I have not played computer games for a long time, but I have recently taken up playing again as one of today's most significant art forms that needs to be enjoyed.
I used to organise LAN parties with games ranging from Duke Nukem to special realism half-life modes and strategies. It continued until around 2000, but then computer games got really boring, with scarce new ideas and mostly trying to push visual effects. So sometimes I play new versions of new games, mostly strategy.
In the 2020s, I am trying again, and some games have given me a similar feeling as I felt exploring game worlds of the 90s as a teenager again.
One of the games that impacted me strongly with storytelling, music, and visuals was, of course, Disco Elysium, which made me feel even like a child again.
But then I bought a game called Stray, as it viewed the world from a cat's perspective and looked really good. I have been reading my children a bit about animal behaviour and animals' perspective of the world (reference the book) and on Umwelt theory of Jakob von Üxküll. This all gives my family new perspectives on how others can perceive the world, so the game did seem like a good time for my daughter.
And that was a good choice for me. The game has the following extraordinary motifs (heavy spoilers below; please do not read)
- Cats perspective
- Although the game does not go into presenting cats' umwelt or senses, we just see the world from a cat's point of view, with human eyes, which is good enough. A different perspective is hard-core here.
- Question of identity: who exactly do I play? During the early game, the cat finds a robot and carries it with him. The tiny drone robot can better interact and communicate with various information systems and technogenic environments. It soon becomes known that this robot has a human consciousness uploaded into it. Am I a during the early game
- The cat, who actually just jumps around and does stuff
- the robot in the technogenic environment, communication and information
the human consciousness with the robot
That is a super nice mind game; I like it.
- Post-existentialism - it plays with motifs of life going on after humans are gone. Actually, even life goes on within human-built environments where humans are preserved in the memories of locals. That is a bittersweet sci-fi emotion here.
Taking into account the gorgeous graphics, this is a game to write about; I really like it (watching it while my daughter played it, and it helped her through dangerous places with evil monsteries).
That brings me to the only thing I did not like a lot about this game: one part was a super good adventure with extraordinary world-building. And then - there are areas where you need just race as stupid to escape small nasty killers. It was a mood-killer for me as, in some cases, I needed to die and load, which killed a lot of immersion. This game could have been done without the "action" parts. But then again, maybe more people would have complained.