll let you know ahead of time that Stray exceeds expectations at every turn.
Stray (PC, PS4, PS5[reviewed])
Developer: BlueTwelve Studio
Publisher: Annapurna Interactive
Released: July 19, 2022
MSRP: $29.99
Stray opens with you playing as an unnamed feral cat running around with a few others in an overgrown urban environment. In these first few minutes, Stray does an impeccable job getting you acquainted with its basic platforming controls while not holding your hand too firmly. In a year filled with games bogged down by slow starts, it’s notable and welcome that Stray wastes no time getting the player moving.
A botched jump sees our kitty fall into a domed underground city inhabited by androids. From there, your mission becomes clear, survive and find your way back to the surface. You befriend a small drone by the name of B12, who serves as your primary means of communication and guide.
Stray is a game about being a cat; paths for platforming are the key to maneuvering quickly and efficiently—jumping on window ledges, squeezing through the bars in a metal gate. The world feels vast and dense. Thanks in no small part to Stray’s excellent sense of scale.
The walled city of Stray is inspired by Hong Kong’s real life though no longer standing city of Kowloon, and it captures the densely packed and vertical feel of a walled city, even if it is filled with LED-faced robots rather than humans. The end result feels something like the slums of Final Fantasy VII’s Midgar if all the humans packed up and took off one day.
Stray’s main loop combines some pretty basic but inventive platforming with some item-based puzzles like old adventure games. It would seem the cat from Stray has the IQ of a decently intelligent human because he's capable of carrying out some pretty complex commands including but not limited to destroying computer servers.
While I won’t spoil major plot points here, there’s also the surprising presence of some sort of parasitic plague that lands somewhere between the Flood from Halo and Half-Life’s Headcrabs.
A few stealth sequences pop up towards the end of the game and involve attack drones that will shoot to kill when alerted. These sequences are a weird blemish, but luckily, there aren’t many of them, and you can typically move fast enough to avoid the drones and run and hide until they lose track of you.
The city's design is something to behold but wouldn’t amount to much if there wasn’t plenty to enjoy inside. Obviously, our cat doesn’t have much to say, but its relationship to B12 was honestly pretty endearing and had me welling up by the end. As you move through different city districts, you’ll encounter a ton of androids with unique looks and interesting things to say. Most of them lament what it means to be alive as these AI-run androids struggle to make art and become more human. There’s a lot of Nier Automata DNA in these themes, and while it never profoundly explores them, it's still affecting, and I formed an attachment to, more than a handful of these colorful android citizens.
Verdict: I entered Stray expecting a fun but simple platformer where you play as a cat. Instead, I got an affecting sci-fi story that delivered on its premise and then some. Stray is a breezy delightful action platformer with engaging environments, characters, and a story worth experiencing.
Buy it
[This review is based on a retail build of the game purchased by the reviewer]