Stray (video game)

• 1. Introduction

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  Stray begins with four stray cats padding through the ruins of an abandoned facility. Then one of them loses its footing and drops into a chasm. When it lands, it is alone, cut off from the group, in an underground city where nobody seems to be home. This is the opening of Stray, a 2022 adventure game from BlueTwelve Studio, published by Annapurna Interactive. The hero never speaks and never explains itself. It simply has to find a way out. Why would a studio build an entire game around the point of view of an ordinary cat? Where did its dense, glowing, claustrophobic city come from? And who, or what, is waiting down there to meet a lost animal?

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• 2. A Playground for a Cat

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  In 2015, two people known as Koola and Viv began work on a project they called HK Project. They were the founders of BlueTwelve Studio, and they had previously worked at Ubisoft Montpellier. Now they wanted to make something independent. They kept a development blog while the game still carried that working title.

  The look of the game came from Kowloon Walled City. Koola and Viv liked its organic construction and enjoyed approaching it as artists. They built graphical tests of its buildings and environments, and concluded that the place was a "perfect playground for a cat" because of its many paths and views.

  Pipes and air conditioning units are usually just decoration in a video game. In Stray they became routes the cat could actually walk. That caused artistic and technical headaches, because the team had to balance interesting design against an open world. A location called Antvillage let them experiment with vertical design and offer the player several ways forward.

  The team also threw out a standard idea early. Watching players repeatedly miss jumps, they decided the experience "didn't feel cat-like." Producer Swann Martin-Raget said a cat's movements feel smoother than a human's. That led to a guided movement system that still leaves the player free to choose where to go. The DualSense controller's sounds and vibrations added to the physical feel, and the low camera made players look more closely at their surroundings than a human character would.

  The city supplied the setting, but the cat itself came from somewhere much closer to the founders' desks.

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• 3. Murtaugh, Riggs and the Office Cats

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  Murtaugh was a former stray cat, found under a car in Montpellier. He became the main inspiration for the game's protagonist. He and a second cat, Riggs, belonged to the founders, and their behavior shaped how the game plays.

  The studio had its own in-house cats too, named Oscar and Jun. Oscar was a furless Sphynx, and he turned out to be an effective reference for animation. A cat animator named Miko studied many images and videos of cats. Miko then worked with the cat programmer Rémi Bismuth to find a balance between smooth animation and gameplay that was fun to control. Most of the team owned cats, so reference material was never in short supply.

  The developers described the game as a "love letter" to their cats. Even so, they deliberately avoided making a cat simulator. They chose interesting gameplay over complete realism.

  The real test arrived at the office. When the studio's cats began reacting to the in-game cat and interacting with it, the team took that as a sign that their choices had worked.

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• 4. Robots and a Backpack

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  Viv first tried filling the world with human characters, and was not satisfied with the results. The high visual quality they demanded would also have taken too long for such a small team. So the studio experimented with robots instead, and found them easier to place in a scene.

  The contrast pleased the developers. They described the cat as "small, organic, and lively" and the robots as "angular and bold." The team was also fascinated by films like Blade Runner (1982), so the change felt natural. Once robots were in, they inspired more of the story.

  A written robot language was added throughout the world so that players would feel they were in a foreign place. Including it pushed the team to develop the world's backstory.

  B-12, the drone, was added to give the player extra abilities, such as interacting with technology. Both B-12 and the cat's backpack were conceived early, when the game was still called HK Project. The interface stayed minimal, with directions built into the world itself. The game runs on Unreal Engine 4.

  B-12 would turn out to hold the biggest secret in that backstory.

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• 5. Beneath Walled City 99

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  In a laboratory deep in the city, the cat helps download an artificial intelligence into the body of a small drone. The drone calls itself B-12. It explains that it once helped a scientist, but that much of its memory was corrupted and needs time to recover. It promises to help the cat reach the surface.

  As the pair travel on, they find the city empty of humans. Their robotic servants, known as Companions, are still there. With people gone, the Companions have become self-aware and built a society among the ruins, though they are trapped underground as well. The Zurks are a mutant strain of bacteria that has evolved to devour both organic life and robots.

  Momo is a Companion and a member of the Outsiders, a group dedicated to finding a way to the surface. The Outsiders guide the cat and B-12 to the Midtown sector. There they find Clementine, another Outsider, who plans to steal an atomic battery to power a subway train bound for the surface. The Sentinels catch and arrest all three, but the cat helps them escape from prison. Clementine stays behind to distract the guards while the cat and B-12 take the subway to the city control center.

  There, B-12 recovers all its memories. It was originally a human scientist who tried to upload their own consciousness into a robot body. The process went wrong until the cat arrived. B-12 also remembers that the city was built to shelter humanity from a catastrophe on the surface, and that a plague eventually killed everyone inside.

  B-12 decides that humanity's legacy now belongs to the Companions and the cat. It sacrifices itself to override the city's network, opening the blast doors. Sunlight pours in, killing the Zurks and shutting down the Sentinels. The cat walks out to the surface and sniffs the air. Behind it, a screen near the exit flickers and switches on.

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• 6. Claws, Buckets and Zurks

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  Stray is a single-player adventure seen from behind the cat. The cat can leap between platforms and climb obstacles. It can also claw at objects, climb into buckets, overturn paint cans and even operate a vending machine. Moving obstacles around is the usual way to solve a puzzle and advance the story. Some levels open up into open-world areas where the player can roam freely.

  Optional behavior adds charm. The cat can sleep, meow, and nuzzle up to non-player characters, and most of them respond. A robot named Morusque plays songs if the player brings it music sheets scattered around the slums. Other robots hand out tasks, usually to find objects that reveal more of the story.

  B-12 translates the language of the other characters, stores items, provides light and hacks technology to open paths. The player can also find several of B-12's memories. Most are optional, though some unlock as the story moves forward. Badges can be collected, and some are hidden in the world, and they show up on the cat's backpack.

  Two kinds of enemy can kill the cat. Zurks swarm over it and devour it. Sentinels are security drones that shoot on sight, but players can avoid them by staying out of their sight lines, which are marked by glowing lights. For one portion of the game, B-12 can carry a Defluxor that destroys Zurks. It overheats after a limited time and needs a short rest to cool down.

  The developers added these action sequences to put some stress on the player and give the story a rhythm. Koola and Viv had a personal reason to enjoy the Zurk sequence. They saw the chance to destroy the swarm as revenge for a bedbug infestation they had once lived through.

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• 7. From Reveal to Release

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  In April 2016, Annapurna Interactive reached out to publish the project after seeing footage on Twitter. Koola and Viv had made only a few early scenes, but they had a strong vision for the finished game. Annapurna had not published a single game when the deal was struck. It helped the studio grow over the years, offered occasional feedback and largely left the creative decisions to the developers.

  Funding was confirmed in April 2017, and the team grew to five people by the end of that year. Koola and Viv wanted to stay small because they preferred direct communication. The small size meant the scope shrank over time, and effort went to the parts they considered most important. After the reveal, they wanted to concentrate on production and market the game only when it was nearly finished. They found that the warm reaction to the announcement added pressure to deliver something polished.

  Stray was announced on the 11th of June 2020 at PlayStation's Future of Gaming event, for PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5 and Windows. A trailer at the Consumer Electronics Show in January 2021 printed a release window of October 2021, which was later removed. A July 2021 trailer promised early 2022. The game slipped to a mid-year release in April 2022, and a State of Play presentation in June set the date for the 19th of July 2022. At launch it was offered to subscribers of PlayStation Plus's Extra, Deluxe and Premium tiers.

  The anticipation was real. Stray topped Steam's wishlist charts before release, then broke Annapurna's record for concurrent Steam players with more than 62,000. It became the platform's highest user-rated game of the year. In July it was the most-downloaded PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 5 game in North America. On PlayStation Plus, it drew the highest number of players in the twelve months after the service's June 2022 rebranding. It left the service in July 2023 and returned as a monthly game for subscribers in November 2025.

  Videos of cats watching Stray went viral, and the account @CatsWatchStray collected more than 32,000 followers on Twitter. Some players used mods to put their own pets into the game. Annapurna partnered with charities to raise money for homeless cats, offering giveaways as incentives for donations.

  Physical editions followed from iam8bit and Skybound Games. A retail PlayStation 5 version arrived on the 20th of September with six art cards. An Exclusive Edition for PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 5 followed on the 12th of December, adding a poster and an embroidered patch. iam8bit released a vinyl soundtrack in May 2023 with album art by Fernando Correa.

  The game then spread to other platforms. An Xbox One and Xbox Series X and S version came out on the 10th of August 2023. A macOS version for Apple M series devices followed on the 5th of December 2023. Annapurna announced a Nintendo Switch version during a Nintendo Direct in June 2024, and it launched on the 19th of November. A Nintendo Switch 2 version was announced in April 2026 and released on the 28th of May. In Astro Bot (2024), the cat and B-12 appear together as a collectible Bot.

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• 8. Reviews, Awards and a Film

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  Review aggregator Metacritic labeled the reception "generally favorable," and 85% of critics on OpenCritic recommended the game. In Japan, four Famitsu critics gave it a combined 36 out of 40, and one of them awarded a perfect 10.

  Many critics focused on the cat. Katharine Castle of Rock Paper Shotgun judged that "at least 50% of the appeal" was simply playing as one. Keza MacDonald of The Guardian called Stray "an excellent example of how a change of perspective can enliven a fictional setting to which we've become habituated." Critics also praised the art direction, especially its lighting, and the original score. Chris Scullion of VGC wrote that the music "knows exactly when to evoke awe, when to creep the player out, and when to pluck at our pesky human heartstrings."

  The Zurk chases and stealth sections divided reviewers. Andrew Webster of The Verge compared the swarms to those in A Plague Tale: Innocence (2019) and said they added tension but could become frustrating. Jon Bailes of PC Gamer described one confrontation as "repeated backpedalling and shooting." Renata Price of Vice found the stealth ranged "from fine to frustrating."

  Some of the sharpest criticism was about ideas. William Hughes of The A.V. Club called the premise a "Lego stack of ready-made video game tropes." Sisi Jiang of Kotaku found Stray a troubling example of techno-orientalism. In the Journal of Games Criticism, Caighlan Smith argued that, despite its nonhuman viewpoint, the game reinforced neoliberal, human-centered ideals of individuality. Alexis Ong of Polygon read the game through the working title HK Project, seeing themes of police brutality and the 2019-2020 protests in Hong Kong.

  The awards were plentiful. Stray won PlayStation Game of the Year at the 40th Golden Joystick Awards and Most Innovative Gameplay at The Steam Awards. It earned six nominations at the Game Awards 2022 and won Best Independent Game and Best Debut Indie Game. It tied with Elden Ring for the most nominations at the 23rd Game Developers Choice Awards, with six, and won Best Debut. It received nine nominations at the 19th British Academy Games Awards and one for Best Game Writing at the 58th Annual Nebula Awards. It also won Best Sound Design for an Indie Game at the 21st Annual Game Audio Network Guild Awards and the Gayming Magazine Readers' Award at the Gayming Awards 2023. Year-end lists placed it second at PCGamesN, third at GamesRadar+, fourth at The Guardian and fifth at Time.

  On the 5th of September 2023, Annapurna Animation announced an animated feature film of Stray, following the success of its first film, Nimona (2023). Co-head of animation Robert Baird pointed to the game's popularity, its buddy comedy and its hopepunk elements as reasons it suited adaptation. The film remains in development.

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