Games Like Stray | Purr-fect Adventures

Biomutant

To start our list on a high note, let’s check out Biomutant.

Developed by Swedish studio Experiment 101, it’s an open-world role-playing game set in the postapo world, in which animals took over the reins of civilization. Thus spiking the whole game with a thick extract of fable.

Image credit: Experiment 101

Branching storylines, main character customization, etc. brings the game close to classic TPP RPGs. There is some undeniably cool stuff like key-winding mechanical hand mount and loads of neologisms to tie your tongue upon, let alone weirdly sounding and even more weirdly looking tribes dispersed throughout the world. The graphics looks nice, with bright colors and vast open locations. Clearly, the nature, too, has taken over the postapo rust and dust, like in The Last of Us. Anyway, save the Tree of Life or reach some other goals in this ambitious project.

Biomutant

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Night In The Woods

A really surprising title, highly acclaimed for dialogues and psychological character design.

Night In The Woods tells a story of an antropomorphized cat named Mae, a college dropout, who returns to her Rust Belt-ish hometown, which has seen better days.

Image credit: Infinite Fall

There is a mystery to be solved, and the plot eventually thickens, although what truly amazed over 7000 Kickstarter pledgers, who backed the game in 2013 in just 26 hours, is the game’s ability to grasp the actual everyday toils and moils of contemporary people, coming-of-age troubles, and young adults problems. To put it simple – the game is highly relatable. Not to mention the 2D graphics, with its colorful yet toned down autumn palette, which finely encapsulates the eerie small-town Twin Peaks-like coziness which certainly hides something underneath…

Night In The Woods

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Untitled Goose Game

So there we were, typing in some random words on Steam search bar, when suddenly a “goose” and “untitled” came out of nowhere.

Intrigued, we clicked the first result and… well, you have to play it to believe it.

Image credit: House House

We may give away only this: you are a goose – snow-white feathers, orange beak, annoying honks – and your task is to fill in a to-do list in 4 different areas of the town. What does a goose to-do list look like, you ask? Well, for starters, you have to make the life of a local groundskeeper as miserable as possible by stealing his keys and making him wet by turning on sprinklers. Then, the next lists get more ambitious as you are to become a picnic planner, garage sale trickster, apparel store prankster, and many, many more. The graphics looks horrid, but who cares if the concept is so absurd. Any other questions? Honk, honk!

Untitled Goose Game

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Cat Quest

Our no. 4 is a game which has once been described as a tad more hilarious Skyrim on a budget with a overwhelming number of cats. It sure is hard to argue with that cute curt description.

Image credit: The Gentlebros

The game is set in the kingdom of Felingrad, and we control an antropomorphic cat who embarks on a journey to save his kidnapped sister. Cat Quest features real-time combat and equipment progression, just as every thoroughbred RPG is bound to have, yet the graphics is bubble-gum sweet. The straightforward plot and undemanding quests in the like of “get from A to B” and “kill all”, provides pretty simple gameplay. The cat puns lie heavy, and should satisfy even CATastrophically stiff cat lovers. Now forgive us, for we have to cough up a hairball… in the shape of a morningstar!

Cat Quest

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Cat Quest II

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Okami

What we have here is an art-house game, whose visual side overshadowed (figuratively as well as literally) many art-bound productions back in the day.

Image credit: Clover Studio

Not only is Okami a game based on Japanese ink wash painting, but it also incorporates elements of the mythology of the Land of the Rising Sun. Also, Shinto spirituality tropes play a pivotal role to the plot, as we are Amaterasu, a Shinto sun goddess, who transformed herself into a white wolf in order to save the land from darkness.

The gameplay incorporates many elements from The Legend of Zelda, and it evidently cannot be a drawback. It is definitely worth mentioning that there is a unique feature called Celestial Brush, thanks to which we may perform miracles by drawing them onto the paused screen with Dual Shock controller/Wii Remote/Joy Con or Play Station Move, depending on the console. All of the above established Okami as one of the most memorable games of the first decade of the 21st Century. And quite rightly so, for once you play it, it sticks with you for a long time.

Okami

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Spirit Of The North

Another canine on board, this time it’s the red fox, which becomes hosted by the titular Spirit of the North – a deity worshiped by a long-dead tribe of what seems to look like some sort of northern shamans.

Image credit: Infuse Studio

Our four-legged protagonist, now powered up by the said deity, sets on a quest to help the spirits of Shamans get to Valhalla, if you catch my drift. That’s it. Visuals and soundtrack are the most prominent attributes of the game. The least attractive ones are somewhat clunky controls and repetitive tasks. Nevertheless, they shouldn’t bother you much, if you dig mood melodies, red brushes, and raw sceneries, withered by harsh gales and crackling frosts.

Spirit Of The North

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Endling: Extinction is Forever

Oh, how different a game Endling – Extinction is Forever is from the previous title on our list!

A survival-adventure production from Herobeat Studios, the game is a fox life simulator in a postapo world.

Image credit: Herobeat Studios

A tear-jerker par excellence, with scenes as powerful as those we find in the movie The Bear by Jean-Jacques Annaud, Endling… puts us in a role of the last female fox in the world who is to take care of her cubs. The outside world is hostile, brutal and harsh, full of obstacles and dangers. When one of our cubs is snatched by the scavenger, we embark on a perilous mission to save it and find a new home for us and our offspring. Endling – Extinction is Forever has a fine graphics, saturated with cold-colored palettes, and fills you with a mood of permanent uneasiness caused by potential hazards. Controls are intuitive and easy to master. And the ending… Oh, boy! Afterwards, you are going to look way different at foxes. And badgers. And perhaps even humans.

Endling: Extinction is Forever

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