when i started playing stray i was kind of shocked at just how different the game was to what i expected, games like this don't just become mainstream hits, what i expected from how people spoke was a fun cyberpunk cat adventure, what i got was a horror platformer influenced by saya no uta and soma, the kind of game that would be a big hit with me and a small group of others but not something you'd expect to be sweeping game awards and being played by the sony first party crowd. this success is very well deserved though because stray really is a one of a kind game that you don't see very often and it ended up being one of the most interesting indie games i've played in a long time.

its a game with a style and gameplay that feels very fresh for horror, a focus on 3D platforming makes it feel super distinct from most other horror games, you have little towns to explore, sewers, apartment buildings, construction sites and saya-esque horror zones covered in flesh and eyeballs and you can jump around all of them, getting in lil nooks and knocking things over and the abandoned areas will have enemies to avoid and a real sense of danger to them, it doesn't shy away from the death, though i turned off the death animations the second i could, it's just too much for me to handle. these areas don't feel like the focus of the game to me though, that would be the towns, all three of them are full of fun (and really cutely designed) NPCs to talk to, sidequests like a musician bot that needs sheet music or a small store you can collect drink cans to buy things from and you have memories to find for your robot companion and they all have super distinct looks and vibes, the kowloon inspired lower town, a tree-village in the sewers and a neon-lit upper town full of police-bots and holograms, each feels like a mini-yakuza town and they're a well needed break from the horrors on the outside, like if a resi save room was an RPG town. the rest of it is mostly the platforming and some very basic puzzles, resident evil item collecting and some key-codes and some chases when enemies show up, it all works well and makes it feel like a 3D platformer mixed with a traditional survival horror game, and then there is the fact that you are just a cat, the main aspect that makes it unique, it makes everything feel so big and changes how you interact with the world massively, you can't really do combat so you just run and you can get places nobody else can, it's also just cute, cats are the best, play it for that reason alone.

the soundtrack (by Yann Van der Cruyssen of cave story and knytt underground) is amazing too, some parts to me also feel saya-y and others feel very, i don't know how to explain other than just calling it cat music, it's a unique mix of songs and it's a great soundtrack overall that gives the game its unique atmosphere, making you feel like exploring but giving you a sense of dread at the same time, music is even an unlockable with extra songs during being the reward for the musician sidequest, says a lot that you acually *want* to go out of your way for this music, it's one of the best ambient osts i've heard all year and can stand up with some of the best i've heard in a horror game, with the likes of silent hill and rule of rose. the story is also super interesting, it sets up a very cool post-post apocalyptic world, there's a ton of cool optional worldbuilding you can find with the memories and you actually start to really care for the people inside it, it's actually really interesting how it functions and theres so much optional dialogue and details you can find in the environment to flesh it all out fully, the main plot itself isn't super in depth but it has a lot of really fun characters that have lil arcs as you progress, its a good story but the world and its people are the focus and the most interesting part.

the game did release to a bit of contravercy around its length though, which i think is a little weird, it's about 5 hours long, maybe a little less, which is fine, great even, we need more solid short games that you can get through in a sitting or two, not every game has to be a bloated AC style experiance thats 100 hours with meaningless sidequests and loot drops, the idea every game has to be long is ridiculous and hurting a lot of more modern experiances i think, 5 hours for the price it went for (which wasn't even full price) is ideal and we need to stop judging games negatively based on their short length, its also just impressive to me that we even got what we did out of it, this was the teams first real game and one of the two directors (colas koola) first game and the other had mostly done small stuff at ubisoft on games like beowulf and zombiu ( vivien mermet-guyenet) and i think it deserves a lot of credit for what they were able to accomplish with what they had to work with, it's a great game and well worth the time you spend on it, i'd rather have a creative and new game that takes me 5 hours than the same procgen slop for 100 hours like in many major releases that do pad for runtime.