Unless you've been unplugged from the internet for the past few days, you've probably noticed that pretty much everybody loves Stray, an adventure game starring a cat from a small outfit called BlueTwelve Studio. We gave it a glowing 82% in our review, calling it "a sparkling feline adventure that always lands on its feet."
Stray's launch appears to be landing on its feet too. As noticed by Benji-Sales on Twitter, Stray is already the biggest launch ever for boutique publisher Annapurna Interactive. Stray garnered nearly 63,000 concurrent players on its first day on Steam.
While concurrent players don't inherently tell us how well a game is selling, Stray's numbers are orders of magnitude higher than Annapurna's other recent launches, including the excellent speedrunning FPS Neon White and last year's 12 Minutes. As I write this, Stray is still the number 1 global top seller on Steam. That's not to mention that Stray also launched on PS4/PS5, where PlayStation Plus Premium members can claim it for free.
- It launched upside down and on fire, but busted and brilliant Stalker 2 has attracted 6 million players to the Zone in the last 3 months
- Monster Hunter Wilds dominated Steam so hard this weekend that a new game from a Nintendo legend attracted a mere 5 reviews, and another dev tweeted they hadn't sold 'a single game' since Wilds released
Stray has shattered the concurrent players record for any Annapurna Interactive game on Steam easily becoming its biggest PC launch everTop @A_i Peak Concurrent Players• Stray - 50,555+• Twelve Minutes - 8,021• Outer Wilds - 7,936• Neon White - 3,277• Journey - 1,757 pic.twitter.com/7RhlAVyWmMJuly 19, 2022
Hype for Stray has been slowly building over the past year as the occasional gameplay trailer reminded us how fun it sounds to navigate a dangerous post-apocalyptic world as an adorable kitty-cat. The excitement got to be so high that Stray managed to steal the spot of Steam's most wishlisted game from another post-apocalyptic adventure, The Day Before.
There is clearly a big appetite for games starring cats (which we argue is much better than a game starring a dog). It also helps that Stray's feline hero is one of the most convincingly animated animals I've ever seen in a game. The beauty of Stray is almost enough for me to forgive it for being a boring puzzle game most of the time. Its automated platforming and simplistic logic puzzles should've checked me out hours ago, but I keep trudging on, looking forward to the next cozy spot where I can press Y to take a nap or spam the triggers to scratch up a fresh rug.
