Trapped in a robot-occupied city, play as a cat trying to find its way home with the help from a smaller robot companion with missing links to its past. Jump, run, climb and meow in this third-person environmental puzzle solver.

Fur-miliar Gameplay

Stray does a number of things very well, and in other spaces they allow those aspects to shine while letting other ones be more simplistic for the sake of storytelling. The gameplay is one of those things. While it does introduce interesting and varied mechanics, like the various cat-like activities such as clawing furniture and knocking items from shelves, it doesn’t find ways to innovate or evolve gameplay as it progresses. What you will find yourself doing quite often is jumping. However awkward it might be to position yourself just right beneath ledges and book stacks, it only serves to facilitate the vertical level design that makes exploring the city quite fun.

The structure of gameplay is linear but tricks you into thinking it’s not by how it introduces the player to these pseudo-open world areas that still give the player something to explore. There are no quest logs or floating symbols telling the player where to go, yet the world isn’t dense enough for the players to get lost. The balance is there, but the content does seem lacking in areas that could have used more depth. Like the Antvillage, with a very unique design and significant characters that sort of just show you the way out.

There is a time, however, where a mechanic that was built up in the story for a significant time prior to obtaining it, is removed from the player and doesn’t return. Or a mechanic introduced early on is only used once. It left me feeling disappointed knowing those mechanics could have been opportunities to vary the gameplay during stressful moments other than sneaking, running and jumping. Opportunities like sprinting into a dark corridor running away from Zurks and having to remember to turn on your flashlight, or using the Defluxor to read hidden messages on walls.

A Paw-sitive Relationship Between Player and Story

The way the game progresses through and introduces the story to the player is quite unique. The interactions between B-12 and the cat feels reminiscent of a reverse Trico and the boy from The Last Guardian. B-12 is the main propelling force of the narrative and the cat follows along in order to find its way back home and to its family. This allows the player to infer the cat’s relationship to the narrative and characters in a way that compels them to learn about the world and help the people in it while not being tied down to its fate. Aside from what the player learns from talking to one of the many characters, the environmental storytelling is very effective, such as signs along doors that read “human personnel only” despite there being no humans around, as well as the street art made by the robots that reveal their relationships to humans and the area of the city they find themselves in. This allows the player to use context to fill in story details that otherwise isn’t overly explained in dialogue, which made me feel more connected to the city and its inhabitants.

The story is very post-apocalyptic, but doesn’t contain many cliches, and the ones that shine aren’t featured in the story in any significant way. The environment still feels malleable, and lived in. It’s abandoned in some ways yet full of life in others, and the protagonist makes changes to the story and characters in small ways as well as big. You don’t have to wait until the end to feel a sense of accomplishment. B-12 also doesn’t follow along the cliche robot companion trope and is probably one of the coolest companions among those in similar games. The memory mechanic for B-12 also mimics the way the cat/player interacts with the story. There are many small memories that can give you clues as to the robots and areas of the city, and a few more significant memories that work both as chapter titles and clues to the overall mystery. The game also finds ways to add personality to an otherwise completely average cat with lots of very cute scenes, like when it simply lays down after having the backpack placed on it, or prompts that allow the cat to jump up on a sleeping robot and take a catnap.

However, the most criminal thing the story does is end just as you’re truly invested. My playthrough was very short, roughly 6 hours long. Even though it does feel like a completed story, as I was nearing the end (which doesn’t sneak up on you, it’s apparent by the time you near it) I was starting to feel bummed out that this cat and B-12 weren’t going to solve more mysteries and knock paint off of shelves. For now, I will say that if you’re looking for a new narrative heavy game with loads of cute cat mechanics, then the $30 price tag is just about worth it. However, I recommend that you wait for a sale.

Vibrant Pur-sonalities

Blue12 Studios (see what they did there?) did a wonderful job with the character design, in both the main protagonists as well as the various robotic companions they meet along the way. It’s inspiring to see how diverse they can make very similarly shaped entities in both how they appear and in voicing their personalities. Despite lacking voice actors they seem to each have a unique voice both literally as well as linguistically. They talk at different speeds, use different slang, and sometimes shift entirely robotic. This helps the player differentiate the robots as well as maintain interest when meeting new ones. It doesn’t feel like i’m asking robot #13 where the lady in the picture is, it feels like I’m asking Mike, the hairdresser who likes to make conversation.

In terms of level design, the size of the protagonist helped allow the world to feel realistic. In other games with a human sized protagonist; hallways have to be wider, doors need to be taller and stairwells extra long so that the player isn’t annoyed by bumping into the environment and ineffectively maneuvering the camera. In Stray, your small size lets the world return to its natural dimensions. Bars feel crowded, alleyways are stick thin and living spaces are cramped, but the player is still able to maneuver these spaces with ease.

However, the graphics aren’t as impressive when you take a close look. The cat, for one, looks underdeveloped and flat. You mostly notice this during cutscenes, when you see the thing blink like an animatronic and clean its noticeably absent fur. Aside from this, and the notably clippy animations, there were plenty of screenshot worthy moments during my playthrough.

Overall Stray definitely has enough content to make you happy, but not enough to really keep you invested. There is a lot to love in the characters and gameplay but it stops just short of amazing. Maybe in the next few months, or even next year, we can see some form of DLC in the style of Little Nightmares, so that we can continue to explore the city and meet its inhabitants.

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Final Review: 4 out of 5 stars