video games – Page 3 – Pain In The Bud

Stray: The Buddies Are Locked And Loaded

We’re ready to play as a cat!

I bought my copy of Stray and I’m all ready for when it goes live at noon on Wednesday. I expect Buddy will find his place on my shoulder, drawn by the meows of the game’s protagonist, and perhaps even “attack” enemies on screen like he’s done in the past.

In the meantime, Stray has become Steam’s most-wishlisted game. Steam is by far the most popular digital platform for PC players, so reaching the top is quite an achievement for an indie studio. Stray is also an exclusive launch on Playstation, so XBox players will miss out on this one for the time being. (Sorry, dudes.)

Early reviews are in, with a developing consensus that Stray provides a refreshing change in perspective for the adventure game format. Some are even calling it one of the best games of the year, which is great news: The history of gaming is full of titles that looked amazing in previews and generated incredible hype only to fall flat when players finally got to experience them.

Of course we’ll have our own review here on PITB, and we’ve been looking forward to this game for years now, so I don’t want to go in with too many preconceived notions.

I can’t wait to jump into the paws of the game’s furry protagonist and experience the eerie future Hong Kong for myself.

If you can’t get enough Stray in the meantime, the developers have written a blog post introducing the world to Murtaugh, the real-life inspiration for the game’s feline protagonist. Murtaugh was rescued from under a car near Montpellier, France, he’s one of two cats who count studio founders Viv and Koola as their human servants, and he’s known as “The Boss” to the development team.

“Even though the character in the game is not a direct reproduction of Murtaugh, he was definitely a huge inspiration for its appearance and was a great support during the whole development,” Stray producer Swann Martin-Raget wrote.

Main character animator Miko also looked to Oscar, a Sphynx, when trying to capture the grace of feline movements. Oscar’s lack of fur allowed Miko to see his underlying musculature work as he went about the daily business of being a cat.

“Oscar is a Sphynx who comes to work with us at the studio almost everyday and was super helpful when Miko needed to have actual video reference of some jumps and runs,” Martin-Raget wrote. “Animating a quadruped is already quite challenging but the subtleties of a cat’s movements are incredibly precise and hard to convey properly.”

And finally there’s Jun, whose official title is executive chief general president commander director officer at the studio. Jun was responsible for supervising the humans working on the game, and of course, napping:

Long-Anticipated Play-As-A-Cat Game ‘Stray’ Releases In July!

Stray puts players in the paws of a feline protagonist.

As a game that puts players in the paws of a feline protagonist, Stray is all about forgoing familiar video game tropes in favor of forcing players to think like a cat.

To do that, Stray’s developers spent a lot of time looking at vast amounts of reference material via the digital archive of feline images and videos known as the internet, and studying two of their co-workers — the office cats who play, lounge and provide inspiration for the development team.

“They are called Oscar and Jun,” producer Swann Martin-Raget wrote, “and even if they are not the most productive employees to be honest, they definitely add a lot of cheerful liveliness to the studio.”

Stray’s tight-knit team spent seven years bringing the heroic moggie and his world to life, and on July 19 players will finally get to explore the neon-drenched environs of a futuristic Hong Kong from a cat’s eye view.

The developers worked hard to get the approval of Oscar and Jun, who could not be bribed with snacks.

“Seeing them interact with objects around the office (even sometimes shutting down our computers at the worst possible moment!) gave us quite a lot of inspiration for the various cat interactions that are possible throughout the game,” Martin-Raget wrote.

We’ve been following the development of Stray for a few years now at PITB and can’t wait to give it a spin. Check out the launch trailer here:

Little Kitty, Big City: Play As A Cat In Tokyo

Little Kitty joins two other highly-anticipated games that put players in the paws of feline protagonists.

It looks like 2022 is going to be a banner year for the fledgling “play as a cat” genre of video games.

There’s the long-awaited adventure game Stray, slated for early next year, in which the player is an orange tabby navigating an eerie future Hong Kong with heavy cyberpunk vibes. Then there’s Peace Island, an open world mystery game that gives players the choice to switch between nine different cats who are tasked with finding out what happened to their humans and all the other people who have suddenly vanished.

Now there’s a third feline-centric game in the mix: Little Kitty, Big City, which offers players the chance to adventure as a playful black cat with bright green eyes. The goal of Little Kitty, Big City is to help the title kitty find its way home, but as the trailer below repeatedly points out, cats tend to get side tracked:

One thing that stands out immediately is the art style. Stray is all dark urban environs drenched in neon, with neighborhoods inspired by Hong Kong’s former Kowloon Walled City. The title cat is determined, resourceful and adept at navigating dangerous situations, with a big part of the game’s focus not only on achieving goals, but achieving them the way a cat would.

Peace Island occupies a halfway point between Stray’s hi-fidelity noir realism and Little Kitty’s polygonal pastels. The titular island is picturesque and the game emphasizes beautiful sunsets, heavy undergrowth and local animal life. The environment itself is a character of sorts, as the players will have to mine their surroundings for clues about the missing people.

By contrast, Little Kitty, Big City offers us a heavily stylized Japanese metropolis with blue skies, bright colors and a whimsical narrative. The feline protagonist has a goal, but there are also so many boxes to explore, so many trash cans that might yield yums, and yes, plenty of laptops to sit on during grooming sessions. There aren’t mysteries to solve or enemies to watch out for, just a journey that rewards the player for doing what a cat does.

The game’s creators write:

“You’re a curious little kitty with a big personality, on an adventure to find your way back home. Explore the city, make new friends, wear delightful hats, and leave more than a little chaos in your wake. After all, isn’t that what cats do best?”

Screenshot 2021-11-18 at 09-55-30 29138850-f0a8-11eb-bcff-17f50e0b4295 webp (WEBP Image, 675 × 422 pixels)

Above: Stray leans heavily into the cyberpunk aesthetic with Bladerunneresque visuals in a futuristic city.

Above: The cats of Peace Island investigate their eerily quiet home town as they piece together the mystery of the missing humans.

Stray was originally slated for late 2021, but has been pushed back to early 2022. Delays in the video game industry aren’t unusual, and as many publishers have learned the hard way, rushing to release a buggy, unfinished game is always a mistake.

Peace Island doesn’t have a release date yet, and as for Little Kitty, Big City, its Steam page simply says: “Planned release date: Cats don’t have deadlines.”

Stray’s Feline Protagonist Is Picture Perfect

Stray follows the adventures of a feline protagonist as he navigates a strange city on a journey to get back to his family.

Determined to get inside an apartment, the ginger tabby leaps onto the ledge of an air conditioner unit, then onto the roof, where he drags a piece of debris to the edge, swipes it off and watches it shatter a skylight.

Boom. Kitty door created!

The scene isn’t part of a Youtube video or a documentary about smart cats, it’s a gameplay sequence from the upcoming Stray, a game in which the protagonist is a lost cat who’s been separated from his family and dropped into an eerie, near-future Hong Kong.

The overlap (or Reuleaux triangle) in a Venn diagram of gamers and cat-lovers is pretty sizable, and for that enthusiastic cross-section, there’s no game more highly anticipated than Stray.

Previously we’d seen a short trailer and still screenshots, and now a video from the developers shows off more than four minutes of glorious game footage following the feline protagonist as he explores Hong Kong’s streets, back alleys and noodle shops.

The developers are clearly cat lovers: The kitty hero of Stray moves with the grace, energy and caution of a real domestic feline, and the game forces players to tackle obstacles and challenges the way a cat would. The protagonist cat gains access to a vent shaft, for example, by swiping a coffee mug into fan blades to get them to stop spinning. In another scene, the cat is startled, jumps a full pace back and lands on all fours in a way only cats can.

Everything from gait to reactions is perfectly cat-like. In the opening moments, our kitty hero is clearly injured, nursing one of his back legs as he hobbles down an alley. In a later scene he bats curiously at a drone the way a house cat would with a new toy.

There are no magic abilities or impossible inventories here: As the player, you can only do things a cat can do in real life, although you’re given a boost later on when a friendly character equips you with a harness on which B12, the above-mentioned drone, can dock. B12 can interact with man-made inventions, understand your cat’s intentions and facilitate rudimentary communication.

If, for example, your kitty character is dehydrated and stops to paw at a vending machine, B12 can send a signal to the machine, order it to dispense a beverage, then open it for the adventurous cat. B12 also helps your catagonist fight off enemies. By flashing a purple light at hostile machines, for example, the little drone can render them harmless and deactivate them.

Ultimately, though, the game designers want you to think in cat terms to make your way through the game world, and that means considering feline physiology when encountering obstacles, and feline psychology when trying to solve puzzles.

The project’s lead designers are both industry veterans who decided to strike out on their own by forming an independent studio after years of working for UbiSoft, the game industry giant known for game franchises like Assassin’s Creed and Watch_Dogs. Like those games, Stray gives players the opportunity to explore a highly detailed open world.

“Our goal is to create a unique experience playing as a cat. We are inspired everyday by Murtaugh and Riggs, our two cats,” creative director Viv said. “Most of the team are cat owners as well, giving us all a lot of helpful first-hand references. Cats are always so playful, cute and lovingly annoying that it’s an endless stream of gameplay ideas for us.”

For the game’s atmosphere, the creators were inspired by Hong Kong’s Kowloon Walled City, a former military fortress that became a slum in the days of British-ruled Hong Kong, with Chinese triad gangs serving as de facto authorities in the lawless zone. Today, the former Kowloon Walled City is a park.

“It is also a very unique point of view for an adventure game. Exploring the strange world we are building feels really fresh when you’re sneaking under a car, or walking the rooftops with the inhabitants below unaware of your presence. Or if you want them to be aware, you can just meow endlessly to annoy them.”

Stray was originally slated for a late 2021 release, but it’s looking more likely that we won’t see it until the first quarter of 2022. Given the recent history of highly anticipated and rushed projects like Cyberpunk 2077, few gamers would begrudge a development team taking its time and getting things right rather than going into a months-long crunch period to meet a holiday deadline. Good things come to those who wait, especially in the complex world of game development.

Cats In Games: The Magnificent Jaguars Of ‘Shadow of the Tomb Raider’

Jaguars figure prominently in Shadow of the Tomb Raider, which takes place primarily in the Peruvian jungle.

Lara Croft has come a long way since the days when she was the polygonal, hyper-sexualized protagonist of the early Tomb Raider games.

Thanks to a reboot the new Lara is a smart, adventurous and brave young woman voiced and motion-capped by the talented Camilla Luddington, and she’s never felt more real. In Shadow of the Tomb Raider, Lara ventures to the Peruvian jungle to chase down Mayan artifacts, and among the many obstacles in her way are jaguars.

Gorgeous, magnificent, regal jaguars who seemingly manifest out of the mist and blend back into the green inferno at will.

Here’s our new Lara, now starring in her third game:

The new Lara Croft is a fearless adventurer and archaeological expert who travels the world unearthing clues to humanity’s past.

Like previous games, her adventures revolve around archaeological digs, ancient tombs and uncovering the history of humanity one find at a time. What would a Tomb Raider adventure be without a bit of danger?

Lara Croft — Lara crosses an underground chasm in search of a Mayan relic.

After an opening sequence, Lara and her friend Jonah head deep into the Peruvian jungle. This being Tomb Raider, they can’t land like normal people — a powerful storm sweeps in, sending their plane crashing into uncharted territory.

Lara finds herself alone, lost in the jungle without her gear. The sounds of the jungle reach a fever peach, with birds fleeing branches and monkeys howling, heralding the arrival of the apex predator of the Americas: Panthera onca, the jaguar, a name that translates to “He who kills with one bound.”

Jaguar of the Tomb Raider — “Hey there, could you tell me how to get to Lima?”

Okay, stay calm! Remember your training! You’re face to face with an apex predator with the strongest bite force of any animal, but you can do this!

Besides, it can’t get any worse at this point.

Can it?

Oh shit. Even the monkeys are like “Dayum! Grab the popcorn!”

Don’t panic! Maybe these jaguars are just saying hello!

Or maybe not.

What’s worth noting is that these are not cut scenes — what you see here are screenshots within the game engine. For people who aren’t familiar with video games, that means you’re looking at the game itself. This is what the gameplay looks like.

We have come a long, long way from this, haven’t we?

Old Tomb Raider — The low-texture, low-polygon world of the original Tomb Raider games.

It’s a difference allowed by several generations’ worth of improved computer hardware and software, resulting in billions of additional polygons, millions of additional colors, improved lighting, physics, art assets, high definition textures, motion capture technology and all the little things that fuel progress from a world made from flat, blurry environments and cartoonish characters to a hyper-realistic, almost photo-quality world which makes incredible immersion possible.

Most of our readers may not be gamers, but for those who are, I’ll avoid spoilers here even though Shadow of the Tomb Raider was a 2018 release.

Suffice to say jaguars play a prominent role in the game and serve as the Big Bads, the game’s ultimate threat made even more terrifying by the knowledge that they can appear at any time and ambush our hero before she’s even aware of their presence.

Shadow of the Tomb Raider does a fantastic job of immersion, making all of the dangers of the jungle feel real through meticulously crafted visuals and sound, and a compelling story. And like everything else in life, it’s better with cats!