Stray (PC/PS5/PS4) - Third-Person Cat Adventure - July 19, 2022

[6souls]

Developed by BlueTwelve Studio

Several years ago, a few gifs were released about a game concept called HK_Project where you play as a cat in a strange city. Those gifs got a lot of attention, but no one really knew what they were. Well, we’re here to share a little more about Stray, the cat adventure game that began as HK_Project.

I remember that I was having a pint of fresh beer with BlueTwelve co-founder Koola, on the « Place des beaux-arts » in Montpellier, France. The summer sun was shining and we were thinking about a cool game idea to pursue as independent developers after working at Ubisoft for long time. We wanted to find an original idea, interesting enough to keep us excited throughout the years of development.

Kowloon Walled City kept coming up in our discussions. Such a unique, organic place was fascinating to us. We thought it was a great basis for a universe, but it really clicked when we realized: “What a better playground than Kowloon for… a cat!”

The concept was crazy enough for us to move forward, so we rented a flat together and started working on what was called Project_HK at the time.

After our first few posts on Twitter, we got a lot of heartwarming feedback. Thank you so much to all those people who sent us those supportive messages over the years. It really gave us a great feeling and energy to keep pushing on this idea. In April of 2016, Annapurna Interactive reached out to us, and they have been a tremendous support to help us put an experienced team together and realize our vision for Stray.

Creating a virtual cat

Our goal is to create a unique experience playing as a cat. We are inspired everyday by Murtaugh and Riggs, our two cats. Most of the team are cat owners as well, giving us all a lot of helpful first-hand references. Cats are always so playful, cute and lovingly annoying that it’s an endless stream of gameplay ideas for us.

It is also a very unique point of view for an adventure game. Exploring the strange world we are building feels really fresh when you’re sneaking under a car, or walking the rooftops with the inhabitants below unaware of your presence. Or if you want them to be aware, you can just meow endlessly to annoy them.

PlayStation 5

The short teaser that we just released highlights the tone and feel of the game, including the mysterious city and weird robots that dwell there. Later on we’ll be excited to show you more of the gameplay like exploration and puzzle-solving, as well as fast-paced action sequences.

The new generation of PlayStation is an amazing opportunity for us. We always loved adding a crazy amount of detail in what we create, and we’re going to continue to explore all that this exciting piece of hardware offers us as creators.

The game is very much still in development and the whole team at BlueTwelve Studio is hard at work to give you the best possible feline experience.

https://blog.playstation.com/2020/06...a-interactive/
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1332010/Stray/

[-Zer0-]

Fuck it. Let's do this.

[6souls]

Delayed to 2022, PS4 Version Added

[6souls]

[6souls]

"Free" to PS+ Extra and Premium Subscribers

Finally! After so many years of hard work, we have our release date: Stray will be publicly available on July 19, 2022! And as you may have seen during today’s State of Play, we’re excited to confirm Stray will also be available to PlayStation Plus Extra and Premium members* at that time.

This really means everything to our small but oh-so-dedicated team, and we can’t wait to see people explore this world that we put so much heart and passion into making.

The vision for this game – initially named “HK Project” – started seven years ago by Koola and Viv, the co-founders of BlueTwelve Studio. It really is amazing to see that it is now an actual full-fledged game and will be experienced and hopefully enjoyed by so many players all across the world very soon. We have developed and learned so much along the way. Of all the unexpected challenges and discoveries we found, creating an interactive cat was definitely the most tricky one!

Trying to control a cat – whether it’s in real life or when making a video game – is definitely not a walk in the park! From the very beginning, we knew that the controls and animations of our star character needed to be absolutely spot-on in order to properly convey this exhilarating feeling of skills and movement. So Miko, our cat animator, took the challenge to heart and spent considerable time looking for images and video references. The good and somewhat surprising thing we found is this: It really seems that the whole internet was basically invented for the sole purpose of hosting loads of cute cat pictures and videos! So we ended up having a lot of very good material to work with for references.

Also about 80% of the people from the team are cat owners (or are being owned by a cat depending on how you look at it) and we even have two cats in the studio working with us almost everyday! They are called Oscar and Jun and – even if they are not the most productive employees to be honest – they definitely add a lot of cheerful liveliness to the studio.

Seeing them interact with objects around the office (even sometimes shutting down our computers at the worst possible moment!) gave us quite a lot of inspiration for the various cat interactions that are possible throughout the game. And of course they all have been reviewed and approved by Jun and Oscar themselves!

But all of those efforts bringing the cat to life were made so that people can properly enjoy exploring as a cat in the game. We are so excited to finally be able to show a glimpse of some new environments like “Antvillage” in our release trailer which is this village built around a huge reservoir. It’s a good example of how the cat’s exceptional abilities allow us to have more freedom in our level design, especially vertically to explore highs and lows in the world.

When we decided to add the backpack and the small drone called B-12 that follows the cat everywhere, it opened up a new layer of ways to interact and learn about the environment for us. Especially the ability to talk with the characters of the world was really important to convey some fundamental points about the environment or learn a bit more backstory from several of its inhabitants.

https://blog.playstation.com/2022/06...a-and-premium/

[6souls]

https://twitter.com/SkillUpYT/status...15229262639104

[-Zer0-]

I'm only an hour or so in but I love this game so much. It's so silly, simple, and the atmosphere is engaging.

[Athas]

According to the reviews, the meow button is putting in work.

[Ksandra]

Loving the game. I think I am about halfway. I will say the puzzles are overall easy, but still very enjoyable to do as a relaxing game.

[Salodin]

Very easy, very zen game. Not what I expected gameplay wise, but it's fine. At $30 it's not a hard sell

Sent from my SM-G996U using Tapatalk