Video games can be a lot of things to a lot of people, and one of those functions can be as machines for empathy. Situating the player in the shoes of another can do a lot to endear oneself to the protagonist’s various struggles, and as such it can operate as an avenue to understanding other perspectives in greater depth. We see that in games like The Last Of Us where the player comes to inhabit a man so wracked with grief and so terrified of being alone that he will do anything, including potentially dooming the human race, to prevent that possible future. Or maybe you’ve played Spec Ops: The Line, a harrowing descent into the abyss of war, and how trauma can manifest as an inescapable hell for those suffering from it. And then, of course, you get a game much in the same vein as those titles: Stray. What perspective is made apparent by Stray? Of course, it’s a game that wants you to know what it’s like to wanna scratch the shit out of every surface you can find, before taking a nap on a robot guy with a cowboy hat. It’s a universal experience!

That’s all mostly a joke, but Stray really does go to great lengths to make you see the world through the eyes of a cat. It’s a game that has a keen understanding of the various mannerisms and oddities of catkind, and tries to apply some semblance of logic to them. Why do cats knock shit off shelves? Well, maybe it’s to solve an elaborate adventure game puzzle. Why do cats nap so much? Perhaps they simply wish to meditate by letting the world move slowly around them as they slumber. Why do cats sometimes stare at you from across the room? Possibly, they’re simply trying to understand you, but lack a funny robot companion who can translate. This manifests in traversal too; what was once an ordinary alleyway is now bursting with possibilities, vents and pipes and edges all jutting out the walls, within prime clambering distance. The verticality afforded to your feline protagonist due to their nimbleness allows you to see parts of the city you might not have previously imagined. Locked doors suddenly become non-issues with the presence of open windows and cracks in walls. It all serves to make an otherwise rather quaint little area feel surprisingly sprawling.

However, that potential for finding hidden secrets and little side stories isn’t quite met by the game itself. All the interesting areas in the game area, for the most part, mandatory to access. They are beautifully designed in their own right, packed with detail and often brimming with a particular melancholic atmosphere, but the lack of optional areas given this level of care can lend a certain artificiality to the world. That’s a real shame since the world itself is deeply engaging and an absolute joy to gradually pick apart. This aforementioned artificiality can make the game feel distinctly designed, which I don’t believe was the intention. The novelty of playing as a cat getting into places it doesn’t belong is hampered somewhat by the rigidity of its controls. The cat doesn’t have a jump button, but instead you can move up and down platforms based on button prompts. For the most part, this is perfectly fine, but by designing the game this way, you lose the sense that you are personally discovering things in the world. If you can’t get somewhere, the game will simply not program the surface to be climbable. More expressive traversal mechanics could have made the process of moving around and solving platforming puzzles feel more personalised and, therefore, memorable. As it stands, the game’s controls are okay and serve it well, but I can help but feel there’s a missed opportunity to achieve something really special here.

This minimalist style of gameplay weakens the overall experience in a few ways, but Stray takes a similarly simplistic approach to its worldbuilding, and in that respect it is absolutely wonderful. As I mentioned earlier, the world of Stray is an incredibly interesting one, and much of that interest stems from the game’s very hands-off approach to its exposition. While the game occasionally sits the player down for some exposition, it rarely takes longer than a couple text boxes and it always serves the ongoing plot. Outside of that, the extent to which the player chooses to engage with the world around them is entirely of their own volition. If you’re like me, you might talk to every NPC you meet, each with unique names and perspectives to share, read all the graffiti littered along the streets, or, alternatively, you can run past it all and try to escape the Dead City as fast as possible. I think this style of worldbuilding suits Stray incredibly well, not least because it’s a game where you play as a cat dropped into a completely foreign environment, surrounded by robots with no concept for what a cat even is. This perspective allows for an objective lens through which the player can judge the world, and it feels organic coming from a character who would much sooner cough up a hairball than read codex entries explaining all the lore.

Through all of this, the game can wordlessly communicate its themes to graceful effect. The robots trapped in the Dead City are, whether they know it or not, constantly mimicking human beings. They began as service bots, created without souls or personalities to call their own. However, they developed those over time, and in doing so learned to recreate and uphold humanity itself, for better and for worse. For every kindly old lady making cozy ponchos, there’s a violent cop cracking down on dissenters in Midtown. The robots wear clothes, go to bars and ramen shops, tend to plants… one of them is described as a hypochondriac, despite other robots expressing an inability to physically feel or smell anything. Their struggles are real, however; the hypochondriac is unable to do his work, even if he isn’t physically experiencing any actual symptoms; robots get drunk and pass out at bars despite the drinks menu advertising high quality air and extra oil. These people are mimicking what they have learned from humans, perhaps in some attempt to get closer to that reality.

However, can humans say they are that different? Of course, we are actually capable of getting sick or being drunk, but are we so sure that we do not delude ourselves with nonsense on a daily basis? The robots also operate a factory in one area of the game, though it is unclear for whom they work or what they’re even making. You need to find a disguise to get in there, and both the hard hat and high-vis jacket are found in shops, as just another role for robots to arbitrarily fill because that’s simply part of being human. The robots of Stray present a reflection of humanity down to the littlest details, and it allows the player an opportunity to reflect. Why are certain roles and systems considered inherently ‘human’? A police force called the Sentinels exists within the population, and their job appears to be to identify bad actors seeking to break free of the mold, and correct their programming, as shown in the prison area later on. Very few robots are capable of recognising a world in which they can be free of these burdens, and any who do dare to dream are quickly silenced. It’s a bleak world to live in, but despite this, the city is filled with people living independent lives, sharing their independent thoughts. No amount of state violence can prevent people from being their full selves. In amongst the despair and melancholy of Stray exists such kernels of hope that make fighting against it as a chaos-propelled cat so easy to do.

This thread of robots mimicking humanity is served well by the protagonist being a cat, because cats are known for being selfish assholes. Cats march to the beat of their own drum, and as such the player character acts as a pure vessel of sorts, unburdened by the need to replicate the behaviours of others. Like I said before, they are agents of chaos, and so what being could be better suited to dismantling this oppressive system of robot existence other than a cat? That being said, the game isn’t anti-humanity by any means. Rather, it sees how humans – or in this case, robots – are often forced to live in a world that limits their ability to be their true selves, and the game asks you to reject that state of being, even when humanity in its organic form is seemingly no more. It communicates this beautiful sentiment that even in extinction, the qualities that make being a human being wonderful continue to live on in spite of that. However, humanity’s negative qualities necessarily pass along as well, but Stray posits that no matter how dire a situation may seem, there is always a chance to make a difference, even if it’s as small as helping a lost cat return home.

Individuals will inevitably pass away, but their beliefs and their stories live on in those they affect in life. Even if it’s the smallest action you can take, you can always make the world a slightly better place for somebody, and that’s a beautiful little lesson to tell in a cute game about a cat and its robot friends.