Later this month one of my most anticipated games launches, called Stray so lets take a look at reasons I am excited and you should be too!
(Video version here)
A Feline Protagonist
Let’s not beat around the scratching post everyone, the biggest reason we are all excited for Stray is getting to play as our furry little friend. Stepping into the paws of a cute cat and exploring a forgotten city lit with neon signs just screams like a unique and memorable adventure. Venturing from area to area with a trusty backpack full of treats, pushing items to push off ledges, meowing at the world for no reason and hissing at the strange things we discover. What secrets will we uncover?
The Story and world
From what we have observed of the trailers and gameplay of Stray, it appears we spend our time in a world based around the styles of neo-Asian architecture, almost cyberpunk in design. Lights littering the city, its murky puddles and robots lingering around but no sight of humans. What exactly is going on? Why are we lost? And how do we find our family? A seedy underbelly awaits it seems, and we don’t have time to waste. The plot seems guarded beyond a small synopsis given online, but we know from gameplay the environment will be a treacherous one full of platforming, stealth and possibly snacks. We will have to string along many balls of yarn to discover its secrets.
Support the weird and wonderful
In recent years indie projects have been a beacon of creativity, ingenuity, and exploration, with Stray this is no different. A dark and lost semi-open world where you venture from point to point, platforming as an adorable cat? Well, you have me sold. These unique concepts, perspectives and stories are what flesh out a sea of sports, shooters and AAA fluff we see year after year. Without those special creations and risks, we would never see the talent of developers grow and prosper so remember, they matter. This game is developed by BlueTwelve studios working out of the south of France and published by Annapurna Interactive some of the minds behind Outer Worlds. Make sure to lend a hand with those passionate, devoted, and fresh eyed developers bringing you fun, cute, and different titles like Stray. Not everything is a blockbuster, but the underdogs matter too, well, undercats in this case.
Trophy list
Another great and fun aspect of Stray, well for its PlayStation version will be its trophy list for all of us obsessed trophy hunters. It has yet to be released, teased, or even leaked which is surprising give its popularity recently. However, what it will entail hopefully will be a straightforward adventure where most of them can be snagged in a single playthrough with maybe some collectables and with vague or rare ones to make us dive back into the world for another run. Without us knowing about difficulty levels, runtime or much else besides the basic plot synopsis it’s hard to determine what trophies will be pesky to get. Nevertheless, I do hope we see a funny one for endlessly meowing at NPC’s or knocking over a certain number of objects. Would it be a cat game without such behaviours?
Its Coming to PS plus day one
That’s right the dark and vivid world of Stray is coming to PS Plus extra when it releases on the 19th of July later this month. What does this mean? Well simply put with the revamped PS plus service, if you are a tier two subscriber you will get this cute indie cat game at no extra cost. Is that not a reason to play and enjoy this indie platformer? If not just go out and buy the game and support indie dev’s as it comes to PS5 and PC soon. Sorry Xbox, you won’t be playing this one yet or maybe not ever. Only time will tell.
By John.P
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