Facts: Games with animals as a protagonist.
“Stray” allows the player to take control of a cat. Here are some other animals from the game world:
Sonic – the world’s most famous blue hedgehog can curl up into a ball and run super fast.
Yoshi – The green dinosaur has its tongue as its main weapon.
Link – In “The legend of Zelda: Twilight princess”, Link is transformed into a wolf.
Donkey Kong: Kong and his monkey buddies throw tongues and hang in vines.
Crash – The Badger Crash can defeat the enemy by spinning like a whirlwind.
Endling – On July 19, “Endling” is released, a game where the player takes control of one of the last foxes on earth.
“Solve an ancient mystery to escape a long-forgotten city”. This is how “Stray”, French Blue Twelve Studios’ debut game, is presented. It may not sound unique, but if you add that a cat is in the lead role, there are few – if any – similar titles.
The idea began with the studio’s founders’ fascination with Kowloon’s walled city, an unregulated and extremely densely populated part of what was then British-ruled Hong Kong.
– They realized that this would be a perfect playground for a cat, with different aisles and ways to get around, says Swann Martin-Raget, producer at Blue Twelve.
The majority of the barely 20 people in the studio are cat owners, and there are even two office cats.
– There were some things that cats do that were important for us to get in the game. Getting the animations, the flow and making the game feel right was the most challenging.
The human-like, angular robots should contrast with the cute, agile cat. Press image. Started from scratch
Games based on humans can often benefit from the tools that have been developed in the gaming world over the years to make movements feel natural. But few games contain cats, and even fewer let you control them. For Blue Twelve, it was about watching videos of cats, and their own, and from the ground up building the cat’s movement pattern.
– There were many interesting challenges. But making a cat that feels believable and fun to play was definitely tricky to achieve, he says.
Swann Martin-Raget is himself a cat owner, and his own cat (pictured) was one of several used as a reference in its creation. Press image.
The game’s cat can, for example, scratch on a sofa (something that Martin-Raget is very fond of) put down objects and of course jump.
– We watched classic platform games, where the jumping itself is a challenge. There the player often misses and falls down. But that’s not how a cat moves in our imagination. There they are always flexible, says Martin-Raget.
The solution was that the cat always manages its hopes. In practical terms, a symbol is continuously moved to the place where the cat can currently jump, and if the player presses the jump button, the cat makes a shot there.
The cat travels through alleys in an environment inspired by a special area that previously existed in Hong Kong. Press image.Inspired by “Bladerunner”
Otherwise, there are some puzzles to be solved, missions to be completed and enemies to be avoided. There are no direct battles with precipitated claws. The cat can also, with the help of its robot friend B-12, communicate with the strange human-like robots that populate the world.
– The environments are very inspired by films like “Bladerunner”. We have worked a lot with contrasts. The cat that is cute and alive and the robots that are cool and angular, says Martin-Raget.
The game will be released on July 19 on PC and for Playstation 4/5.
– The ones we really want to make happy are cat owners. Because we have done our best to portray the cats in a good way. The game is like a love letter to the cat. But anyone who likes adventure games in a new context can probably find interest in the game, says Swann Martin-Raget.