Stray nails every adorable and annoying cat behavior

digitaltrends.com:

When I woke up the morning before my hands-off preview of Stray, developer BlueTwelve Studios’ game about a feline hero wandering a city, I was immediately greeted by my own cat, Mirah. She hopped up onto my bed and curled up right on my chest, as has become one of her new habits in recent months. In the hour leading up to the preview, she’d run through her usual morning routine, like hopping up on the side of the tub when I finished showering and trying to lick the water. When I finally sat down at my desk and logged into the event, she slunk underneath my legs and fell asleep on my Wi-Fi router.

Cats can be absolute weirdos. Each one has their own set of quirks that can be puzzling, infuriating, or downright adorable. Stray looks to capture and embrace all those little ticks via an adventure game that’s cleverly built around some familiar behaviors. Based on the demo I saw, Stray looks like it’ll do for cats what Untitled Goose Game did for geese — just replace the honk button with a meow button.

In Stray, players control a precious orange cat who freely roams a futuristic city filled with robots. The slam-dunk premise was inspired by Hong Kong, a city that the game’s creators felt was a perfect playground for cats thanks to all of its nooks and crannies. That idea ballooned into a full-blown adventure game where a stray animal freely explores a city with the help of a drone friend that can translate robot speak and hold items.

A wide range of feline behaviors have been adapted into gameplay here, with some quirks proving to be useful for puzzles and exploration. Like any good (or bad) cat, Stray’s hero can knock things over whether they have a good reason to or not. In one scenario I saw, that proved quite useful. The