Stray Review – Meow Simulator

Ever since Stray was introduced in 2020 by PlayStation, I knew I had to play this game. I am a big cat lover, and being able to play a video game about being a cat is definitely an experience I wanted to try. The only other one I played in recent memory was Catlateral Damage, back in 2015. Will Stray be the GOTY of 2022 amidst such giants as Xenoblade Chronicles 3 and Elden Ring? Let’s find out!

Game Name: Stray
Platform(s): PS5 (Reviewed), PS4, PC
Publisher(s):  Annapurna Interactive
Developer(s): BlueTwelve Studio
Release Date: July 19th, 2022
Price: $29.99

In Stray, you follow a cat learning the basic controls of being a cat by following its family. After a jump goes wrong and a pipe break occurs, this unlucky cat plummets underground, far away from its family. You discover yourself at what appears to be some kind of disaster shelter populated by robots and by what is called Zurks. Zurks appear to be some organisms that want to eat everything in sight, including the cat you play with, which doesn’t bode well for you.

Now that we’ve established that you’re now a four-legged feline, your goal is to reunite with your family. Any way that you can.

Everybody Wants to be a Cat

Starting this game off, I noticed only one thing I disliked with the control scheme, as there is no jump button. You press the interact button on places you can jump to, and then the cat jumps. It’s quite frustrating at times. However, everything else is smooth; Walking, running, steering the cat. The movement itself is very buttery smooth. Though maybe it is too smooth as an actual cat, as they tend to run into walls all the time when they run.

A lot of this game is more or less finding things for robots to further the story. Sometimes they will have you find notebooks, batteries, or other things that help the robots get the cat to a new location. There are also robots who want to go outside of the shelter, but it will take a lot of work since you have to dodge and weave through Zurks and janky moments where the interact button won’t show up for you to jump. Again, the lack of a jump button is super frustrating.

Though, the best part of this game is all you get to do in the engine this game is made on. You can climb to a lot of places, knock off bottles and boxes from high places, cuddle with robots, trip robots, sleep anywhere that has a bed, and scratch a great variety of things. Things that cats simply love to do. Heck, in one instance, you need to scratch on the door to get a robot to open the door for you. I did this multiple times just to replicate my cat scratching to go outside and then wanting to come back inside almost immediately. The robot didn’t even mind; it just kept opening and closing the door.

Honestly, I am glad this game is on PC because it has a lot of potential for sandbox mods. The game itself is really fun, but it is also really short. One thing I do want to note control scheme-wise, there is a dedicated meow button. The meows are actual cat meows rather than stock sounds from the internet too. It is fantastic!

Purrfect

Stray has such a mood in the music, the atmosphere, and the aesthetics. It is all about it being an apocalyptic world. Even with that apocalyptic mood, it still has some really engaging music and changes for each area you explore. Each new area also has new sets of collectibles or memories. When you meet a drone robot with amnesia, instantly, that robot attaches itself to the cat.

Throughout the game, you find memories of the robot in murals, books, and information surrounding the locations you get to be a cat. These memories are where most of the lore and worldbuilding occur. Honestly, for a game about being a cat, there is quite a bit of depth to this world and the societies you get to see.

This review would be incomplete if I didn’t mention Stray’s fantastic take on adapted triggers and haptic feedback. When you scratch up a couch, the triggers make it a little more difficult and go tense. Thus, it makes it engaging to scratch things throughout the game. You are really getting the scratching workout with that feature. Thanks to the haptic feedback, you’ll also feel every time the cat purrs, making it much more adorable when you cuddle with a robot and purr next to it. The purring feels almost exactly like when you pet a purring cat. They went all in on the Dualsense control schemes, which makes me happy to see some added value from the controller.

Small and Cuddly

Overall this game isn’t a huge step of progress in the game development industry unless you count cat physics and cat voice acting as a new industry standard. Stray is also relatively short, as it takes five hours of playtime just to finish the game. Of course, you can extend that by just doing cat stuff as I did and having it be 7 hours of game time before I hit the credits. Be prepared to feel a lot of warm and fuzzy feelings with maybe some moments of emotional sadness.

I highly recommend everyone to play this game either way just because it is a very satisfying game to complete. The only big issue I had was the lack of a jump button, and the interact button wouldn’t always work when trying to do jumps. If you don’t want to drop the $30 now to play it, you can subscribe to PlayStation Plus Extra to be able to play it for cheaper.

Stray is available on PS4, PS5, and PC.

Review Disclosure Statement: Stray was provided to us by Being a PlayStation Plus Extra Tier member. For more information on how we review video games and other media/technology, please review our Review Guideline/Scoring Policy for more info.

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