Stray

I've been going through a tough time recently and lost interest in the things I used to enjoy, like video games.
During the last Steam sale, I remembered this game. It had been on my wishlist for a while, so I decided to buy it, even though I didn’t really feel like playing. I gave it a try and played for a few minutes—until I noticed a calendar on the wall with my birthday on it (October 11th).
For some reason, that small detail motivated me to keep playing. Over time, I found myself playing more and more. It took me a few weeks, but today I finally finished it. It may not seem like much, but completing this game feels like a real accomplishment after many setbacks in life.
This game helped me rediscover my love for video games. A heartfelt thank you to the developer for creating this masterpiece.

I never knew the perfect cat game existed, but after sinking over twelve hours into Stray, I now know it does. As a cat lover and owner, playing as a cat felt like an absolute dream. I really hope they release some DLC or a sequel. I'd give this a 9/10 (minus one point because I couldn’t swipe food off the counter like my tabby loves to do)

Started the game crying about a cat, ended the game sobbing about a robot. Immaculate.

---{ Graphics }---
☐ You forget what reality is
☑ Beautiful
☐ Good
☐ Decent
☐ Bad
☐ Don‘t look too long at it
☐ MS-DOS

---{ Gameplay }---
☑ Very good
☐ Good
☐ It's just gameplay
☐ Mehh
☐ Watch paint dry instead
☐ Just don't

---{ Audio }---
☐ Eargasm
☑ Very good
☐ Good
☐ Not too bad
☐ Bad
☐ I'm now deaf

---{ Audience }---
☑ Kids
☑ Teens
☑ Adults
☑ Grandma

---{ PC Requirements }---
☐ Check if you can run paint
☐ Potato
☑ Decent
☐ Fast
☐ Rich boi
☐ Ask NASA if they have a spare computer

---{ Game Size }---
☐ Floppy Disk
☐ Old Fashioned
☑ Workable
☐ Big
☐ Will eat 10% of your 1TB hard drive
☐ You will want an entire hard drive to hold it
☐ You will need to invest in a black hole to hold all the data

---{ Difficulty }---
☐ Just press 'W'
☑ Easy
☐ Easy to learn / Hard to master
☐ Significant brain usage
☐ Difficult
☐ Dark Souls

---{ Grind }---
☑ Nothing to grind
☐ Only if u care about leaderboards/ranks
☐ Isn't necessary to progress
☐ Average grind level
☐ Too much grind
☐ You'll need a second life for grinding

---{ Story }---
☐ No Story
☐ Some lore
☐ Average
☐ Good
☑ Lovely
☐ It'll replace your life

---{ Game Time }---
☐ Long enough for a cup of coffee
☑ Short
☐ Average
☐ Long
☐ To infinity and beyond

---{ Price }---
☐ It's free!
☑ Worth the price
☐ If it's on sale
☐ If u have some spare money left
☐ Not recommended
☐ You could also just burn your money

---{ Bugs }---
☑ Never heard of
☐ Minor bugs
☐ Can get annoying
☐ ARK: Survival Evolved
☐ The game itself is a big terrarium for bugs

---{ ? / 10 }---
☐ 1
☐ 2
☐ 3
☐ 4
☐ 5
☐ 6
☐ 7
☐ 8
☐ 9
☑ 10

Stray is a game where you play as a cat. Just… a regular little orange cat with a tiny backpack.
You fall into a forgotten cyber city full of flickering neon, rusted alleyways, and robots trying their best to be human. Your overall goal is to get back to your feline friends. Along the way, you’ll nap in cozy corners, knock over bottles for no reason, meow at strangers, and occasionally run for your life from unsettling sci-fi bugs! Normal feline activities.
The city itself steals the show. Every alley feels like it has a story. Every robot you meet is quirky, curious, or quietly lonely. There's no giant plot twist waiting at the end, but the world-building and atmosphere do the heavy lifting. And somehow, despite everything being rusted and broken, it feels oddly hopeful.
Yes, it’s a short game, you can easily finish it in an afternoon or over a couple of evenings but that’s part of its charm. It doesn’t try to stretch itself thin or overstay its welcome. It’s the kind of story that settles in quietly, like a cat curling up beside you, and then stays in your thoughts for days, soft, subtle, and unexpectedly moving.
Definitely give it a try! <3

If you discover this game presuming it's all about exploring a mesmerizing open world as a meowing, purring, ginger cat that can vertically climb and scratch surfaces, like it's some sort of simple cat simulator game, then I'm afraid to tell you that it's far from the truth! Stray is so much more. Stray also features: equally as much gross areas to explore, areas infested with enemies which will require you to be stealthy, and ultimately a compelling story!
All those beautiful screenshots you'll encounter of Stray online are generally from the very beginning, the very end and most commonly, from an area near the end of the game called Midtown! They're just snippets of 3 chapters part of a larger 12 chapter game!
This raises the question of what exactly is Stray then. Let me explain.
About Stray
Stray is a gripping, short adventure game where you'll be playing in third person as an unnamed, stray, ginger cat who becomes separated from their cluster as a result of falling from a loosened pipe, deep down to an unfamiliar world. In this new world, roam different types of robots. You'll first meet companion robots, which are highly-intelligent, bipedal robots with different personalities and their own respected language. They are notably slow and weak at defending themselves from predators such as zurks which are enemies you'll often encounter and have to evade throughout the game. Because of their limitations, companion robots have confined themselves to a small safe zone in which most of them refuse to leave. Within the safe zone are a few outsider companion robots who wish to reach where the cat came from - which is the surface, but the companions refer to it as the: "outside" . However, all but one outsider companion robot is inside of the safe zone when you initially arrive to the safe zone so you must track the rest of the outsiders down and follow their leads to possibly get back to the outside.
Will the ginger cat survive and make it back to the surface and reunite with their cluster? Play to find out!
My Review of Stray
I have to say, this game exceeded my expectations. For starters, I wasn't expecting chases and having to hide from enemies. In fact, I blindly got into this game expecting no enemies at all. So, these elements really caught me off-guard but in the end I had fun getting past the zurks and sentinels, it made the gameplay experience all more thrilling and intense, fueling my eager desire to get back to the surface.
In the about section, I just scratched the surface of the plot - what I shared was just the tip of the iceberg. The plot is what really intrigued and left a profound impression on me other than the outstanding visuals of this game. It's such a deep rabbit hole that I didn't see coming. The plot really deserves as much as credit as the graphics.
Learning that:
- The entire map was a closed cylindrical space called: "Walled City 99" ,
- Humans died out from a plague breakout and that the last humans lived within this confined space along with the companions ,
- There is a sort of caste system in which inhabitants live in an elevated level with respect to their hierarchy ,
- Some of the last remaining humans became companions or entered themselves into the network,
- B-12 was initially the Scientist's assistant and then the consciousness of the Scientist ,
were details that all shook me. I was not expecting such a rich story.
If you're as fascinated by the story as I am, then I encourage you to collect all of B-12's memories or to alternatively learn more about the plot from the Stray Wiki.
And of course, I can't finish this section without mentioning the graphics, the visuals - the things that truly carry this game. The game is full of many areas with colorful lighting - which is very admirable, but if I have to be honest, while the game has an abundance of orange, red, blue and other colored lights, there aren't many areas containing beautiful scenery - the perfect places to use as background footage for your screenshots. I was a bit disappointed in this aspect. As a result of this, my number one destination for photography was naturally the Midtown. So, I wish there were more beautiful areas on the map to explore. Nonetheless, the overall aesthetic of the game is stunning, even if all areas can't be used for picture-perfect moments.
My Pain Point About Stray
There's only one thing that I'm dissatisfied about Stray which is how we aren't able to go into first person. The feature to zoom in your camera felt really pointless to me because part of the cat's body would appear in the shot and kind of ruin it so I don't think I took any shots by zooming in. If we were able to enter first person, I would've taken so much more screenshots and would have put the zooming in feature into use. So, the ability to enter first person should really be introduced.
Signing off with some screenshots I took, feel free to leave them a like!
Overall Rating: 9/10

A relaxing cat walking sim with some puzzle here and there. Played on the steam deck it was a fun experience.
With a good discount it's a great buy