The novelty of playing as a cat in Stray quickly leads to impressive realizations. Especially in a platform puzzle like this one, where we first go exploring, climbing up the sides of buildings to find unorthodox routes or jumping on furniture to see which objects we can manipulate, Stray makes such behavior more natural, as we can see that the cat is not only a cat, but also a cat, and that the cat is not a cat, but a cat, and that the cat is not a cat.

Moggy's feel is important here, and it is obvious how much observational work has gone into her animation. The slender ginger tabby is one of a small feline colony living in a disused industrial area that has long since been reclaimed by nature. When the game begins, your gang waits out the storm in a concrete shelter, where they can play a little fight and sniff and paint each other. All of these interactions are well-detailed, with ear movement, spinning, and stretching, and if you like cats (as I do), "Stray" has a "meow" sound to it.

The next morning, with leaves still dripping from last night's downpour, you and your companions venture outside. In between jumping up steps and over gaps, you might pause at a puddle or use a tree trunk as a convenient scratching post. At first glance, it seems cogent that a jump can be made only when a button appears on a nearby shelf, box, or pipe, and a landing is guaranteed. But this system is ideally suited to the suppleness of an animal with a deliberate purpose, looking around its environment for places that are clearly reachable, rather than frantically jumping. And while there are moments when "Stray" abuses its control, such as when it refuses to jump simply because a barrel or box is not part of its original path, the overall result is a clever and satisfying loop of pause, look, and leap that sustains the cat's illusion.

Indeed, the rhythm of prowling and pouncing introduced in the opening minutes would have kept me entertained for some time on its own. As the sure-footed avatar leaps into the breach, the rusty pipe betrays her, breaking under her weight, and she tumbles and tumbles some more into the darkness. She is now in the not-so-idyllic setting of a trash-strewn ruin. Looking up, she sees a halo in the distance, from which a plaintive cry echoes. It's a gut punch from such an innocent beginning. When was the last time you cared so much about the fate of a game's protagonist?

The game continues with another journey to the summit, revealing the fate and legacy of the extinct human race along the way. As the surface became toxic, it seems that people built underground cities, only to meet their end regardless, long before the outside blossomed again. All that remains are the android servants of the past and a horde of nasty beasts called zooks that exist only to chew up anything that moves, like the baby headcrabs in Half-Life.

At various stages of your adventure, you must pass through zerk-infested territory. They are usually characterized by an unsightly, stringy, gooey coating, as if a giant pizza had exploded. At first, the only way to survive the zers is to speed through the stream of squealing masses, sprinting across the screen to avoid being caught by the zers. Later, if you spot a zurk blocking your route, you must trick the zurk into chasing you with taunting squeals. None of this is particularly burdensome, though, and you can certainly get caught, but these sections mainly serve as a change of pace in between the more leisurely hardships.

You will also quickly find friends to offer technical guidance. If you hop the concrete peaks of the city, under the watchful eye of surveillance cameras, a number of neon signs seem to be directing you to some specific place. Follow the path and you'll encounter an AI called B-12, which uploads itself into a small drone and uses a 3D printer to build a harness around the cat and store itself there. b-12 is now your partner, talking to the robot, hacking doors, It's the mouth and hands you need to talk to the robot, hack doors, and store puzzle-solving items.

Once you arrive at the little oasis in the hustle and bustle that the robots call home, your buddy is your most dependable. Disorganized streets framed by neon signs with nicely inverted edgy cyberpunk connotations bring a healthy glow to the sun-deprived enclave, where B-12s can get information from and help the androids, and where the androids are often the only ones who can help the androids, and where the androids are the only ones who can help the androids. For example, a barter robot trades useful knick-knacks for energy drinks, and a guitarist finds sheet music for them to play a song.

These androids are not merely quest givers; they are essential supporting players. It is fascinating to see how machines made by humans inherit bits and pieces of their makers' dead cultures. They wear human clothing and express themselves with monitor heads crowned with hair made of wire webs. It is a fashion consciousness born of half-understood imitation, but because it is not socially programmed, it feels authentic. At the same time, they have no standards of meeting cats, so they stand silently by when you jump on the table or knock over a cup. In other words, they're like every minor RPG NPC you've ever met: they're not really there, they're just there.

You also get to move around this populated settlement and its interior in all directions when you jump on the bar next to a fallen drinker or jump between the bookshelves in a researcher's lab. 3D game worlds are a mix of things that don't move and things that fly or break at the slightest touch. It can be a tricky combination, but from a cat's perspective, that's how things work. Most things are too heavy to get in the way, with the exception of empty bottles and piles of books that wobble after you jump on them. And despite occasional visual anomalies such as clipping and brief animation glitches, "Stray" creates a believable logic to the way a fun-sized tiger moves through space.

This allows the kitten's mischievous and inquisitive nature to be fully appreciated. A trash can on wheels or an air conditioner can quickly ascend vertically, or if it goes up on the roof, it will peck paint cans off the shelves. Or how about going to ground level and entering a house to pull down the curtains or scratch the rugs? But making a minor mess seems more like a side effect of natural curiosity, traversing a world not built for instinct, rather than gratuitous. You are not clumsily destroying places; you are expressing yourself, strongly encouraged by the game design.

The game keeps you oscillating between play and danger. As the determined cat gradually returns to the surface, you will make new robotic friends, help them achieve their goals, get trapped, and learn about the history of this buried city in its meticulously detailed ruins. so there is plenty of room left to enjoy the world-building or simply be a cat. [Adding tension to the jump sequences or complexity to the puzzles. Because it doesn't, some sequences get stuck in slow gear. For example, a scene in which the fight back against the zer is reduced to a confrontation with a series of retreats and gunshots (and with the bland digital capabilities of the B-12 taking center stage instead of the fluffy protagonist's abilities), does not evolve enough to escape the feeling of a lack of originality, and does not perform well enough to avoid the well-rehearsed tasks along genre lines.

Still, "Strait" makes up for such shortcomings by making room for the next idea before each idea leaves a stain and serves as a mere part of an ensemble. But more than that, it remains a true marvel in the way it makes the familiar clichés of adventure games ring with smoother, cleaner mechanics. Rather than simulating human interaction in broad strokes, it builds a fragile but impactful interdependence between cat and robot. Stray's commitment to this premise, packed with the nuances of both feline and android life, is a triumph.

Throughout, the joy of playing the cat never stops. Perhaps the greatest compliment I can give "Stray" is that even the unguarded stealth sequences in the final third are not only tolerable but actually entertaining. Like so much of the game, the characters make it work. What it lacks in complexity, it more than makes up for in agility and adaptability. If only more games had such keen intuition.