I would say that playing as the cat initially was cute and quite enjoyable. But the allure of this gimmick wears off rather quickly and you start to see just how bland the game actually is.

Stray is a walking sim. All you do for the entirety of the game is walk, jump around with clunky environmental interaction, and solve “puzzles”.

The puzzles in this game hardly qualify as such. I’ve played Lego games with more challenging puzzles than this. The only time you have to think when playing this game is a couple of fetch questy type sections where you have to run around the map and find specific items to progress.

The world is the most interesting part of Stray. I’d probably say my favorite section of the game is up until you get your robot companion because everything up until that point is mysterious and the vibe of the game is very different. But once the robot joins you it feels like getting strapped into one of those theme park rides from media that’s essentially just a history presentation on a specific event. It feels like a completely different game. The game was much more interesting to me trying to figure out what happened on my own than being told via the robot.

I cannot fathom how this game beat the likes of Neon White, Cult of the Lamb, and Sifu for Best Indie at the Game Awards. Stray has to be the most overrated game from 2022.

By no means is Stray a terrible game but I don’t understand why people are raving about it.