I have to admit, I’m not a cat person. Don’t get me wrong, I love them, but they make my eyes itch, my nose runs, and I keep sneezing. But I’m a dog person through and through, and when I think of cats, the only two that come to mind are Pyssan, who used to hop on my lap when my friend Mikey and I were watching movies , and made me caress you. Each time it stopped, it would stop purring and dig its claws into me until they pierced my jeans, scarring me for life. And on the other side Bäbisen, who every time I visit her, watches her from behind every door, hissing like a python and digging her claws into my heels.
Do you know a dog that does this? They kill you with kisses, and the truth is I prefer kisses to Band Aids and involuntary blood loss. So I don’t want to deny that I accepted this order with a little skepticism. The idea of being able to play or talk as a cat with no boots and cool weapons made me question this game, but I remembered the time there was a Japanese businessman who stared at Shigeru Miyamoto in disbelief when he came up with the idea suggested by an Italian plumber who jumped on turtles and ate magic mushrooms. So maybe the idea of playing as a kitten isn’t that crazy… maybe it’s even genius.
The game tells the story of a street cat with no name, so I decided to call him Allan (after all, it’s always good to have a name for the character you’re yelling at while playing). It all starts when you huddle under a bridge with your little band of mouse hunters. You play with your friend’s tail, take a nap, and then wash your butt for what feels like an eternity, until it’s time to go exploring with your four-legged alter ego and his gang of long-tailed companions.
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It may take time to learn all the controls, but have you ever seen a cat in a hurry? Well, keep calm. After a while the inevitable happens, a pipe we’re climbing breaks and our cat Allan falls into a bottomless hole. After the resounding fall, I find that my entire group has disappeared. But that’s not all, I’m in a completely new place and I have no way of getting out. And here is one of the premise of the game: try to return home.
If you thought you would spend your days playing with skeins of yarn, let me tell you you were wrong. It seems that cat life is a lot more complicated than it seems, although during the game you can curl up in a ball and sleep for hours. And if I’m being honest, my kitty slept for hours just for me to have an unnecessary trophy called “Productive Day” (I couldn’t avoid it). Without realizing it, you’ll start acting like a cat: you’ll push people’s pots out the window or, why not, a can of paint on a poor person’s head, just because you feel like it. They will pull threads out of the carpets and use every spot to sharpen their claws. After spending a while trying to figure out where you are, you’ll find that someone is trying to communicate with you through the TV screens.
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Someone is in danger and our first mission is to find them. Which isn’t as difficult as she seems to have communicated, like Joyce (from Stranger Things) herself, because every time she screams, the street lights up with flickering lightbulbs and the security cameras play haywire. At the end of this light path you will find the one who will become your partner during the game: B12, a little drone that might remind you of Leia’s little red and white robot in the Obi-Wan Kenobi series. Just like you need help, B12 also badly needs a helping hand since he has lost his memory and like the two lost souls they are, they decide to join forces to solve their problems. Finding a way out and finding and unlocking B12’s memories becomes an adventure none of them will soon forget. The adventure will take us through twelve different locations, from sewer tunnels to neon-lit cities, through the slums and the dead city, and that also means the game is divided into just twelve different chapters.
Precision platform jumps don’t exist for our fearless feline, who always lands feet first. With nowhere to fall or lose his balance, Allan jumps straight to the X marker. The rhythm of the game varies in intensity, from solving puzzles without haste to rushing to try and dodge the two enemies who are in such a hurry as You will find throughout the game: the Zurks and the Sentinels. Bearing a strong resemblance to Half-Life’s headcrabs, the Zurks wreak havoc on everything in their path. Fast as the wind, they pounce on us all at once with the sole aim of turning our beloved Allan into another worthy item on their fast food menu. However, at the beginning of the game there is only one simple strategy to run away from them: run like there is no tomorrow. You can get rid of one or two with the circle button, but if more stick to you, you’ll succumb to them and have to start over at the final checkpoint.
However, you can use B12’s abilities to help throughout the story. It’s like a weapon that kills everyone in a certain radius, but with the downside that it weakens you as you charge. On the other hand, you don’t need a weapon against the Sentinels since they are drones that you just have to hide from. And in all these contrasts lies the beauty of this game. One minute you’re wandering the rooftops of one of the glittering cities solving puzzles, and the next minute you’ve got an army of electronic demons on your heels before breaking out of a prison in true ninja style. But not everything will be enemies, because throughout the story we will meet the inhabitants of different cities, but they are a little different from what we are used to. They don’t have tails or whiskers, but have a peak over their face. In the most remote cities live robots that are as forgotten and dusty as the cities they live in. And even here, B12 will prove its worth by translating everything they say, as kittens don’t speak “robot language”.
Well… pure cats don’t talk. This is a third-person adventure game that took me about twelve hours to complete, which is a short time in my opinion. But I have to admit that I’ve been running from place to place, investigating like a hound and letting my cat sleep peacefully, while in real life I’ve been doing the laundry and preparing dinner. I also know that there’s a trophy you can get if you beat the game in under two hours, so you can probably complete it in a lot less time than me.
Stray creates a very cozy atmosphere with beautiful graphics. I assure you that I really enjoyed the hours that the game lasted and I had a hard time turning it off. It’s an easy title thanks to the many opportunities for exploration, and for someone like me who loves to turn everything upside down, it gave me a lot to look at as I uncovered hidden secrets and memories. I love being surprised and this game didn’t disappoint. BlueTwelve Studio, the small French team that developed it, managed to convince me that cats can be more than just arrogant and snobbish creatures, and that they can also star in a video game, and there’s nothing to that crazy.
