Rub up against the leg of some Companions and they will emote with a heart. Despite many of them not even knowing what a cat is, referring to it as a quadruped, they have a very human desire and appreciation for the creatures. There’s a knowingness to the Companions’ relationship with the eponymous stray, too. It’s this raw, unadulterated charm, in my opinion, that has captured the hearts and minds of players the world over. These small but significant interactions add to a greater narrative, a sense of self-awareness that Stray has – and one that, I feel, many larger teams and studios would struggle to capture with such nuance. Likewise, there are numerous pianos around the world that you can jump on and walk all over a la keyboard cat multiple instances where your job as the cat is to destroy things by pushing them off ledges with a timid, curled paw and even times when walking across a computer keyboard is a crucial part of plot development. Throughout the game, you and your drone pal B-12 explore and investigate the various dwellings within the walled city in hopes of finding a way to return to the outside world, and as a byproduct, freeing the Companions that are trapped within its walls.Īs a premise, I’d be remiss to say it’s totally innovating the post-apocalypse adventure genre, but what really elevates Stray to the next level is seeing it all through the lens of a cat. The inhabitants of the city are Companions, helper bots abandoned by humanity that, over several centuries, have evolved to mimic the behaviors, beliefs systems, and even aspirations of humans. Stray puts you in control of an orange cat that has been separated from its group of feline friends and thrust into a post-post-apocalyptic cyberpunk city, walled off from the outside world. If you’ve been asking yourself quite why this game has won hearts, look no further than its attention to detail when capturing the joy of cats.

Reporting from Buzzfeed in 2012 even found that, while dogs were more frequently searched for, cat content was much more prone to virality.įast forward to the present and we have Stray, which capitalizes on now-decades of cat legacy on the internet. Now, we had keyboard cat, “No No No” cat, Grumpy cat and, of course, our pop tart pal Nyan cat. Rapidly, the universe of cat memes was expanding. Whether it was one of the earliest cat blogs like M圜atHatesYou or the Infinite Cat Project, memes like Ceiling Cat, Long Cat and Cheeseburger Cat or even the Caturday posts of 4Chan, cat culture was strong and sprawling, spreading quickly from imagery to video as sites like YouTube became more accessible. Some readers may recall a little old site called 'I Can Has Cheezburger?' from back in the day, which posted text memes featuring an array of recurring characters and themes – some of the earliest memes I remember finding on the internet.

Boop the snoot