Stray, the game about being a little cat exploring around a big cybercity, has a release date – and it’s soon! July, in fact. That’s next month! Time flies when you’re excited about getting to be a ginger tabby kitty.
Although this was part of the Playstation State of Play, it is coming to PC too. The release date trailer shows off the city itself and some of the platforming and stealthy navigation that your cat protagonist will need to master in order to get around and stay undetected.
I am not (sorry) really much of a cat person (sorry!!). But I am a wander around virtual cities person, and definitely an interact with robots with expressive and brightly coloured pixel faces person, and absolutely a float down the river in a little coracle person. So, yeah, it’s won me over. I’m looking forward to this. I’m hoping the inevitable dog sequel (starring a Dachshund, please) that we get in a few years keeps the same setting, though.
In a blog post, Bluetwelve producer Swann Martin-Raget talks about the challenges of animating a cat – and the solution. “The good and somewhat surprising thing we found is this: It really seems that the whole internet was basically invented for the sole purpose of hosting loads of cute cat pictures and videos! So we ended up having a lot of very good material to work with for references,” they write. Plus, the two studio cats, Oscar and Jun, were apparently very helpful.
Some more gameplay footage for Stray was shown off in the summer of last year, namely how you get to be a jerk cat and progress by knocking things off of ledges and such. Listen, it’s hard to do precision puzzle solving when you don’t have opposable thumbs. Or even arms. If anything I think this cat is doing a more careful job, relatively speaking, than Nathan Drake ever did.
Stray will be coming to Steam when it launches on July 19.