Stray rewards you for mashing the meow button, which more games should do

polygon.com:

When I saw the announcement for Stray— a game where you play as a stray cat in a dystopian world —I was immediately sucked in. I love cats. I also can’t ever own a cat (unless I want to get hives and possibly stop breathing, which isn’t ideal for taking care of a cat). I’ve lived the vicarious cat-loving life by liking TikToks, glimpsing my co-workers’ cats via Zoom, and also meowing really loudly with my mouth at the cat that lives in the alley behind my apartment.

Playing Stray, I noticed the game really accurately* nails an important element of being a cat. It was the part where the cat meows. Vaulting through Stray’s beautifully dystopian world prompts chitters, chirps, and mews. Often, you’re meowing in response to stimuli, but sometimes it’s at the game’s humanoid robots, who are very confused about it because they think the outside world doesn’t exist and have never seen a feline. The obvious solution is to school these robots by meowing as much as humanly— erm, catly possible. The game makes it easy: You can hit Circle and meow anytime. This is how I earned the “A Little Chatty” trophy (on Steam, it’s an achievement) for meowing 100 times. I got the trophy within 20 minutes.

I was in the top percentile of meowers, and that only stoked the fire. This is a good amount of meowing, I thought to myself as I solved the game’s environmental puzzles. Let’s meow some more.

Here’s the thing: It’s not just one meow, it’s a whole array of them. There are long attention-seeking meows, playful little chirps, and sometimes even a gruff little snarl. I have no idea how many different types there are, because I was too busy cycling through them over and over again. But I can confirm the answer to this boiling question: Are the