A month since its release, critics still sing praises for Stray. The little indie game made a big ripple, getting near-perfect scores by publications like GameSpot and EGM, garnering news articles from publications that do not normally cover video games and getting a lot of social media attention from its players. One aspect of the game that is most loved is the feline protagonist.
Behind the cat protagonist are a number of real-life cats connected to BlueTwelve Studio. One cat inspired the look of the protagonist, another was a voice actor, and one more was studied for the various jumping cat-related animations. The studio had a number of office cats around that inspired them as they made Stray. In fact, according to Producer Swann Martin-Raget, about 80 percent of the people who worked on the game had cats as pets.
Murtaugh And Oscar
While not complete clones of each other, the protagonist in Stray had its design based on a real cat named Murtaugh. He is the cat of BlueTwelve Studio's producer, Viv and Koola. Originally he was a stray himself, found by Producer Martin-Raget under a car near Montpellier, France. According to a PlayStation Blog article written by Martin-Raget, Murtaugh was also lovingly nicknamed, "The Boss." In an interview with Digital Trends, Matin-Raget said that Murtaugh getting adopted by Viv and Koola coincided with the early stages of Stray's development. While Murtaugh was the inspiration for the main character, he did not stay in the office. Other cats, however, frequented the development team's space as they worked on the game.
For animation, Oscar the sphinx was the star. He was owned by the game's cat animator, Miko, and spent a lot of time in the workplace as a reference for how the cat protagonist was animated. Miko used a lot of cat videos to help with animation and was also able to take videos of Oscar in action.
Jun And Lala
Stray's producer also shared pictures of Jun, the black cat, when discussing the cats behind Stray. Jun, like Oscar, was present in the studio offices nearly every day. Along with Oscar, Jun helped the team consistently see cat behavior while they made the game. According to Martin-Raget in the Digital Trend interview, Jun was the sort of cat who went desk to desk and stared at what everyone was doing.
For voice acting, Lala the cat provided her meows. She not only voice acted for the protagonist, but for the other cats in the game as well. The voice actor was revealed from a Tweet by Jankenpopp, and little is known about her other than her major contribution to the game. She not only provided the meows, but the hisses, purrs, and growls of the cats.
More About Stray's Connection To Cats
Martin-Raget shared a lot about what it was like to work on a video game among cat co-workers. One detail he shared with Digital Trends was that he lost some work when translating from French to English because a cat managed to turn off his computer. To cat-proof their computers, the development team had to put cardboard over their power buttons.
While social media now is full of videos of people's cats reacting to the game, the development team had that happen in their own offices. Martin-Raget shared with Digital Trends that the cats beginning to react to the characters and sounds of the game was a great moment, and the developers took it as a sign that they were on the right track. The cats reacting to the technology in the offices offered a lot of inspiration for how the cat in Stray would react to various parts of the cyberpunk setting.
Stray is currently available on PC, PS4, and PS5.
Sources: PlayStation Blog, Digital Trends, Twitter