Stray review – press paws for adorable life as a post-apocalypse pussycat

PC, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5 (version tested); BlueTwelve Studio/Annapurna Interactive
Pattering through a ruined city, being petted by robots and watched over by a friendly drone, cat lovers may regret finding the escape

I have walked around decaying cyberpunk cities such as these many times before, with their omnipresent neon signage and filthy streets, their grimy verticality. Usually I am expected to shoot someone. But this time, I'm slinking around the fluorescent-lit slums of the future as a skinny wee ginger cat, scaling rusty pipes, squeezing through barely-open windows and pattering across corrugated-iron roofs. The robots who have lived here on their own for untold decades have never seen anything like me before, but still, they feel compelled to pet me when I rub up against their spindly metal legs. I am a wild, mysterious, perfect thing in a broken world.

Stray is an excellent example of how a change of perspective can enliven a fictional setting to which we've become habituated. Post-apocalyptic narratives have been done to death lately, but this one feels interesting because we experience it from such an unusual point of view. Accompanied by a drone, which acts as a translator between the robots, the cat and the player, we make our way through a city sealed off from the world, trying to make it to the outside, where we belong. Stray sounds like a shallow meme - it's the cyberpunk cat game! - but the setting and the story have substance, and at the end I honestly found it quite moving. Perhaps the least credible aspect of the whole setup is that a cat would actually be so helpful.

Stray is out 19 July; 23.99, or included with some PlayStation Plus subscriptions.