Stray is a pleasant puzzle adventure with a very lively kitten

During this summer, I looked for the nicest way I could find to entertain myself in moments of leisure alone, or boredom. I tried with TV series (but at a certain point I can’t watch 10 hours of episodes a day), I tried with books, but none particularly fascinated me (some too heavy, others too oriented to professional, others very long), and also videogames.

I tried many videogames not only this summer, but also before: this summer, however, Sony offered me 3 months free of Playstation Plus Premium with which I could download a variety of games. After many tests, I realized that the type of video game I like most is adventure and puzzle. Something like Super Mario Odyssey, which also adds the platformer element, or Uncharted, which also inserts RPG logic. These games, however, are very long: like a book of many hundreds of pages.

Stray, on the other hand - an indie game that costs 40€ and which was heavily promoted by Sony itself - is the right balance between longevity and intensity, at least for my tastes. It is available for users who have at least the subscription to PS Plus Extra.

Playing Stray is like reading a book of 200-300 pages: it can be a quick thing (if you follow only the main story, about 4-5 hours), or it can last a little longer if you deepen the details and return to some scenes to appreciate at best (8 hours to play all the extras and complete all trophies, according to GameTrack user statistics).

In Stray you take on the role of a kitten who gets lost in an underground city that was created following the outbreak of an epidemic to preserve the human race. The humans, in the meantime, have all died and left room for robots, which have taken the habits and customs of their creators (very extravagant scenes where you see robot barbers, robot cooks but not only) even if they don’t need them.

There are 4 main settings, divided into 12 chapters, and access to each setting closes access to the previous one, even if the chapters can be replayed. What I liked most about Stray is the ability to show the way to the player without giving too many clues. In Stray there is no data in overlay, there are no complicated sequences of keys to making moves in every situation: with X you jump, with square you interact with objects, and with triangle you make feline moves, like scratching a wall or a rug, taking a nap or knocking objects to the ground.

In the eyes of a player who has learned all the commands but hasn’t played yet, everything appears as a potential clue to pass the level. There are no clear instructions, but only general indications: who to find, in which area to search and what needs to be done to move forward. But the operation that actually needs to be done is not mechanical, but intuitive after a bit of reasoning. In some levels, I lost almost an hour looking for things that I then discovered I was looking for starting from wrong assumptions. Other times, however, I finished a level in a few minutes.

Although I must have spent at least a total hour of the 7 hours I took to get to the end to admire and wander in the beautiful settings with breathtaking photography.

In these 7 hours, I feel I have read and lived a beautiful story with a sweet and nice protagonist who does not speak. And that I had a lot of fun.