Before Annapurna started branding itself as the publisher for the weird and wonderful world of experimental indie titles they really had a hard time breaking through to mainstream. To be sure, thing like Steam Early Access, Itch.io and other platforms provided platforms for these titles, but they weren’t exactly a curated experience. Annapurna then, finding success with numerous titles like this, has become a curator of left of the norm titles, ones that only need a very gentle push to go from a cult classic to a more mainstream hit. Which is what Stray is; on its own it’d be yet another indie puzzle-platformer, but given the main protagonist and it’s set in a post-apocalyptic hell hole it didn’t need much to breakthrough into the mainstream. As a game though it’s pretty middle of the road, not really breaking any new ground and staying very light on in terms of its narrative.
You’re a cat, a ginger stray, and you spend your days doing cat things with your fellow strays. You live on the outskirts of a deserted city, nature having long since begun its reclamation of the concrete monolith. As it is with cat things you one day fail at being a cat, seeing yourself fall down into the bowels of the abandoned structure, separating you from the rest of your cat buddies. It doesn’t take long for you to realise that this area might not be as abandoned as it first appears and those that still dwell within here are in need of some help from the outside.
Stray’s aesthetic is a lightly stylized, post-apocalyptic future modelled off the Kowloon Walled City. Whilst that’s interesting it doesn’t deviate too far from the typical cyberpunk visual stylings with drab buildings punctuated with garish neon and other kitschy elements. The environments are well detailed, making this a game that can be appreciated both for its wide vistas but also its smaller, tighter environments. Given this is a multi-generation release it is a little behind the game in terms of its overall graphics fidelity, but that also means performance is solid no matter where you find yourself.
Mechanically Stray is a pretty bog standard puzzle-platformer, requiring you to explore a large area to discover items, trigger events and get up to general cat mischief so you can unblock the way to the next area. I should probably put an asterisk next to the platformer element as whilst you’ll certainly be doing a lot of it you’re not really free to explore at will, your jumping and climbing abilities only available at very specific places. Whilst this does sound extremely limiting the devs have done a good job in making sure that a good portion of the world that looks explorable is, even if you’ll come across a good number of edge cases in your own playthrough. There’s some semi-open world aspects to it as well, mainly in the form of small side quests which don’t yield much in the way of rewards apart from some visual buttons on the side of your cat’s jacket.
To being with Stray’s platforming and exploration, whilst limited, is pretty enjoyable. This is all thanks to the fact that you’re a cat, and the devs have gone to great lengths to give you the opportunity to act like an asshole cat at every juncture they could think of. This includes meowing at any time you goddamn well feel like it, pushing things off shelves and generally causing mayhem by just catting around. As someone who’s had cats for many years it was kinda fun to engage in the chaos that’s been inflicted upon me and I’m sure that’s the appeal for a great deal many people who’ve bought this game.
Thing is though that starts to wear thin after a while, and you’re just left with the puzzles and the game’s narrative to keep driving things forward. The puzzles themselves aren’t exactly challenging, especially given the limitation on jumping to/from things or just interactions in general. Whilst this makes the game far, far more approachable it does mean that once the initial “YAY KITTY” stuff wears off you’re left with a very basic game that takes a good while to really do anything. It’s probably the kind of game that lends itself well to being played in short bursts over a longer period of time, but played (mostly) end to end it’s shortcomings are a lot more visible.
Which isn’t helped by the fact the narrative is very predictable and light on most things. Some characters are given a little bit of fleshing out, but it’s mostly thrown out the window when you advance to the next section. It becomes obvious early on what the game’s stakes are and what the final outcome will likely be which means most of the plot reveals from then on out aren’t so much revelations as they are just ticking boxes off in your head.
For many gamers I think Stray will hit all the points that they were wanting from it: general cat related game play, a cyberpunk environment and an extremely approachable challenge that even non-gamers would enjoy. If that’s all you wanted from something like this then all the more power to you but for me I found it somewhat lacking in certain areas that made my time with it feel more laborious than it could have been. For a first release from a new studio though it’s definitely up there in terms of quality and whilst I might be ho-hum about this particular game I am very interested to see what they come up with next.
Rating: 7.0/10
Stray is available on PC, PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 5 right now for $41.95. Game was played on the PC with a total of 4.4 hours playtime and 50% of the achievements unlocked.
