Stray

Orange cats are Jellicle cats. I could could happily ramble about the nature of a Jellicle cat for hours, and explain how they can fly on a broomstick to places far distant or sing, in more than one key, duets by Rossini and waltzes by Strauss, or even more importantly, how Jellicle cats can, would, and do, but suffice it to say that orange cats are Jellicle cats because they’re hopelessly mad. It’s as simple as that; they’re bonkers, they’re unhinged, they’re creatures of chaos, without an ounce of civilized thought to be found inside their little heads. In Stray, we play with a brave orange cat. And, true to form, they’re Jellicle.

Our orange cat lives in a post-apocalyptic world where humanity has been possibly devoured by little insectoids that make adorable noises or met an even worse end. After a tense chase sequence, where our cat has barely escaped with their life, with those voracious cute creatures bursting out of eggs, coming out of crevices and alleys to try to hop on their back and eat them whole, they come across a carpet and, well, they can stop to scratch it for a whole minute, without a care in the world. A truly Jellicle thing to do.

And when they’re exploring an abandoned library – its owner long gone – our cat, always familiar with candle, with book and with bell, can find a cozy place to settle in for a nap – and if we let them sleep for a full hour, we even unlock a Jellicle achievement. Lucky us. Our friends are sure to be impressed.

Our cat had friends once, too, but when they were exploring the upper part of a gigantic wall covered in vines and post-apocalyptic vegetation (that bright, lively kind of vegetation covering concrete that makes us go “wow, this fictional apocalypse is more beautiful than our real-life world”), a pipe they were using as a bridge broke down, leading our orange friend to fall down a hole. Don’t worry, though, for Jellicle cats always land on their feet when falling on their head. Actually, worry just a little, as they ended up in a necropolis populated by robots and monstrous insects, so it’s not all sunshine and rainbows yet.

Stray is a beautiful game, knowing how to leverage moody lighting to create stunning images: when we arrive at the dead city, our orange cat is but a small black silhouette before an imposing dimly-lit alley covered in a heavy, cold blue light that creates the effect of a misty environment: we are taken aback by the image, sensing how this place holds as many secrets as it does dangers.

There’s no way around it. We – fearless as we are when playing video games – immediately want to explore. But here’s the thing about Stray, its first major setback: we play as a cat…without a dedicated jump button. Jumping here is much like in Ocarina of Time: a context-based action. This means we can’t just jump everywhere and be Jellicle and free, finding our way by ourselves when we’re lost in the street, being the cock of the walk when we’re walking alone.

No, here we need the game’s permission to proceed: we are only allowed to jump to a plank or a ledge or a chair if the button prompt appears on the screen. This is frustratingly limited, going against the nature of the very thing we are playing at: orange cats don’t respect boundaries; they don’t wait for permission; they can dive through the air like a flying trapeze, turn double somersaults, run up a wall, bounce on a tire, swing through the trees, balance on bars, and walk on a wire. It’s “Jellicles can, and Jellicles do”, after all; not Jellicles can’t and don’t.

There’s this great segment where we’re free in a dilapidated neighborhood with those friendly, coward robots I mentioned before. They’re a quirky and kind bunch who were even afraid of us at first, running away desperately, sounding a siren, and locking their doors at the sight of a cat. They wear human clothes, have developed their own language, and can make art, so it’s understandable how they’re displeased with living in those underground slums alongside flesh-and-metal-eating monsters and other horrors: they all dream of going outside and seeing the sun, but they don’t believe that’s possible. Most can’t even picture what the outside looks like: sunlight may even be a myth for all they know.

In this segment, we get to know and interact with them, and there’s a sidequest about finding sheet music for a robot that’s particularly nice, as he indeed plays each one after we hand them over to him. But even though we are technically free to go anywhere in this complex, layered level, full of verticality as we go up and down the buildings, hopping on air conditioners and such, we must always stop and wait for a button prompt before jumping to them. It breaks up the pace of exploration, making the process of moving around a tiresome affair that prevents us from ever reaching a flow state: it’s a level designed for a platform game stuck in one where we can’t freely jump around. At least the game has a dedicated meow button. Silver linings and all that.

The second issue is our android companion, B-12, who seems to have come out of a Star Wars project but lacks the charm of that series’ droids. First, they act like the fairy Na’vi from Ocarina of Time, handing us unwanted directions and help all the time: “This fellow knows a lot about the area. Should we show him the postcard? Maybe he knows a way out of here,” they say, when we try to wander off and explore a suspicious alley we saw and activate the main quest only later.

Second, he just said that in English to a cat. There’s this constant bit where we find some strange writings on walls and can ask B-12 to translate them to us, and it’s literally to us, the players, as the poor cat will probably remain as bewildered as before, looking forward to the next can of paint laying around to push down a ledge.

Kate, the kind, would of course say that B-12’s work is actually twofold: that it’s making the English text for us, but that inside the game’s universe they’re actually communicating with the cat in the Jellicle language of cats, as droids are known to do. We just don’t see that happening, you see. Well, bless her heart.

However, besides breaking immersion – of those not as kind as dear Kate, that is –, B-12 also commits a much graver sin, which is to rob that strange world of its allure, of its aura of mystery. Because instead of letting the environment answer our questions through old paintings, faded signs, barely legible murals, and the decrepit state of the city – clues that invite interpretation and therefore remain necessarily ambiguous –, the game repeatedly resorts to explicit text, laying all of its mysteries bare. Jellicle cats were there when the pharaohs commissioned the sphinx; they don’t need clean, straight answers delivered to them.

In other words, B-12 explains too much of that world that would have remained just a suggestion otherwise: a suggestion that would have perfectly fit a game whose main character is a Jellicle cat. Take the excellent movie Flow, for example: its cat doesn’t speak English or has a droid translating texts to them, so the precise nature of what happened to their world is left for us to imagine, filling in the gaps. Its cat acts like a cat, too, solving problems with maybe more wit and emotional intelligence than a real-life cat would have, yes, but in a way where we can still buy the premise. In Stray, though, the cat acts more like a person than an animal: there’s this moment when B-12 asks the orange cat to take them to a Work Station, and the cat, fearless, faithful, and true, immediately complies, as if they perfectly understood the concept of a Work Station.

A good test is to put this game in the hands of a person who doesn’t speak English. Will they understand the objectives, what they have to do to proceed? I bet there’ll be parts where they won’t, where they’ll be quite lost, especially in the latter segments that function more like a point-and-click adventure than anything else, asking us to solve puzzles and acquire specific items to help some characters. You see, Jellicle cats, even though they’re practical, dramatical, pragmatical, fanatical, oratorial, Delphic-oracle, skeptical, dispeptical, romantical, pedantical, critical, parasitical, allegorical, metaphorical, statistical, mystical, political, hypocritical, clerical, hysterical, cynical, and, of course, rabbinical, would be just as lost as that non-English-speaking player. For, as smart as they are, Jellicle cats don’t know what a Work Station is.

Understand that the complaint here is not about realism – Flow, after all, isn’t realistic either – but about taking advantage of the unique traits of its main character. You have an orange cat as a protagonist, so please, for the love of all Jellicle gods, build the game around that. Don’t just give us a meow button and the ability to scratch sofas: Stray’s whole design – levels and narrative alike – should have reflected this premise, instead of it being limited to just a couple of gimmicks.

Finally, since we start the game out of the underground city, there’s little mystery about what the outside is like. There are parts here that would have perfectly fit a horror story: some set pieces and locales taken by the adorable insectoids are actually horrifying, and one in particular is even Lovecraftian in nature. So, there would have been a great deal of suspense regarding the outside: we would’ve tensed, sensing there’s a storm in the air, asking if the outside is Jellicle, better, or somehow even worse than these nightmarish landscapes. But already we know the Heaviside Layer is nice. We’ve been there, after all.

Stray, then, is less Jellicle than its protagonist. It still offers a memorable experience – mainly due to its striking visuals and art direction – but it could have been much more. It could have been the queen of the nights, singing at astronomical heights: life to the everlasting cat!

July 05, 2026.