Stray

Stray is an adventure game played by a single player in a third-person perspective. The player controls a stray cat, who can leap across platforms, climb up obstacles, and open new paths by interacting with the environment, such as clawing at objects, climbing in buckets, overturning paint cans, and operating a vending machine. The narrative progresses by solving puzzles, 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 freely.

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.

When a group of four stray cats trek through the ruins of an abandoned facility, one falls into a chasm leading to an unpopulated underground city, and is separated. 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, known as 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.

BlueTwelve Studio founders Koola and Viv began working on Stray in 2015 as they wanted to pursue an independent project after working at Ubisoft Montpellier. They maintained a development blog for the game, then known as HK Project. After seeing footage on Twitter, Annapurna Interactive reached out in April 2016 to publish the project; Koola and Viv had only developed some early scenes but had a strong direction for the final project. Annapurna, which had not published any games by the time the deal was formed, assisted in building the company over the years, providing occasional feedback but largely leaving creative freedom to the developers.

Funding for the studio was confirmed in April 2017, and the development team grew to five by the end of 2017. From early in development, Koola and Viv knew they wanted to maintain a small team of developers, as they prefer working with direct communication. The small team meant the game's scope reduced over time, with focus directed towards elements the developers considered important. After revealing the game, the team wanted to focus on production and only begin marketing when development was nearing completion; they found the reception to the reveal added to the pressure of delivering a polished experience.

Stray received "generally favorable" reviews, according to review aggregator Metacritic, and 85% of critics recommended the game according to OpenCritic. In Japan, four critics from Famitsu gave the game a total score of 36 out of 40, with one critic awarding the game a perfect 10. Chris Scullion of Video Games Chronicle (VGC) considered it one of Annapurna Interactive's best releases, and Andrew Webster of The Verge named it among the best games of the year to date. VG247's Kelsey Raynor described it as "a touching tale of loss, loneliness, environmental destruction", and Ars Technica's Sam Machkovech declared it a blend of the "eerie, atmospheric exploration" of Half-Life (1998) and the "childlike whimsy of a classic Studio Ghibli film".

Critics praised the graphical quality and art design, especially the use of lighting. The Washington Post's Alyse Stanley described Stray as "a master class in environmental story telling and level design", lauding the subtle directions provided to the player. Shacknews's Bill Lavoy found the world among the most beautifully-designed, praising the detail but criticising the lack of graphical settings. Kotaku's Ari Notis likened the cinematic cutscenes to games by prestigious studios like Naughty Dog.