Stray is fast becoming one of the hottest games of the year, for reasons that are very easy to understand: It’s all about an adorable cat.
Released last week on PlayStation and Windows, Stray is an adventure/exploration game where you play as a cat, exploring a cyberpunk city with help from a drone named B-12. It’s popular with both cats and humans, with many gamers posting videos of their pets enjoying and/or interfering with the game. And just one week in, it’s also inspiring a lot of creative mods for the cat protagonist.
It’s a perfect game for simple but effective fanmade mods, re-skinning the playable cat with different appearances. Most of the time, people seem to be doing this so they can play as their own cat.
Stray‘s original hero is a ginger tabby, but over at NexusMods, there are already several alternate versions including a Siamese cat and a tuxedo cat (based on a real pet, with photos for reference). There’s also a DIY tutorial available for people whose cats aren’t already represented by someone else’s mod.
However, the most attention-grabbing mods are a little more… experimental. A couple of modders have created options to play as Disney’s Bolt the dog or a Minecraft pig, but the most popular one is the Garfield mod, juxtaposing the cartoon cat’s goofy demeanor with the atmospheric vibes of Stray‘s cyberpunk setting.
Meanwhile, the prize for the most disturbing mod goes to the morally-ambiguous gangster CJ from Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas. Absolutely no one asked for this, but here it is anyway: CJ behaving like a cat, lapping water from a puddle and scratching trees.
In just eight days, Stray has inspired an impressive outpouring of creativity. Of course, based on our knowledge of human nature, this probably means we’re just a few days away from someone posting the game’s first NSFW mod. But the less said about that, the better.
