The most intriguing project of the summer of 2022 has finally fallen into our clutches: we share our impressions of the best game from an online game developer Friv2Online for cat lovers - Stray.

The protagonist of Stray is a stray ginger cat : breaking away from his pack, he finds a small flying drone named B-12, who becomes his companion, and sets off on a journey to find his way home. The friv game is set in a post-apocalyptic world, where humanity has become extinct and small closed cities are inhabited by robots.

It's dangerous outside: zurkas are teeming there - creatures similar to the headcrabs from Half-Life, no less aggressive and bloodthirsty. The very first chase will show that it is better not to catch the eye of these creatures, and for the rest of the game you will be enveloped in sticky fear when these monsters appear.

It is possible that civilization was overtaken by a catastrophe precisely through the fault of the Zurks, although if you carefully look around and explore the locations for artifacts of the past, you can find other evidence of the end of the world. Be that as it may, the Earth is now inhabited by cats and robots, and the latter managed to build a society akin to human, alas, adopting the vices of their ancestors: there is also class inequality, crime and poverty.

Although the protagonist becomes an outside observer that “passed by” here, an inquisitive player can endlessly study the way of life and the life of machines: the authors filled the locations with many details, which is why their concentration per square meter of space exceeds all conceivable limits. In each of the settlements, you can linger for a long time, looking closely at subtle details, building a picture of a robo-society in your head.

However, most of the piece of iron only imitates a reasonable existence, performing routine actions or digging in the garbage left after a more developed civilization. Such is the irony towards those who expect robots to surpass humanity.

But back to our cats. Stray offers the most authentic implementation of four-legged hairball control in games, forgive me the authors of Catlateral Damage. The way the protagonist moves gracefully and easily is delightful: he obeys the slightest movement of the stick, carefully jumps on air conditioners and boxes, squeezes through narrow cracks and climbs onto the roofs in a matter of seconds. The friv game has a lot of vertical gameplay, so we often have to solve spatial puzzles in order to get to the place we need.

Jumping, however, is allowed only in specially designated places - where a special icon appears. Therefore, there is still no complete freedom of action here, we are limited by invisible frames and borders. Each of the areas that the player enters (Stray alternates between linear and semi-open locations) is streaked with pre-prepared moves that our red-tailed hero will begin to move. You get used to it very quickly: a trained eye easily distinguishes objects from the environment that you can climb and which you can’t; the latter stand out visually - for example, the air conditioner will be surrounded by protruding rods, and the balcony will be tightly closed with bars.

In the same way, you can quickly get down from the roof to the ground, and you do not have to worry that the cat will miss and die in the fall. In general, dying in Stray is difficult, although possible - and you can even lose all nine lives, although in this case the game will just continue from the last checkpoint. However, exploring the world is not something the protagonist can suffer from.

In addition to the typical feline grace, the developers endowed the protagonist of the friv game with other characteristic features. In Stray, a separate button is reserved for meowing, and this is not the same repeated sound: the cat can meow invitingly, annoyed, frightened, giving out a whole range of emotions depending on the situation.

The hero also scratches everything he can reach, and you will probably want to see if you can get the robot to open the door for you in this way. Yes, it will succeed, and in this case, like a real cat, you can stand for a minute in front of the open door, meow with displeasure and go home. Because no one will force a cat to do what he does not want.

Redhead can be very harmful, bring chaos to the measured life of robots. Jumping onto a shelf and throwing off everything that is there is easy. Getting under the feet of an innocent victim to make them stumble and stretch out on the paving stones is no problem. Flying onto a board in the middle of a mahjong friv game, throwing balls across a pool table, ripping photos off the walls, hiding in a box, putting a bag over your head and smashing everything around trying to take it off - the list is endless.

But also a cat can collect notes scattered around the city and bring them to a local musician, rub against the legs of robots, causing a surge of emotions in them, or curl up on the chest of a crouching tramp and purr contentedly. Cats, in general, are fickle creatures, and if at one moment our hero behaves unbearably, then a minute later those around him will forgive him all his sins, if only he remains as cute.

When it comes to acting like a furry hero, Stray is great, but the gameplay isn't that exciting. Although it all depends on what you expect from the game. The genre is more like a quest with finding items and using them in the right places. Sometimes there are clumsy stealth missions here, a little more often there are chases - not very accurate, so in these episodes I constantly had to lose.

If you thought that the title will send you on a massive, action-packed adventure, then you better moderate your ardor. The friv game can be run in two hours (even an achievement is given for this), but those who want to linger can count on eight to ten hours of exploration, staring and meowing. Alas, you will have to entertain yourself.

Despite the torn storytelling and rustic gameplay, Stray is engaging. I would venture to suggest that the friv game is able to melt the heart of even the most ardent dog lover. If you want to look at the world through the eyes of a cat - well, now you have such an opportunity.