Stray Reviews
Stray is a wonderfully endearing game about humanity in a world without humans, delivering quality feline exploration/adventure, with some passable action thrown in.
It's not going to unseat some of the bigger titles of the year, but as a fun and unique experience Stray is the cat's meow.
Stray is a puzzle-platforming adventure game which offers players a one-of-a-kind feline science fiction experience that delights in every way.
Stray is a very good surprise. It is not a simple game where you play as a cat but it's a poetic, touching and exciting adventure.
Review in French | Read full review
Though short, Stray is a delight of a game to experience. Forcing players to make organic progress feels like a genuine achievement, and viewing this world through the unique perspective of a cat gives the story considerable more weight. Stray is a game that you will think about even when you’re not playing it. Like a good book, its world pulls you in and you never want to put it down. It’s nice to see at least one cyberpunk game live up to the hype, eh?
Stray merges feline mayhem with a classic cyberpunk setting, inviting you to explore its neon dystopia while never taking itself too seriously.
I’m very high on Stray overall, as you can probably tell by now. It might not quite have the substance and complexity in design to elevate the experience to genre-leading heights, but there’s so little to fault and so much to love about it that I’m certain, cat lover or not, it shouldn’t be missed. Stray is a superb achievement for a debut project from a studio in BlueTwelve that I cannot wait to see more from.
Stray does a great job at letting you act like a cat, turning a wide range of true-to-life feline behaviors into clever gameplay mechanics. But it's much less successful at making you truly feel like a cat, as the game's more conventional approach to its gameplay and story routinely shatters your immersion in odd ways. If you can suspend your disbelief and look past the missed opportunity of a more cohesive experience, however, there's a lot to like in its moody cyberpunk world and varied challenges.
Stray is an immersive and beautiful adventure game filled with so much detail and personality. Who knew solving puzzles as a cat could be so much fun?
Stray is a wonderfully crafted game. It not only manages to successfully immerse you in the role of an adorable cat, where exploration is key, but it also tells an engaging science-fiction story along the way.
Even though Stray from BlueTwelve Studio has been out for a year, it’s still a joy to play on the Xbox Series X. The story is still a wonderful journey, the gameplay is still easy-peasy, and the visuals are still out of this-world gorgeous.
What's the secret of earned success? A cat + cyberpunk. A small adventure game from a small developer dazzled the whole world and it doesn’t seem that the spell will break anytime soon. Stray really is an incredible game.
Review in Polish | Read full review
Stray's strength is delivering a fun gameplay experience in playing as one of the world's most adored animals. While its story isn't going to be attempting to say anything new about the world, it's hard to pass up the opportunity to play as a cat.
Stray is an adorable game that has you playing as a cat that fetches things for robots in order to get outside of a large underground shelter. You run away from Zurks and security droids as the villains in this game with very smooth controls other than it not having a dedicated jump button.
A lusciously dense world of natural beauty colliding with cyber-future grimness is ready to be explored from a uniquely tiny perspective. Stray tells a surprisingly emotional tale that instantly grips during its opening moments and doesn't relent until its closing scene. A standout release so far this year, Stray proves to be so much deeper than just a cat adventure game.
Stray is one of those rare games that manage to be narratively intriguing, dynamically fun, and addictively replayable all at once. If you like cats, or even if you just like great adventure games, this is a must-play.
B-12's memories are a kind of collectible you'll have to search for, and a few optional side-quests require scrounging up assorted bric-a-brac, but Stray doesn't make you wander about examining every nook and cranny for something you may or may not actually need. That's a good thing for a videogame, but if you were hoping to really just play as a cat doing cat-like things, "pointlessly searching for stuff you don't need" would be exactly what you wanted. The cat game might be less about the cat and more about the existential crises facing mankind and the artificial intelligences that will be left behind, but at least there's a dedicated meow button.
Stray is a brisk and relentlessly charming adventure that offers a very unique window into a gorgeous sci-fi world. It won't challenge your mind or your reflexes too much but it'll absolutely delight your senses. Importantly, it's a video game with a dedicated 'meow' button, and what could possibly be better than that?
Stray somehow manages to endear at the same time it feels like it's overstaying its welcome. At the end of the day, though, this cat-lover was won over by its sheer charm.
Overall, Stray surprised me in how well it wears its features and themes on its sleeve and how well crafted said features are. It's a game created for cat lovers by cat lovers, but with features and mechanics everyone can enjoy irrespective of age or pet preference. It's just too bad that the journey you'll go on, while memorable, is incredibly short, at only about eight hours long.