For the critical play on worldbuilding, I played the game Stray. Stray was made by Blue Twelve Studio, and is for people who are patient, very perceptive, story driven, and people who want to play as a cat.
Stray is set in a post apocalyptic future where there are no humans. You play as a cat, who fell into the City from the Outside. Inside this city, it seems empty until you meet your first robots and the Zurks. The Zurks look like glowing orange potatoes with legs, and are the first antagonists you discover. As they chase you through the streets, you have to avoid them, or else they’ll latch on and slow you down. Allowing more Zurks to jump on you and attack you. In Stray, the world was built around the fact that there are almost no living creatures anymore because of whatever killed them off, which leads to you being different.
The first chapter starts off with you and a group of cats adventuring Outside. As you’re jumping around on different pipes, one is coming loose, and when you jump on it, it falls, causing you to fall into the City. The City is even more empty than the Outside at the start. But all of this was made to portray the dead/empty world after whatever killed most life on the planet. As you move around, there is text in a strange language you can’t understand.
(here’s a photo of the popup you get for chapter one, as you can see, the red is in a mysterious language, and it is translated below)
For the first chapters of the game, there is seemingly no way to translate it (unless you go to the wiki), but you eventually find a robot that can translate for you. The creators of the game made a new language to make this world seem even more different from our own, and making us feel out of place. Which is exactly what they want, you’re only around other cats at the start, after that you’re surrounded by different robots, which is much different than a cat. The lack of interaction with other living creatures really shows how the world has collapsed.
Another way they show the world has changed, is the overgrown parts of the map. Especially in chapter one, you can see pipes and different man made objects overtaken by plantlife. This wouldn’t have happened if someone was there to clean up the place, so it makes the player start wondering what happened to the world, and where everyone was.
This game is a great example of embedded storytelling. With the creators making a new language, it is really easy for them to drop pieces of the lore around the map in a way that can be easily skipped. But for the story driven players, it can eventually be translated and the story starts to make sense. In chapter three you meet a group of robots that keep getting attacked by the Zurks. After seeing that you are not a Zurk, they let you in. As you look around you can see different drawing on the walls, explaining what happened, and furthering your understanding of the plot if you stop to look. Starting to understand what happened can make you feel sad and lonely, wishing for interactions with living creatures that are long dead.
(here is an illustration on a wall with words explaining the lore of the game)
Not only does being a cat set you apart from the others, but the things you do as a cat does to. In the game you can knock over, scratch, or sleep on different items. These are all things that cats do, and really sell the image that you are a cat. But, the robots don’t want to knock over paint cans, scratch up walls, or sleep on a random pillow. Which further sets you apart from the majority in the game.
Stray doesn’t really struggle from the harmful stereotyping other games have to face because you are a cat. It’s not saying you have to knock over anything in your sight, scratch up the walls, or sleep constantly. It just allows you to do that to increase your immersion. If your cat doesn’t knock over stuff very often, you don’t have to do that in the game. This ability to not follow the stereotypes if you don’t want to is great and other games should find a way to incorporate it. Plus with the game making you feel like an outcast, as the only living being in a world full of robots, it can really help different people of minorities feel seen. Even though we’re not all cats living with robots, everyone is different in their own way, which can make us feel like outcasts. This game is a great way of making people who might not be minorities feel that and can increase their compassion towards minorities.
