Stray Review

One of the most highly anticipated games of 2022, this cyberpunk game about a cat took the world by storm. Ranking in with over 100.000 overwhelmingly positive score on Steam this game follows an orange feline, who got lost from his group. Climbing through the dead human world across pipes and other debree, our orange hero falls down whilst crossing with it’s friends. Being lost and alone, it seeks to find a way back. Tracking through a city devoid of life, it finds an old lab where we help a computer download itself down into a drone – B-12. The drone explains to us that it used to help a scientist, but it suffers from memory loss due to a corrupted memory. B-12 promises us to help us back to our friends, and tracks along with us during our explorations.

Tracking through the city where once humans lived, they discover that the only remaining citizens are the robots that used to serve them. These robots have thus built their own society having lost their human counterparts, and are living their own lives. Due to an infestation of Zurks (a mutant, that has evolved to eat both organic matter and robots) our robot friends are trapped underground with no way out of their city. Visiting the robot city, we meet Momo, a robot belonging to the Oursiders. Momo, and the other Outsiders, are working on finding a way to the surface, out of the sunless world they are living in.

With the help from Momo, our feline and droid tracks on from the slum quarter, and moves on to Midtown, a somewhat finer part of our robotic city. Here they meet Clementine, another Outsider. Clementine has a plan, wanting to steal a nuclear battery in order to power a subway, that should be able to take them to the surface. Being the helpful critter we are, we set off to liberaite said battery, but are caught by the Sentinels of the city, of which we help escape from. Whilst Clementine stays back in the prison to distract the guards, we scutter off to the City Control Center. Here B-12 finally recovers his memory, and reveals that he was once a scientist who tried to upload his memory into a robot, but everything went wrong untill we came around and helped. We also learn, that the city we tracked through, Walled City 99, was built as humanity’s last hope of surviving the catastrophe that happend to the world. But in due time a plague killed every human. B-12, with this knowledge, chooses to sacrifice himself in order to open the doors to the city. With the sunlight shining in, all the Zerks dies off and the Sentinels are deactivated. Now we can finally leave the city.

Stray might not be a typical point-and-click game, but it certainly is an adventure game. You track through the game, platforming away, but still need to find certain items to move the story along. The platforming is well done, sometimes a bit tricky. The entire game world is built around the once-real city of Kowloon Walled City in China. This city was so densely built, that sunlight could not enter. Kowloon has even been the inspiration of multiple sci-fi books and movies. It was a grimy world, with sewage spilling in the darkness, electical wires hanging everywhere and shady people. In Stray, the world created is quite more beautiful than it’s real life counterpart, and you soon find yourself lost in the beautiful world they have built. With neon-signs everywhere, beat-down buildings and strange robots the game provides an amazing visual experience.

The soundtrack of Stray is nice and fitting to the experience, being mostly chill. It fits the game, where action is scarce (a few escape sequences), and fits well with the journey. All this, combined with playing as a cute cat, creates for an experience you do not want to miss. On the topic of playing as a cat, you even have the opportunity to do cat-things. You can scratch carpets or rub up against the legs of robots – even sleeping on pillows. It serves as a great game for almost everybody, and comes with a heartly recommendation.