One week ago, a video game called Stray was released. The title was seven years in the making. Its premise is simple: you’re a cat that needs to find your way back to your cat friends. You’re not a superpowered cat or anything like that. Just a normal feral cat.
Along the way, you enlist the help of a little drone that docks on your back and meet robots, each with its own quirks and personalities and needs and wants. You get to see a world inspired by urban Hong Kong through the eyes of a small, four-legged creature, leaping onto small surfaces as you navigate the space in every direction, learning how alleyways intersect and pouncing upward to reach rooftops.
The entire game takes around six hours to complete—more if you’re particular about exploring every detail. You play it alone (perhaps with your real-life cat lounging by your screen as a curious observer), and every task that is accomplished pushes the narrative forward. You learn a little bit more about the game’s world until you reach the end.
It’s refreshing to see a game that’s self-contained in a way that delivers a story—an experience—that is meaningful and then not ask for more. KrASIA has covered many facets of the video game industry, from the business of e-sports to the application of blockchain technologies to develop GameFi. There’s plenty more in this space to uncover, but for the game developers who are following us, the occasional artful one-shots deserve some airtime too.
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