I’ve walked through crumbling cyberpunk cities like these many times before, with their ubiquitous neon signs and dirty streets, their dirty verticality. I’m usually expected to shoot someone. But this time I’m sneaking through the fluorescent-lit slums of the future like a skinny ginger cat, crawling up rusty pipes, peeking through barely open windows and stomping on corrugated iron roofs. The robots that have lived here alone for countless decades have never seen anything like me before, yet they still feel compelled to pet me when I rub against their thin metal legs. I am a wild, mysterious, perfect being in a broken world.
Stray is a prime example of how a change in perspective can bring a fictional setting we’re used to to life. Post-apocalyptic narratives have been done to death lately, but this one feels interesting because we’re experiencing it from such an unusual perspective. Accompanied by a drone that acts as a translator between the robots, the cat and the player, we make our way through a city isolated from the world, trying to get outside where we belong. Stray sounds like a shallow meme – it’s a cyberpunk cat game! – but the setting and the story have substance, and in the end I honestly found it quite exciting. Perhaps the most unlikely aspect of the whole setup is that a cat would actually be that useful.
I had little trouble with any of Stray’s puzzles or challenges, but that may be because I grew up on a mix of 3D platformers and point-and-click adventures in the 90s, and Stray is a mix of those two genres. You find routes up buildings, jump over gaps, and carefully sneak past danger, while also fetching keys, talking (via drone) to robots, and inventing uses for trinkets you come across. You can slow down and take your time exploring, and I wish I’d done more of that – there aren’t too many secret things to find in each area, but what there is is worth it, unlocking intriguing information about what took place in this long… abandoned place.
Stray was apparently created by cat people. Of course there is. The cat is brilliantly lifelike, with its tiny twitching ears, its purrs and purrs (which vibrate adorably through the controller), the way it goes from soft pouting to carelessly crouching to trotting. Near the start of the game, she dons a bib and spends the first few minutes flailing around in a state of outraged confusion that will be familiar to anyone who’s ever thoughtlessly attempted to dress a kitten in a Halloween costume. My perpetual subtask while playing Stray was finding cozy little spots to curl up in for a nap; there are such stains everywhere, on the pillows, in the corners, on the bookshelves, on the belly of a lying robot. There’s no point in doing this since the game doesn’t specifically reward you for it. It also doesn’t reward you for digging your nails into every tempting piece of fabric you see, or deliberately knocking things off the shelves with a little probing paw, but I’ve done that too. I just enjoyed being a cat.
The robots are also unexpectedly distinctive with their emoticon faces and impressive animation. It’s a stunning-looking game, whether you’re watching from the ground or the rooftops – I won’t spoil the cat’s journey, but the developer squeezes plenty of novelty and some impressively creepy moments out of this gated city into the seven hours it takes to play through. It’s certainly far from twee, with the possible exception of elevators with buckets you can drop from the roofs, paws and ears all sticking out of the top – and they’re so cute they’re instantly forgivable.
We may literally control the cat in Stray, but figuratively speaking, there is always some distance between us and the creature. As players, we eagerly gather information from the non-humans we meet and the places we visit, trying to figure out what to do next – but the cat is just doing its job, being curious, trying to survive. By placing this magnetic yet unknowable creature of nature in a tightly controlled, man-made sci-fi dystopia, Stray emphasizes something that every cat person already knows: you can never truly tame a cat. There is always something a little wild about them and they carry that wildness wherever they go.
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