This month, BlueTwelve Studio and Annapurna are set to release Stray, an adorable-looking adventure game featuring a playable cat in a dystopian cyber city. In third-person, players control the cat with animations and interactions that perfectly resemble how cats ordinarily behave, making for a unique perspective in an unfamiliar, neon-lit landscape. Interestingly, aside from the stray cat, only droids and other drones seem to remain in Stray's world with no indication of human life.
Much of Stray’s gameplay seems to involve interacting with B-12, a drone whose name seemingly references the developer, and finding key items for different characters. Moment-to-moment gameplay involves exploration through shanty, dilapidated environments while platforming along dumpsters and awnings in order to reach new areas or rooftops. Stray allows players to embody the agile stealthiness as well as the annoying silliness of this cat, which will likely make for interesting exploration. However, how Stray’s platforming works may not be what players have in mind.
Stray’s Cat Seems to Only Leap When There Is a Button Prompt
Previous gameplay showings for Stray lacked any sort of UI or HUD to indicate any button prompts that may appear on-screen while players meander about. There are gameplay presentations that do show UI, which include button prompts for interacting with droids. Fans will notice in these particular showcases that when the cat is near a ledge, perch, or other environment that can be jumped to, a tiny button prompt to do so will appear there. This means that instead of players having a button that lets them leap around whenever and however they would like, the cat can only leap to predetermined points at the behest of a prompt.
Therefore, gameplay that would otherwise be exciting may now be observed as much less interesting. For example, the cat leaps upward along many points in the environment to get to its destination, which may have been fun and creative if players needed to decide where they could leap to and how to traverse environments. With dedicated button prompts, this ingenuity and creativity is redundant, as players will likely only have to repeatedly press the same input in order to scale any length of environment before them.
Stray’s Gameplay Risks Feeling Stale Without Proper Platforming
Gameplay that involves mindless inputs such as these to maneuver otherwise inventive environments could sour quickly if Stray features a lot of these sequences. Interacting with droids, circumventing hostile threats, and finding requisite items may be Stray’s focus instead of platforming.
Either way, Stray’s environmental level design seems perfect for proper platforming mechanics where players would have to find their way around awnings and other structures, as well as tiny paths and shortcuts that only a creature of the cat’s size could make its way through. If nothing else, it could have at least made gameplay more engaging than it may end up being, as finding where to leap would have needed players to think more creatively about how to navigate.
That said, Stray could still be incredibly fun and engaging with its current traversal design. Perhaps the idea of proper platforming had been considered, but ultimately decided against in order to create the sensation that the cat was truly nimble and exacting with its movements.
Cats are rarely leaping about in place, and while precise button prompts render the player unable to freely behave as they please, it at least coincides with the immersion of playing as a cat, however that may be interpreted. Fall damage should also be completely omitted as well, then, given the idea that cats land on their feet despite falling an otherwise devastating distance. It will be interesting to see how satisfying Stray is nonetheless when it releases later this month.
Stray launches July 19 for PC, PS4, and PS5.
