The Most Popular Game of 2022 Is One That Gamers Play as a Cat

You may have heard about Stray, the first adventure game released by independent publishers Annapurna Interactive and developer BlueTwelve Studio. It is marketed as a “third-person cat adventure game” and tells the tale of a street cat who is trying to find its family. The game is set in a world where robots live, complete with detailed neon-lit streets of a decaying cybercity and the murky environs of its sordid underbelly. It appears to be a method that works as the game has now received the top rating on Steam.

The Game Quickly Gained a Lot of Attention

Stray presently has a score of 8.61 on Steam250, which gives Steam games a number based on neutral or favorable user reviews and averages them to indicate their total review. Of the 42,655 votes, 98 percent are positive. This indicates that it has now surpassed the previous leader, God of War, which is ranked second with a score of 8.56 after receiving 53,101 votes and 97 percent favorable ratings.

Based on 23,539 votes and 98 percent good ratings, PowerWash Simulator is ranked third with 8.56 percent, followed by Teardown, Dorfromantik, Neon White, The Looker, Wobbledogs, The Planet Crafter, and Raft. Social media users became immediately hooked with the idea as soon as the game’s first trailer emerged online, which the BlueTwelve team hadn’t fully anticipated.

Meow!

BlueTwelve Studio founders Colas Koola and Vivien Mermet-Guyenet, who wanted to work on an independent project after working at Ubisoft Montpellier, started the game’s development in 2015. The game, which had the working title HK Project, was published in collaboration with Annapurna Interactive. Kowloon Walled City, which the creators believed a cat might correctly explore, had an artistic effect on Stray.

The gameplay was especially influenced by the developers’ cats, Murtaugh and Riggs, and the development team’s research included looking at several cat pictures and videos. They discovered that playing as a cat presented the unique potential for level design, yet they also ran into difficulties balancing design and playability. The team’s choice to populate the planet with robot characters had an additional impact on the story’s arc and history.

A great deal of expectation existed before the big unveiling of Stray in the year 2020. The game was released for Windows, PlayStation 4, and PlayStation 5 on the 19th of July, 2022. The fighting and stealth sequences were met with a variety of responses, but the aesthetic design, cat gameplay, plot, and unique soundtrack received the majority of positive feedback.