Stray Teases Clever Cat Gameplay in a Beautiful World

ign.com:

I was enamored with Stray from the moment I joined a recent hands-off preview of over 30 minutes of BlueTwelve’s upcoming cat adventure. Idling on screen before the demo began, Stray’s pro-cat-onist sat waiting for the player, pawing at something in the air, stretching out to get comfy, and, well, generally behaving like a cat.

Thankfully, the demo showed me more than just a snoozing cat, though I did see more of that later, too, and I’m quite intrigued by the impressive world on display, and the many surprising ways BlueTwelve has made playing as a cat look so fun. More importantly, it showcased a beautifully designed world and some inventive ways to incorporate a cat’s behavior into gameplay. The developers are keeping silent on much of the story players can expect, but the many slices of life I saw promised a potentially cat-tacularly good time.

Stray starts from a relatively simple premise, but finds ingenuity in how strange it actually is the moment you start exploring it. It’s an adventure game through a cyberpunk world where you play as an unnamed cat, having fallen into this unfamiliar cybercity full of robot citizens. As the unnamed cat protagonist, you’ll explore the world, try to understand and find your way through it to reunite with family, and perhaps help some robots along the way.

Exploration is a big part of what you’ll be doing in Stray, whether it’s through more authored locations, pushing you along the main path or forcing you to outrun trouble, or via wider hubs that will slow down the pace a bit to really let you immerse yourself in the world.

Something quite striking about all this, especially if you’ve seen any footage of Stray, is that you’ll see its main cat hopping around the world, up and down