Credit: https://annapurnainteractive.com/games/stray
Stray, developed by Annapurna, is a perfect cat simulator immersed in a cyberpunk world. Stray, the new title developed by Annapurna , starring a cute red cat immersed in the cyberpunk world in which, at least apparently, human life has disappeared, has really conquered me.
Cat Simulator
Despite the basic simplicity, or perhaps for this very reason, the “cat simulator” has made its way into the hearts of many players. The recipe is simple: we will be called to take on the role of a kitten who, through the overcoming of levels, more or less obvious, built as a puzzle platform will make us advance through a story told in a silent but not superficial way.
The style, as well as the artistic direction, is the flagship of Stray. The title, in fact, has an absolutely personal style, in which the movements of the cat have been reconstructed in a really great way by the Annapurna team, and where each type of movement the player does, will have a correspondence in a certain input and vibration on the DualSense controller.
Therefore, the advice is, if you have the opportunity, to play Stray on PlayStation 5. Surely the experience will have greater strength if tried on consoles.
A Hundred Meows
In addition to the fun of finding a whole series of hidden trophies designed with great intuition, such as the one obtainable through “a hundred meows” (yes, there is a button dedicated to meowing) the difficulty is at a medium-low level: you can find difficulties, always relative, however, only at certain times and I’m talking about the stampede.
Here, on these occasions, not being able, let’s say, to carry out offensive maneuvers, we can only escape. Sometimes, but only in a few circumstances, the choice to exploit minimal gameplay leads to a very narrow pool of options for the gamer: certain levels “can be overcome” only in that specific way.
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Net of this, however, the progression is really very pleasant and, as previously mentioned, the narration is treated with grace, making us discover a world only apparently so different from ours. The aesthetic impact is also at good levels even if, frankly, I have little understood the non-inclusion of a photo mode: the kitten is so beautiful and the scenarios so suggestive that, I am sure, in the case of an introduction by a photographic mode maybe in a future patch, we will fill our “digital rolls” with dozens and dozens of shots of the cute little red cat.