What is Stray?
Stray is an indie 3D puzzle platformer where you play as a cat in a cyberpunk post-apocalyptic earth inhabited by robots and insectoid creatures called zurks who eat any and everything. You play as an unnamed cat who falls from the higher “Outside” level down into the bottom of an underground bunker world and has to journey back to the Outside to get back to its family of cats still living above. In this game you will move throughout the world solving puzzles, interacting with NPCs and avoiding zurks and other enemies to reach your goal of returning to the living outside world.
Game Review:
Stray is available on Playstation 4, Playstation 5, and Microsoft Windows. I played Stray on PS5 through the Playstation Plus Extra tier. Part of the game I played on my phone through PS Remote Play so that I could be in the living room with my newborn son while I played. The game ran incredibly smoothly both on the PS5 directly and streamed through my phone.
The story of Stray is one of the more enjoyable aspects of the game. Like I said in the description, you play as an unnamed cat who falls down into an underground bunker world called the “Dead City” and has to return to the surface world above where its family is. The cat moves through the world and is quickly introduced to a recurring antagonist of the game, the zurks. These small insectoid creatures come in large numbers and attack the cat (or anything that moves, really). You have the ability to shake them off but if they overwhelm you, you will die and restart at the previous checkpoint. As you avoid the zurks and make your way through the world you will meet a small drone named B12 that will join you and be a companion throughout the game. B12 serves several important functions: translator for speaking with other robots/reading text, puzzle solving, item storage/explanations. With B12 in tow you will work your way through a variety of levels to this underground bunker world and meet robots that will either serve as set dressing for the world or provide materials and or information to help you reach your goal of exiting the city. The story also provides a number of twists that I was not expecting. I won’t spoil these because they create interesting lore that really sparked my curiosity about how the world ended up becoming the way that it is. My problem with the story however is it seems completely arbitrary that you are a cat, outside of the fact that being a cat lets you solve puzzles in ways that a larger creature could not. The story doesn’t particularly use the fact that you play as a cat to its advantage. If you’ve ever met a cat, you know that most cats are aloof and stand-offish. Cats wouldn’t listen to directions and instructions from others and then actually follow through with them, honestly it would make more sense story wise for you to play as a dog in that sense. The game just doesn’t give much to help suspend my disbelief as a player that the cat actually would be able to do all these things to get back to the surface. So while the story is not the most groundbreaking story in games, it stands out among what the game has to offer.
Gameplay in Stray consists of “platforming” and puzzle-solving. Platforming is in quotes because it is a far cry from games that pride themselves in tight, satisfying platforming. Platforming in Stray is: look at a ledge that you can jump to, a prompt to jump will appear, you press said button, and the cat will automatically jump there for you. The actual act of having to aim jumps and adjust trajectory does not exist in this game. Now to be fair, I understand why they did this. This game attempts to make you feel like a realistic life-like cat. To do this, you need to jump the way a cat jumps in real life so giving the player more control and giving the cat more floatiness would break the immersion of moving like a real cat. So I understand why the cat moves the way it does, but for me personally, it makes that part of the game pretty boring and unengaging. It feels like it’s holding my hand through all the platforming and not letting me move with the pace or fluidity that I would want. There are, however, a few sections that really found ways to amp up the adrenaline and intensity with the platforming. Sections where the zurks were around made the platforming more fun and energetic (with a hint of terrifying) as it requires you to speed up your decision making and pick where to run and jump more quickly, lest you be eaten by the zurks. These moments made the platforming more engaging and fun to play.
Puzzles in Stray are the other big aspect to the gameplay. These often include using items with particular NPCs to achieve certain goals or to initiate a sequence of events. For example, one puzzle early in the game requires you to make a robot high on a roof drop a bucket of paint on the street below, which triggers a robot in the house below to get angry and come out to clean its porch, leaving the door open for you to enter and grab what you need. Puzzles like this are fun and engaging. But sometimes Stray has less engaging puzzles, often in the form of fetch quests where you just have to go and find a certain item and bring it back. Luckily these fetch quests never take too long or make you go too far so they don’t overstay their welcome.
Stray also includes a few instances of stealth, particularly later in the game where you need to navigate corridors while avoiding the gaze of enemies. These stealth sections play similarly to stealth sections in Metal Gear Solid where you know exactly where the cone of vision for the enemy is and then it's up to you to avoid it. These sections added a tension and intensity that I didn’t find in much of the game and were a nice change of pace to the tedium of the rest of the game.
Stray has 12 total chapters, some of which are very short. The game does not overstay its welcome and is paced pretty well. The game takes around 4 hours to play and complete. I didn’t pick up every collectible so it might take a little longer to do that, but it only takes a few hours to get a nice story experience.
Family Friendliness:
Obviously you play as a cat in this game so the nature of being an animal may be appealing to a young one wanting to watch or play this game. NPC robots are designed to be cute and visually appealing. The dialogue between robots and B12 is also usually very charming and innocent as the Robots, for the most part, are good-willed and curious about the world. The language used in Stray is very appropriate although may sometimes be a bit wordy for a really young child. I don’t think a young child would catch on with some of the themes or story beats that an older person would but I think it would still be an enjoyable game for them. The zurks may be a bit scary for little ones so I might recommend only playing Stray in front of an older child (maybe ages 10 and up).. Overall I would be okay with my child playing or watching me play this game at a fairly young age, but you know your kids best so the ultimate decision lies with you.
Features for Parents:
A feature that I keep praising and will continue to do is the ability to pause. This game has a great pause feature that allows you to put it down and help out when you need to respond to your child or spouse. This game also has a good checkpointing system, I think the most I ever had to replay was a couple minutes after I loaded a save. It helps that the levels and game are pretty short in comparison to bloated AAA games of today. If you want to play but don’t want to have sound on because of a sleeping baby or something, the game is also all text based for dialogue and doesn’t progress until you hit a button, so you won’t miss anything . Finally, being able to remote play, while not the best way to play, is great if you want to be able to play without taking over the living room tv or having your child watch.
Final Verdict:
Stray is an interesting story with engaging world building where you play as a cat. It leaves a bit to be desired in terms of engaging gameplay but there are enough moments of excitement and engaging puzzles to make it a worthwhile game. It is a family friendly game, with the exception (maybe) of the zurk enemies who can be a little frightening. I would recommend this game to parents who read my description and thought it sounded like a fun experience. This is not a must play in my opinion but is well worth the 4 hours if you already have Playstation Plus Extra.
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