Kowloon Walled City: Exploring the City of Darkness that inspired Stray's cyberpunk world
One of the most fascinating aspects of Stray, the latest indie gaming hit that has caught everyone's attention, is the beautifully rendered walled city that is inhabited by humanoid robots. The rich and intricate explorable space has been immensely praised by both reviewers and critics for its visual aesthetic, ambience and design.
Across Stray's 12 chapters, especially The Slums and Midtown, players experience social divisions that cannot be overcome, oppression from a top-down hierarchy, acceptance of defeat and a strange sense of hope. The feline protagonist's perspective further enriches player immersion in-game.
The futuristic world of dystopia doused in cyberpunk aesthetics is not something new in the video game realm. However, Stray finds its inspiration from a well-known historical place, the memories of which are slowly getting lost to time — the Walled City of Kowloon.
During its existence, the ungoverned Kowloon Walled City was the most densely populated city on earth.
In his article titled "The Strange Saga of Kowloon Walled City", James Crawford noted that the city, with an area of around one-hundredth of a square mile, housed "350 buildings, almost all between 10 and 14 stories high, occupied by 8,500 premises, 10,700 households, and more than 33,000 residents."
Kowloon Walled City was a jungle of concrete and steel, with tall towers packed together like sardines without any sense of uniformity. The developers of Stray noted the organic nature of the erstwhile historical city. It indeed felt like a massive organism, with closely woven elements that grew like stacks on top of each other.
Wires and pipes ran all along the walls and ceilings, both vertically and horizontally. As Crawford pointed out, dripping water
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