Stray

Stray is a 2022 adventure game developed by BlueTwelve Studio and published by Annapurna Interactive. The story follows a stray cat who falls into a walled city populated by robots, machines, and mutant bacteria, and sets out to return to the surface with the help of a drone companion, B-12. The game is presented through a third-person perspective. The player traverses the game world by leaping across platforms and climbing up obstacles, and can interact with the environment to open new paths. Using B-12, they can store items found throughout the world and hack into technology to solve puzzles. Throughout the game, the player must evade the antagonistic Zurks and Sentinels, which attempt to kill them.

While a group of four stray cats trek through the ruins of an abandoned facility, one becomes separated from the others after falling into a chasm leading to an unpopulated underground city. The cat finds a lab where it helps download an artificial intelligence into the body of a small drone, which calls itself B-12. It explains it previously helped a scientist but much of its memory was corrupted and needs time to recover. B-12 promises to help the cat return to the surface and accompanies it further into the city. As they travel farther, the pair discover that, while the city is completely devoid of human life, their robotic servants, Companions, remain.

With humans absent, the Companions have grown self-aware and have built their own society among the ruins of the city, but they likewise are trapped underground. The ruins are infested with Zurks, mutant bacteria that have evolved to devour both organic life and robots. Stray is an adventure game played by a single player in a third-person perspective. The player controls a stray cat, leaping across platforms and climbing up obstacles, and can open new paths by interacting with the environment, such as climbing in buckets, overturning paint cans, operating a vending machine, and clawing at objects. 

They solve puzzles to progress the narrative, often involving moving obstacles. Optional activities include sleeping, meowing, and nuzzling up to non-player characters, most of which elicit a response. Some levels have open-world elements, allowing the player to roam at their freedom. The player is accompanied by a drone companion, B-12, who assists by translating the language of other characters, storing items found throughout the world, providing light, and hacking into various technologies to open paths and solve puzzles. 

Throughout the game, the player finds several of B-12’s memories, providing more context for the story. Most of these memories are optional, but some are unlocked through story progression. The player can collect badges, including several optional throughout the world, which are displayed on the cat’s backpack. The world is populated by robots, who often employ the player to locate objects that reveal more information and progress the narrative. Some robots provide optional tasks, such as Morusque, who plays songs upon being provided with music sheets found around the slums.

The player can interact with most robots in the world. Stray features two types of enemies who can kill the player: Zurks, a large, mutated bacteria that can swarm and devour the cat; and Sentinels, security drones who will attempt to shoot the player upon spotting them. For a portion of the game, the player can attach a Defluxor to B-12 to destroy the Zurks, though it can only be used for a limited time before B-12 overheats and requires a brief period to cool down. The player can evade Sentinels by avoiding their sight lines, indicated by glowing lights.