Stray: The Urban Blues of a little tramp

We all just love cats. In our environment, an absolute a priori fact is the cult of worship of these furry scoundrels, starting with the main rock and roll call sign and ending with your personal pet, which you may not have only because of severe allergies. The world of interactive art has stayed away from the obvious idea for too long: to make a video game where the protagonist is a cat. Not an anthropomorphic cartoon or a fantasy creature hungry for moon sugar, but our native four-legged Felis catus. Today, let’s talk about the most soulful game of 2022, Stray.

How curiosity killed a cat

A flock of four cats lives and thrives on the ivy-covered industrial ruins. In this world abandoned by mankind, cats live in the best traditions of Ray Bradbury’s “Gentle Rain”: the absence of people does not bother the fuzzies at all. But frolicking and playing in industrial areas is still fraught with accidents, and the unfortunate jump of our red-haired protagonist separates him from his family. By the will of fate, the four-legged Odysseus embarks on a journey that he, like any normal cat, is not particularly interested in. But it is quite interesting for the small robot B-12, which resembles a cross between a Wall and flying saucers from the Spielberg-produced film “Batteries are not included” (It comes without batteries). He is not just a robot, but a container of human consciousness, ironically suffering from retrograde amnesia.

With such simple motives, this story begins: Red wants to return home, B-12 wants to regain the memory of his past. And an entire metropolis inhabited by iron descendants, imitators of the human race, wants to free themselves from tyranny, the threat of flesh- and metal-eating creatures and see the stars in the night sky, which is tightly hidden by the steel roof of the megastructure.

Thus, the good-natured tale of the adventures of a cat and his mechanical friend acquires very unexpected references. At first glance, it makes you think of Shelezyak’s planet, but that’s only if you look at the screenshots. And behind them lies the feeling of endlessly reproducing architectural chaos, which Tsutomu Nihei reflects in his work.

The paradoxical boundlessness of an isolated alien world covered with a lid is best felt from the perspective of such a small innocent creature as a stray cat. And the image of the Zurks, insect-like eaters of matter, conceptually rhymes very much with the thoughtless builders from the cult manga “Blame!”.

Similar feelings are influenced by the survival strategy of the little tramp. In case of danger, the cat can only run and hide. And what is this cat capable of?

Orange Cat Behavior

In its most peaceful sections, of which there are most, the game is most similar to Cloudpunk. There, a simulator of walking in the neon rain was presented in flights through air traffic, but even more interesting is that you can be a cat! That’s just like the real thing. You can meow as much as you want on a separate button at any time, even in cut scenes where everything else is taken away from the player. You can sharpen your claws on carpets and sofas. You can curl up in secluded places. After all, you can run around like crazy for no particular reason. All the behavioral patterns of cats are conveyed very reliably and charmingly.

In fact, the entire gameplay is a collection of spatial puzzles named after old Lara Croft. There is no quest system as such, but wandering through robot-populated areas can provide a lot of additional activities. For example, you can compose sheet music for a street musician, who will be happy to perform it on his out-of-tune Canister Guitar. Curiously, his music, and the music in the game in general, as well as the overall visual style and specifically the design of hostile guardian robots, are so similar to the world of the long-suffering game “No Man Sky” that it is quite possible that the action takes place in the same universe. The galaxy is big, there is a place for all cats.

A spoonful of citrus

Despite the overall conciseness of the game, there is a sense not of incompleteness, but of some missed opportunities. I would like to add at least the good old purring to the same cute cat activities. It is possible to drop objects from the shelves and the edges of the table, but due to physics, not intentional interaction. You can’t force a cat to sit down or fold into a loaf, which is also a huge disadvantage.

The skin system would be great for the game. For the plot, the color of the cat does not matter. It would be great to act out your literal pet. It would be possible to make a separate editor of the cat’s appearance or to comprehend those very additional quests, receiving skins as a reward. But there is no such thing, as there is no photo mode, which was even in Turbo Overkill. And I would like to capture the cat against the background of local beauties from the best angle!

Gameplay mechanics themselves are of little interest and are not being developed. Each of them, whether it’s stealth hide-and-seek or the destruction of targets using ultraviolet light, occurs once or twice per game. There are no more interesting combinations that could be made. Yes, it’s a very short game, but it seems to lack a couple more hours of gameplay.

In the narrative part, everything is not so smooth either. The theme of tyranny appears only in the third city, as if it were a rebellion against the central nervous system. There is no dictatorship and no dictator, but there are wandering bad policemen who are bad just because. At the same time, the general plot outline could play with the posthumanity of the hardware in the spirit of the novel “The City” by the classic science fiction writer Clifford Simak. Instead, it’s… well, it’s kind of too flat. The Boy Nipper Pipper had more logic of protest, and in “Dunno on the Moon” the criticism of urbanism is more weighty.

Sunny sadness

At the end of the game, the sun illuminates the enclosed world, literally tearing the roof off it. All the bad guys burn up in its rays and a brave new world begins. I would call this ending crumpled and merged, if not for a couple of important points.

In any cultural product, the context is very important. This game came out at a very difficult and tragic time for all people who speak and think Russian, even if they try to hide this fact. And we, Russian-speaking and Russian-thinking people, love cats very much. And then, against the background of a flood of shocking news, this game became a real mouthful of goodness, thus a life-giving sunbeam.

We love cats, but we don’t like happy endings. Because, unlike cats, such endings should not be trusted. And here the ending is… more honest, or something. Red will not return to his pack, and B-12 will not regain his humanity. Those who illuminate the world don’t always have a good time. Take care of those who have been tamed. And be sure to feed at least one stray cat soon.