A couple of observations about this beautiful game.
Just as with Untitled Goose Game, we're discovering the power of playing from a radically different perspective.
That’s something I always loved from games such as The Last of Us, the realization of how different you feel and behave when controlling radically different characters. The value in games like Stray is that they take this notion and push it to a new boundary.
The importance of world and level design to support such a decision.
Stray works because the world in which you are immersed presents advantages and challenges to what you can do when playing with this character. Those affordances are radically different from what we’re used to. This reminds me of Nier: Automata, where you play as an android. It takes some getting used to when you start playing the game because even though your character has a human form, it is not bound by human limitations. You can run forever and never get tired. You can dodge in ways no human could, and even “phase out” becoming invulnerable for a couple of seconds. All this needs to be internalized by the player in order to succeed at traversing the excellent world the game presents.
The usefulness of harnessing a meme, coupled with a clear game concept.
It’s no secret that cats hold a special place in the age of the internet, and have become one of the great memes of our generation. Memes have a virus-like behavior, infecting every host they get and using them to spread further. Harness that power and mix it with a one-liner idea such as “you’re a lost cat in a cyberpunk world with no humans and only robot societies” and you get a viral game.
All in all, brilliant cultural product. My congratulations to Blue Twelve Studios. I predict this trend will continue to rise, and even occupy a significant segment of the metaversal experiences in the future.
