Stray is a difficult game to review. I was recently asked by a friend if they should pick it up, to which I responded “Yeah, it’s worth playing”, and while I feel that’s true, other factors come into play that perhaps change that statement. It’s a well-crafted game, well worth experiencing for yourself, however, given that it’s priced between £20-30, along with its rather short 6-hour playtime, there are some considerations to be made. So to change my response from earlier, I’d say read my review on it and decide for yourself, and here it is now!

Set in a dystopian future where the only remnants of humanity are the robots and architecture left behind, Stray explores the desolate Walled City 99, as you view the beautifully ruined cityscape from the unique perspective of a cat. Climbing atop roofs, sneaking into buildings through windows, and stopping every once in a while to have a nap or scratch a door, the game manages to translate these well-known, real-world cat-isms into easily controllable movements, so much so that users even voted Stray the award for “Most Innovative Gameplay”, at the 2022 Steam awards.

Well, I wouldn’t go that far. Yes, exploring the slums and sewers as a four-legged furball is definitely a unique and fun concept for a game, but it plays a bit too familiar to call groundbreaking. Also, a lot of the time when I want to explore, I’ll have to retrace my steps because not everything that looks climbable actually is, and when you realise that perhaps the world isn’t as freely explorable as you might have hoped, the novelty of walking around and occasionally jumping to or from something, while not stale, doesn’t result in anything mind-blowing.

I think perhaps my issue with the simple nature of controlling Stray’s cat-agonist stems from the rather dull opening 30 minutes. Before any characters are met, or anything can be truly discovered, you’re simply climbing around and avoiding some enemies, in a pretty nondescript area of the game, which at the time, made me a bit worried for Stray’s overall quality as a complete experience. Luckily, it does improve significantly from that point, but the underwhelming introduction to the world of Stray perhaps tainted my view on the novelty of moving around as a little furry guy.

The gears truly start turning once you’re introduced to the game’s primary mouthpiece, an AI named B-12 (LIKE THE DEVELOPERS) whose goal to discover lost memories quickly replaces the game’s loose narrative focus of returning to your cat family, as the clues and returning thoughts B-12 elaborates on are genuinely intriguing moments. Perhaps the opening was intentionally sparse to amp up the enjoyment of interacting with the AI and chatting with them, as once you’ve met B-12, along with the slum-dwelling robots, the game’s personality becomes a lot more apparent.

Once you’ve arrived at the first robot settlement, the game becomes a joy to behold, with plenty of characters to observe and interact with. On top of the main focus of leaving the city, you can complete smaller tasks to collect badges, one of which involves collecting sheet music for a musician, whose tunes warrant a separate acoustic soundtrack release which I would definitely buy. This first settlement, along with the later 3 robot-inhabited areas, are vibrant hubs of post-human activity and is where Stray truly shines. While the largest of them is still a rather contained area, it’s so well-designed, and with incredible detail that it truly feels like a world lived in. 

The humour that’s infused into the game’s dialogue is what shapes the world’s personality the most for me, with how the robots interact with each other and mimic human behaviour in an often comical way. The game is also full of pop-culture references, with more obvious influences like Back to the Future and Daft Punk almost acting as a time capsule of human influence. My favourite instances of these however are the several instantly recognisable lines from Skyrim, as well as references to Persona 5’s Sojiro, which I love to see. It made me like the developers more when they dropped Glados voice lines into Cyberpunk, and the same goes here too, so I guess I’m just a sucker for that kind of thing.

The spaces between settlements are feared by the robots, as metal-eating bacterial mutants known as Zurks patrol the overgrown fleshy back alleys and sewers of City 99. These speedy little bastards answer the question no one asked, that being, “What if Half-Life’s Headcrabs were cute?”, as the design mirrors the aforementioned crabs heavily, other than the Zurk’s adorable sounds and single eyeball. The sections that feature these guys are great, as they provide intense chase scenarios, without sacrificing the uniquely playful way that the game portrays a post-apocalyptic landscape.

The slower-paced city exploration and intertwined Zurk chase sequences later also gain a third gameplay style in the form of stealth-oriented sections, which of course it does because this is a modern video game. Infiltrating a factory and escaping jail are cool scenarios and provide different settings to explore, with some character interactions sprinkled in that creatively utilise your role as a foot-tall feline. That being said, I think I’m just a bit tired of stealth sections in every single game I play, and thankfully, there isn’t too much of it in the short run time of the game, so it doesn’t quite reach the levels of tedium that it perhaps could have.

The overall package of Stray isn’t the most ideal by any means, but the awards and attention it gathered this year were truly deserved. It’s a short yet unique experience that, once it’s found its footing, is truly engaging. While the story of ascending the city isn’t an imperative one, it’s the interactions with B-12, the various Robot allies like Clementine, Seamus and Doc, along with the enticing nature of the broken world, that keep the game interesting. The price surely reflects the quality of the game, but with the length being shorter than perhaps I and many others were hoping for, it’s the first game I’ve reviewed that I’d strongly consider waiting to be on sale before buying.