In July 2022, the indie game Stray released for Playstation 4 and 5 and immediately garnered critical acclaim for its unique concept, smooth gameplay, and terrific art design. BlueTwelve Studio developed the single-player, third-person action-adventure on the Unreal Engine 4.
Annapurna Interactive released the game for PlayStation and Windows simultaneously — making it not a PlayStation exclusive, but a multi-platform indie hit that broke Annapurna Interactive’s record for concurrent Steam players upon release (62,000). In addition, the game was the most-downloaded PlayStation 4 and 5 title in North America during the month of release.
What is Stray about?
In Stray, you play as — what else? — a stray cat that leaps across platforms, climbs up obstacles, and opens new paths by solving environmental puzzles. You can also sleep, meow, and nuzzle NPCs. However, significantly less adorable is the world around you, which approximates a cyberpunk Blade Runner aesthetic as you make your way through a walled city filled with robots, machines, and mutant bacteria. You at least have a drone companion, B-12, to help you on your journey, but you’ll still be terrified when masses of one-eyed microbes begin chasing you through neon-lit alleys.
But in between the action, you basically get to be a real cat, swiping things off ledges that you’ll need a few floors below and pawing at vending machines until you get a reaction. And it turns out that real cats love this game as much as players, as myriad videos of felines watching Stray went viral after its release. You can check out one below:
Will Stray be available for any other platform?
Yes, and it’s sooner than you think: Stray will be launching for the Xbox One and the Xbox Series X/S on Aug. 10, 2023.
That means by the end of the week, Xbox owners should be uploading videos of their own fluffy companions stanning the heck out of this unique game. And in this era of divisive politics and couples breaking up over Barbie, we all need something to unite behind. (In this case, cats on their pinchable little haunches staring at a video game and perhaps wondering why they don’t have their own cute backpack and drone to help them on their adventures into your highest kitchen cupboard.)
Meanwhile, a fourth version of Stray is in development for macOS, meaning that, eventually, the game will be on every system imaginable — so there’s no excuse for not playing it. What are you waiting for? Cat got your thumbs?