Games I Played > 2022 > Stray
Stray is a “cat adventure game” that I’d followed development of for over seven years! It very quickly won me over both for the setting (based off of Kowloon Walled City) and for the effort they put into animating the cat. It looked like it would be a very charming game:
The game released in July 2022, but I waited to play because the reviews claimed it was only 6-8 hours long. Six to eight hours? For $30? The gumption of these indie devs!
(Nevermind the fact that paying $30 for an entire day of fun is almost unheard of anywhere else…)
I finally got my hands on Stray in December when a Black Friday deal let me upgrade the remaining 900+ days of PS+ to the Extra tier for a flat $80(!!). Stray came as a free game in Sony’s version of Game Pass, and so it was the first thing I downloaded.
Indeed, the game was short - the console clocks my completion time at just five hours. If I’d gone trophy hunting I might have been able to squeak in another hour or two.
But enough about game duration! Stray game is gorgeous! And the cat controls really well! And there’s a dedicated meow button! As far as games go in which you play a cat, Stray delightfully combines a compelling story, gorgeous art direction, and surprisingly fluid gameplay with enough proper cat mechanics to at least make for a memorable experience.
Final trophy count: 14 of 25
