28 people and two cats: Inside the making of Stray

Sharing is caring!

Stray is a third-person cat adventure game set in a dystopic robot town inspired by Kowloon Walled City.

It’s the sort of elevator pitch guaranteed to pique just about anyone’s interest, but it was actually a single piece of static art, and a GIF of a cat wandering the neon-lit, rain-soaked streets of a long-lost city that first grabbed the internet’s attention.

HK_Project hit just about everyone’s radar in 2015. It was the work of two former Ubisoft artists, who go by the names of Koola and Viv. The two wrote on their blog at the time that the art was the by-product of their mutual decision to “work on stuff we’ve never done before.”

That glimpse of a little black cat making his first digital steps lit up the internet.

Soon, more GIFs began to hit and the cat’s exploration of the colorful city was punctuated by mostly nonplussed, seemingly sentient robots. Just six months later, publisher Annapurna Interactive reached out to sign the team and its game, much to the delight of the growing fanbase.

We chatted with studio creative and design director Viv and Stray producer Swann Martin-Raget about those early days, the power of the GIF, and how Unreal Engine helped the small studio realize its dream and give life to Stray’s feline protagonist.

To read the rest of this story, which first ran on Aug. 24, 2022, visit Unreal Engine.