Score: Meh

All hiss and no bite

Stray is an action/adventure/puzzle game developed by BlueTwelve Studio. You play as a cat who is trying to escape a city. The city is roughly based on Kowloon Walled City which was a real city and was noted for having the highest population density of a city ever at over 3 million people per square mile. (3,250,000/sq mi) Fortunately, the in-game city is not nearly as populated and your GPU will appreciate that.

Stray is a relatively short game. I was able to finish it in 6 hours and 2 minutes. There’s a trophy for beating it in under 2 hours. I streamed the whole thing in one sitting over on my Twitch channel and I highly recommend you check that out. I’m probably going to be speed running this game in the near future and getting all of the trophies.

Cons

If you watched the stream, then you already know my major problems with the game. Which were actually more numerous than I hoped for. Near the beginning of the game, it holds your hand a bit too much with literal signs showing you exactly where to go. Sometimes I wanted to figure something out on my own but was told the answer before I could do so which I found a little frustrating. This was only an issue at the beginning. It was fine for the rest of the game.

Secondly, there are numerous spots where you can relax and just be a cat. These are meant for fun; they’re cute and silly but if you want to get through the game, you’ll have to ignore them because there are just so many. There are literally several per room; sometimes just meters apart. However, the game forces you to do some of them in order to proceed and there’s no indication if it’s just for fun or not. This can lead to a stressful realization that you might have to check all of them but I found in general that you should only try them if you’re stuck.

Thirdly, and this might be the most bizarre game design choice I’ve ever come across, this is the first game I’ve ever played where you have to press a different button to close the last bit of dialog. To skip to the next bit of dialog it’s square but to close the last bit of dialog it’s circle. And there’s no indication that it’s the last bit. You have to check your controls in the bottom right and that just increases your cognitive load. It’s annoying. You’ll be sitting there tapping square wondering why nothing’s happening. I have no idea why they would do that.

Fourthly, there’s no skip cutscene button. It’s 2022 and the skip cutscene button is still not a standard feature. This makes replaying the game a pain.

One big omission I noticed was the lack of a photo mode. This game is very sharable. There are so many cute things the cat can do but the lack of a photo mode makes this difficult. I’d love to see a photo mode where you could change the cat’s pose and have all the standard adjustable camera settings. Hopefully, we’ll get that in a future patch.

On a minor note, the physics of the cat’s movement can be a little wonky especially when you’re walking on straight paths such as ledges or pipes but you can do donuts which more than cancels this point out. However, the physics of other objects can also be a little weird. Like if I barely tap the large pots on the edge of the roof, they still go flying. Books are rock solid until you jump off of them and then they turn into soup. And this can happen…

And one final note is that they censor curse words. If your game is going to have cursing, commit to it—don’t half-ass it! For the record, there’s only 1 curse word that I found during the main story. It’s when you meet this character which makes you think he’s a tough guy but later on he uses darn instead of damn. If you’re going to have a tough character that curses then he needs to curse. Don’t use euphemisms. Either don’t use censorship or don’t curse at all.

Pros

Storytelling

Now, I know I’ve talked a lot of shit about this game so far and that’s because I have so here are some things I like about the game.

I was pretty impressed with some spots in the storytelling. Without spoiling the game too much, there was a point where you and a Companion were trying to leave an area. But without saying a word, you signal that you can’t leave your buddy behind. This is never actually said but due to the composition, framing, timing, and all that jazz, the devs were able to speak volumes.

With that said however, the story itself wasn’t anything to write home about. You fall into the city, you escape the city, and you’re rewarded with the credits. I thought the ending itself was quite bad. There’s a tragedy at the beginning of the game and the ending could have provided some closure but it doesn’t. It was very lackluster and not something I’ll be thinking about in the next few weeks like I do with some games. But I’m used to playing games for the gameplay so it doesn’t bother me that much.

Gameplay

Speaking of gameplay, it was solid. The puzzle elements felt fun and weren’t too hard to figure out. I was able to predict far in advance the solution to some of the puzzles. I’m not going to spoil them here. I’ll do that in a future video. The difficulty of the gameplay was easy. I only died 2 times due to careless mistakes. And if their overall goal was to make you feel like a cat, they definitely succeeded. There are so many spots in this game where you can just stop and be a cat which is on brand for being a cat. There were exciting stealth sections towards the end of the game that reminded me of old school Metal Gear Solid. The mechanism for jumping to a ledge was a little finicky at times and I can see it killing some speedruns in the future but overall, I enjoyed the gameplay.

Graphics

The graphics are decent for a small studio. There was one area where the lack of shadows stuck out like a sore thumb. But for the most part, the game was really pleasant to look at. There was so much clutter that each environment felt as if it had been there for decades. It’s very dirty and gritty. It reminded me of Final Fantasy VII with all the pipes and being in an underground city. At one point, you make it to an area where no one has lived for a long time and there are robots that continually clean the place and it’s very noticeable. It contrasts heavily with the rest of the game. Also, the cat’s eyes can do this. That’s cool.

Music and Sound design

I enjoyed the atmospheric nature of the music. Sometimes it seemed a little over the top in places it shouldn’t be but overall it was a joy to listen to. You can press circle to meow and depending on the context, the meow will change. Sometimes they’ll be standard issue meows, other times, they’ll be weak and pitiful.

Conclusion

Overall, I enjoyed Stray for the gameplay but the story didn’t stand out and it left me frustrated a few times. I kept yelling to myself, “Why? Why would you do it that way?” The sections that made me want to play through it again were few and far in-between and are ruined by the lack of a skip cutscene button. So for those reasons, I give the game a meh.