Original reporting by Melissa Miller
Who wouldn’t want to spend some time going on quests as a ginger cat wearing a backpack? And now, we all can thanks to the new sci-fi video game Stray. The recently released game includes incredible graphics of the stray kitty exploring a neon-lit cityscape. The game from BlueTwelve Studio is available for PC and PlayStation 4 and 5. It’s also included for PlayStation Plus Extra and Premium members. And soon, it will arrive on Xbox. You can take a look at Stray‘s official trailer, here:
Stray arrives on Xbox Series X|S and Xbox One on August 10. And we’re sure it will be full of just as much cat-goodness as the original PlayStation version. The creators of the game shared some insights in a blog post on PlayStation’s website. Producer Swann Martin-Raget writes about the difficulties of controlling a cat. Every cat owner knows the struggle, but it turns out it’s true in game design too. They used the internet’s most valuable resource—cat videos—as references. So those of us who upload them are actually helping professionals do their job.
The trailer includes action sequences, but also everyday cat activities like knocking things over for no reason. Or, as we call them in my house, gravity experiments. The video also shows a small flying drone named B-12 joining the quest. The team-up gives real Leia and her droid Lola vibes.
After releasing a teaser trailer in 2020 and more gameplay videos last year, we can’t wait to finally play. According to the game’s website, Stray takes place in the seedy underbelly of a decaying cybercity. It instructs us to “be stealthy, nimble, silly, and sometimes as annoying as possible with the strange inhabitants of this mysterious world.” Sounds like a cat. Apparently, according to Polygon, if you meow enough in the game, you even get a “Little Chatty” trophy on Steam. And it sounds like there are many different meow sounds our favorite cat can make. We love that for everyone.
It’s a huge advancement from the first computer animation in 1968, which was also of a cat! Other studios have used motion capture of cats. All cat videos are good cat videos!
Originally published in 2022.
