Stray (video game)

Stray is a 2022 adventure game developed by BlueTwelve Studio and published by Annapurna Interactive. The story follows a stray cat who falls into a walled city populated by robots, machines, and mutant bacteria; the cat sets out to return to the surface with the help of a drone companion, B-12. The game is presented through a third-person perspective. The player traverses the game world by leaping across platforms and climbing up obstacles, and can interact with the environment to open new paths. Using B-12, they can store items found throughout the world and hack technology to solve puzzles. Throughout the game, the player must evade the antagonistic Zurks and Sentinels, which attempt to kill them. Development began in 2015, led by BlueTwelve Studio founders Koola and Viv, who wanted to pursue an independent project after working at Ubisoft Montpellier. Stray's aesthetics were influenced by Kowloon Walled City, which the developers felt could be appropriately explored by a cat. The gameplay was inspired by the developers' cats, Murtaugh and Riggs, and the team studied images and videos of cats for research. They found playing as a cat led to interesting level design opportunities, though they encountered challenges in balancing design and gameplay. The decision to populate the world with robot characters further influenced the narrative and backstory. Stray was announced in 2020 and became highly anticipated. It was released for the PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, and Windows in July 2022, Xbox One and Xbox Series X/S in August 2023, macOS in December 2023, Nintendo Switch in November 2024, and Nintendo Switch 2 in May 2026. It received generally positive reviews, with praise for its artistic design, cat gameplay, narrative, original score, and platforming elements, though critics were divided on the combat and stealth sequences. Stray received accolades at the Game Awards, Game Developers Choice Awards, and Golden Joystick Awards, and appeared on multiple publications' year-end lists. An animated film adaptation is in development.

Gameplay

Stray is an adventure game played by a single player in a third-person perspective. The player controls a stray cat, who can leap across platforms, climb up obstacles, and open new paths by interacting with the environment, such as clawing at objects, climbing in buckets, overturning paint cans, and operating a vending machine. The narrative progresses by solving puzzles, often involving moving obstacles. Optional activities include sleeping, meowing, and nuzzling up to non-player characters, most of which elicit a response. Some levels have open-world elements, allowing the player to roam freely. The player is accompanied by a drone companion, B-12, who assists by translating the language of other characters, storing items found throughout the world, providing light, and hacking into various technologies to open paths and solve puzzles. Throughout the game, the player finds several of B-12's memories, providing more context for the story. Most of these memories are optional, but some are unlocked through story progression. The player can collect badges, including several optional throughout the world, which are displayed on the cat's backpack. The world is populated by robots, who often employ the player to locate objects that reveal more information and progress the narrative. Some robots provide optional tasks, such as Morusque, who plays songs upon being provided with music sheets found around the slums. The player can interact with most robots in the world. Stray features two types of enemies who can kill the player: Zurks, a large, mutated bacteria that can swarm and devour the cat; and Sentinels, security drones who will attempt to shoot the player upon spotting them. For a portion of the game, the player can attach a Defluxor to B-12 to destroy the Zurks, though it can only be used for a limited time before B-12 overheats and requires a brief period to cool down. The player can evade Sentinels by avoiding their sight lines, indicated by glowing lights.

Plot When a group of four stray cats trek through the ruins of an abandoned facility, one falls into a chasm leading to an unpopulated underground city, and is separated. The cat finds a lab where it helps download an artificial intelligence into the body of a small drone, which calls itself B-12. It explains it previously helped a scientist but much of its memory was corrupted and needs time to recover. B-12 promises to help the cat return to the surface and accompanies it further into the city. As they travel farther, the pair discover that, while the city is completely devoid of human life, their robotic servants, known as Companions, remain. With humans absent, the Companions have grown self-aware and have built their own society among the ruins of the city, but they likewise are trapped underground. The ruins are infested with Zurks, mutant bacteria that have evolved to devour both organic life and robots. The pair meet Momo, a member of the Outsiders, a group of Companions dedicated to finding a way to the surface. The Outsiders help the cat and B-12 proceed to the Midtown sector of the city. There, they locate Clementine, another Outsider who plans to steal an atomic battery to power a subway train leading to the surface. The trio are caught and arrested by the Sentinels, but the cat helps them all escape prison. Clementine stays behind to distract the Sentinels while the cat and B-12 escape on the subway, which takes them to the city control center. B-12 finally recovers all of its memories. It reveals that it was originally a human scientist who attempted to upload their own consciousness into a robot body, but the process went awry until the cat arrived. B-12 remembers that the city, Walled City 99, was built to shelter humanity from a catastrophe on the surface, but a plague eventually wiped out the entire human population. Realising humanity's legacy now lies with the Companions and the cat, B-12 sacrifices itself to override the city's network. This opens the blast doors over the city, exposing it to sunlight which kills the Zurks and deactivates the Sentinels. With the main exit unsealed, the cat leaves the city and reaches the surface, sniffing the air. As the cat leaves, a screen near the exit flickers and activates.

Development

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