The Buildup to ‘Stray’ Reminds Me of ‘Untitled Goose Game’
Throughout my life, cats have always been my favorite kind of pet. Half my phone’s camera roll consists of (mostly) my cats – several of which would, to an outside observer, probably look just the same as the rest. On my morning walks to the gym, I catch the attention of the neighborhood strays lurking in flower beds, the underside of parked vehicles, sometimes splayed out in the driveway. And when I return home, I don’t have time to hang my keys before at least one of my cats is twirling its tail around my calves, seeking attention. My ceaseless fascination with and adoration of cats extends, of course, to video games.
Many of my favorite video games contain cats in one form or another. I think foremost of Night in the Woods, a story reckoning with adulthood, belonging, and purpose, where you play as an angsty cat, Mae Borowski. This anthropomorphized take on playable cats in video games has extended itself quite broadly beyond Night in the Woods itself, leading to incredible moments like the recently raised banner of Mae at a Portland Timbers soccer match, declaring, “From Stonewall a brick, and Portland an axe, respect our pride or expect our wrath.” Clearly Mae has resonated with the LGBTQIA+ community, amongst others. This simplicity and charisma of her design is both relatable and symbolic, but neither quality properly captures the essence of playing a ‘cat’ in a simulated sense.
Cats in video games most commonly appear in this anthropomorphized manner, including more of my favorites like Morgana from Persona 5 Royal, Miu from Mutazione, and the Dream King from Wandersong. On the other hand, the spinoff Twitter account ‘Can You Pet The Cat?’ comes to mind as a delightful counterexample to this design tendency. Taking direct inspiration from the viral ‘Can You Pet The Dog?’ account, this cat-centric page highlights massive games like Assassin’s Creed: Valhalla, The Elder Scrolls Online, and even forthcoming indies like Planet of Lana – where the common observation is that you can, in fact, pet the cat in this game. There are other games like Judgment where instead of petting the cats, you hunt for them with your camera like a detective. Even Sea of Thieves, a game that I seldom play, convinced me to spend real-world money on microtransactions simply so I could have a fluffy boy roam the rails of my pirate ship. The common thread in all of these cat-related examples is that these cats are not playable characters and, if they are playable at all, they do not behave like cats do. Nevertheless, cats belong in video games.
The Appeal of Stray
Enter Stray, Annapurna Interactive’s forthcoming game this summer. From the moment this game was announced, cat lovers like myself took to the internet to express enthusiasm for the project. And while the initial reveal trailer didn’t clearly demonstrate a sense of what the game is about, how it plays, and so on, I was not alone in immediately seeking out more information about Stray, wishlisting it with anticipation. I tend not to overexcite myself about yet-to-be-released games, as I have repeatedly burned myself with release window marketing hype. (Ghostwire: Tokyo is a recent example that comes to mind.) There have simply been too many games that overpromised and underdelivered that I try to use restraint and wait a few months for newer games when possible. I do not see myself waiting with Stray.
The appeal of a game like Stray is multiple in nature. I think the most fundamental strength of this game’s presentation is its simple premise: you play as a cat. As marketing has begun to drip-feed interested players, the actions you appear to take in Stray are cat-like in nature. It may seem fatuous to get this excited about a game where, at the point of this writing, some of Annapurna’s reveals for Stray have included riding in a bucket as fast travel, batting objects off tall surfaces like tables, and scratching at a random part of a wall. But the internet, like myself, seems in desperate desire for these interactions and simulations that were undoubtedly designed by cat lovers. (There’s an entire article devoted to the real cats that inspired Stray’s design if you need some extra ‘aw’ in your day.)
Stray dips its aesthetics into the cyberpunk genre, with cramped alleyways, robotic beings, and neon signs reflecting in the warm glow of street puddles. But that’s apparently as far from realism as the game wants to go, which I think is another strength of this game’s marketing thus far. There doesn’t appear to be a skill tree of upgrades for this playable cat; rather, it appears that the primary focus of Stray’s design is to answer the question that every cat owner has daydreamed about: what would it be like to live as a cat? And while I don’t expect this game to lean into literal realism, seeking vacant litter boxes and pulling apart the neighborhood varmints, the appeal here is instead the basic commitment to a moveset of cat-like functions set in an environment that visually harkens a labyrinthine series of hidey-holes to disappear into while exploring and puzzle-solving.
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A Bizarre Comparison: Stray is like Untitled Goose Game
As wild as this comparison may seem, I think Stray is gaining memetic traction online in a way that I have certainly seen before – albeit with a different animal: Untitled Goose Game. Plenty of people online are simply referring to Stray as ‘that cat game by Annapurna’ in the same manner that Goose Game’s appeal wasn’t captured by its title either.
With Untitled Goose Game, almost anyone who expressed interest in the game was able to relate to troublesome geese. Specifically, many people have experiences due to the infiltration of the Canada goose (the angry comment Epilogue received when I called them “Canadian geese” in my review will forever haunt me) into places they otherwise wouldn’t belong. Sometimes geese cross the street without regard for traffic, and suddenly everyone is late to work; at my university, I had to constantly monitor the sidewalk to class, as routinely it would be covered in geese droppings like a Pollock painting from hell. So the very premise of Untitled Goose Game – independent of what actions you’d actually take in the game itself – was enough to break out of the usual sphere of video game conversations and into mainstream cultural circles.
Stray may not hit the same peak of cultural conversation that Untitled Goose Game did, but the buildup to the release itself is also parallel in nature. That is, especially in terms of memes, as well as the in-jokes between game developers on Twitter, Stray seems to be catching on in terms of what people are saying about it, how they are treating it as an intellectual property, and how it fits into the ‘metaverse,’ for lack of a better term, of gaming.
Parallels Between the Memes
Briefly, it is worth revisiting 2019’s eruption of Goose Game memes to appreciate the parallels happening right now with Stray. I would strongly recommend scrolling through each of these articles on their own, but I will highlight a few memorable goose memes that have been preserved in each. Nicole Carpenter’s article for Polygon, “Untitled Goose Game memes are reaching critical mass,” showcases the goose in parodical roles for ‘Metal Goose Solid,’ ‘Agent Goose,’ and ‘GTA: VI,’ respectively. Danny Paez’s article, “What Is ‘Untitled Goose Game’? 6 Memes to Explain the Weird New Release,” showcases the goose in bizarre crossovers with massively popular cartoon characters like Arthur, Garfield, and Moe from The Simpsons. And, of course, post-release, Untitled Goose Game continued in the conversation as cultural analysts and pundits began connecting the dots between the goose character and political posting. Amrita Khalid’s article, “How Untitled Goose Game became a left-wing meme,” expertly dissects the manner in which the goose became to symbolize more than video games.
While I am not saying that we will close 2022 with a political analysis of Stray, I would strongly suggest that the former memetic dimensions of Stray’s extra-textual staying power is already in effect. Aside from Annapurna releasing five second trailers with captions like, “knock things over as a cat,” before the internet explodes with delirium, other game developers are getting in on the joke. The first meme that caught my eye is a photo of Kratos from God of War (2018) pensively holding the cat from Stray in his outstretched palms. Whomever runs the Annapurna Twitter account quote-tweeted Sony Santa Monica Studios, creators of God of War, jesting, “idk if this is approved lore.” Cory Barlog, God of War’s director, immediately replied, “Oh, yes. It’s fuckin’ canon now.”
This level of absurd crossovers took another form with a tweet from No Code, developers of Observation, who tagged Annapurna with the “crossover no one saw coming,” and a picture of Emma Fisher holding Stray’s cat in an abandoned space station. Around one hour after initially writing this article, Playstation UK tweeted out a picture of the Stray cat in a BB pod from Death Stranding. Later in the same day, forthcoming indie Little Kitty, Big City tweeted a photo of the two game’s respective cats sitting together. Seeing the shift of memes from user-made to developer-made, as well as the shift from AAA to indie intellectual properties, I expect this will be far from the last meme-worthy crossover between Stray and other games. Personally, I need to see Stray’s cat somehow hunting rats in A Plague Tale: Requiem, which also releases later this year.
Stray looks excellent, from its premise to its aesthetics, and Annapurna Interactive seldom misses when it comes to scouting interesting titles from indie developers. This combination of compelling trailers, sharp marketing, and Annapurna’s generally excellent track record sets Stray towards the top of my most anticipated games for this year. And while it’s unwise to pre-order games off trailers alone, and I am incredibly eager to see what the critical reception to Stray looks like by release day, I have every reason to believe that Stray will be met with love and praise when it finally releases.
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