If you’re into video games at all, you’ve probably seen the trailer at some point for BlueTwelve Studio’s dystopian “cat with a backpack” game—even if you haven’t played it yet for yourself. If you have, you’ve probably spotted some of the nightmare fuel this otherwise fairly innocent-looking game sneaks in from time to time. And if you’re a cat lover like me, you’ve probably been wondering: is Stray actually a horror game?
The short answer is no. It’s best categorized as simply an action-adventure game. But the honest, more complicated answer is: sometimes.
(Minor spoiler alert—I won’t be discussing any major plot points in this post, but I will be talking about basic gameplay as well as enemy types and death animations, so be ye warned.)
‘Stray’ Is Not a Horror Game—Most of the Time
Of Stray’s ten total chapters, only about four feel truly horrifying. Most of the time, the game feels more like Nier: Automata in terms of the look and feel—sans the lingerie.
Stray is set in a cyberpunkish future without humans, populated by robots, cats, and awful creatures called Zurks that look and act like overgrown ticks. More often than not, it’s a sci-fi adventure that balances most of its gameplay between exploration, puzzle-solving, and stealth.
The dialogue is rife with pop culture references (my favorite being Doc and his Defluxor, which of course requires 1.21 gigawatts of power to function), and if you’re anything like me, you’ll spend a lot of time rubbing on robot legs to show affection, taking cat naps in cozy corners, and knocking random objects off of ledges just for fun—not only when the game asks you to.
But now and then, things take a dark turn—and boy, was I not ready for it.
The Dark Side of ‘Stray’
Being a dystopian game is, in a way, inherently dark. Humans have gone extinct. The outside world got so dangerous that even robots are afraid to venture into the unknown. And as the titular stray cat, you’re just an itty bitty kitty in a big city—a city infested with Zurks.
For me, the Zurks were the worst thing. They’re biologically-engineered nightmares the size of small dogs that can eat anything—yes, even robots, but also and much more importantly, cats. If you get caught, you get eaten.
The death animation here isn’t gory or gruesome, thankfully. The stray just utters a defeated little “mew” and collapses under a pile of Zurks, and the screen fades to black. So it’s not as bad as it could be. But that little “mew” gets me every time. So if you’re sensitive… try not to die?
The other major threat is sentinels—flying enemy drones on security detail in certain late-game levels. These aren’t scary in and of themselves, but I found out the hard way that if you get caught, you don’t just get arrested. You get shot. Again, it’s not gory—there’s no blood, just sparks from the bullets on your harness as you collapse—but the idea itself, to me, is absolutely horrifying.
And let’s not forget level design. Most of the time you’re in a decaying urban sprawl of some kind, a little creepy at times but not too intense. But then you find yourself somewhere like the sewers, which are covered in walls of pulsating flesh straight out of Amnesia: The Dark Descent and hundreds of eyeballs that stare at you and glare at you when you do something they don’t like—I still don’t know what consciousness these eyeballs are connected to, because I haven’t finished diving into the lore—and suddenly yes, Stay is a horror game.
It’s not for long, and it’s only some of the time. But still—in the words of another famous animated cat, “be prepared.”
All of that being said… I enjoyed Stray very much. It’s a bit clunky—it certainly doesn’t look or feel like a PS5 game, which is what I played it on—but it’s a great concept and a decent story, and it’s a lot of fun.
Just have a cat (or cat plush) ready to cuddle—because you’ll probably need a good snuggle by the end of the game.
When Kim Berkley isn’t writing books or games, she’s reading or playing them—or making friends with cats, stray or otherwise. Want more content like this? Sign up for her newsletter today; you’ll never miss a post!
