One of the games we’ve been looking forward to most this year is Stray, an adventure game about a cat trying to escape a futuristic, dystopian city. Stray was first announced in 2020 but the developers, BlueTwelve Studio, have been secretive about the details since. We don’t know much about the story or the gameplay, but we now know when Stray release date is July 19.
In last weekend’s State of Play stream, PlayStation revealed the release date and dropped a new trailer for Stray, giving us another glimpse at what the developers describes as a “third-person cat adventure game set amidst the detailed neon-lit alleys of a decaying cybercity and the murky environments of its seedy underbelly.”
We know it’s a dystopia because the robot inhabitants of the city run and hide when they see you coming, and only people stuck in a bad timeline would be afraid of a cute cat wearing a little backpack. We also see some classic cat behaviour, finally! Previous Stray trailers have been light on cat content, but this one shows the cat knocking over bottles, sitting on top of a robot’s important work documents and hiding in a box during a stealth section. My cat is currently asleep in a box right now despite having his pick of a bed, my bed and a shelf that I’ve converted into a sleeping nook for him, so this checks out. I was worried that Stray’s cat would be a gimmick — just a cute alternative to playing as a human or a robot — but now I’m feeling more confident that it’ll actually feel like playing as a cat.
Along the way, you’ll befriend a small flying drone named B-12 who’ll help you on your journey by interacting with the city’s inhabitants in the ways a cute little cat can’t, and it looks like he’ll be on call to give you hints or possibly even help you interact with the environment.
Stray is releasing on PS5, PS4 and PC and will be published by Annapurna Interactive. Annapurna has one of the best track records in the business, bringing us games like Outer Wilds, Journey, Thirsty Suitors and The Arful Escape. If Stray is even half as good as these games, it’ll be one of the best games of the year.
