Stray – a housing estate in Hong Kong. The unusual inspirations behind famous video games
Table of Contents
- Genre: adventure game
- Release year: 2022
- Developer: Blue Twelve Studio
Before the release, Stray won the hearts of the players wimply with the fact that its main character is an ordinary cat that behaves like any ordinary cat, which turned out to be extremely authentic. But it's worth noting that Stray wasn't initially supposed to be a game with the cat protagonist – the main character of the game was primarily the city. Seemingly post-apocalyptic, devoid of people, but looking more abandoned than ruined. Indeed, over time, we learn about some kind of plague and a form of waste that made people disappear from the city that was taken over by humanoid robots. While creating the narrow, cluttered streets of the city, the creators realized that it would be a great playground for a cat. The idea was all the more natural as most of them had cats at home.
Stray is, first and foremost, about the city, whose unusual buildings are not just figments of Blue Twelve graphic designers' minds. Their main inspiration was the infamous Kowloon Walled City in Hong Kong. Initially, it was a fort to fight pirates, and over time, it became a place abandoned by both the Chinese and the British. Illegal immigrants moved in there, and the place got a life of its own, without the control of any law. So it quickly became a haven for criminals and all kinds of shady businesses. Ordinary residents also settled there, and Kowloon began to grow out of control, mainly upwards, over time becoming the most densely populated region in the world, with almost two million people per square kilometer (sic!).
This led to a life in conditions that ignored all sanitary standards. Fires, problems with access to water and electricity were just part of everyday life. On top of that, there was anarchy, chaos and crime, despite placekeeping efforts of the Hong Kong government. Together with its isolation from the rest of the city, this has led to the emergence of a unique culture that evolved a weird combination of social norms with lawlessness. Ultimately, a decision was made to demolish the estate, which ceased to function after many forced evictions in 1994. Today, culture is dominated by a somewhat idealized, dystopic image of the Kowloon. In addition to Stray, the estate appeared in many other works of pop culture, incl. in Bloodsport, Crime Story , Baraka , Batman Begins, and in games such as Call of Duty: Black Ops, Shenmue II, Stranglehold and Fear Effect.
It all started with the founders of the studio, Kooli and Viv, who were fascinated by the Walled City of Kowloon as artists. They were artists before and they were fascinated by this place called Kowloon, the Walled City, that no longer exists today. It was this very unique place with a very high density of people, a lot of details and compact environments. As artists they were really inspired by this place, so they started to do some purely graphical tests of the buildings and environments, and in doing so, they realised that it was really the perfect playground for a cat. And then, being cat owners and cat lovers since forever, they really started to have a clear idea of the project at that point.
Swann Martin-Raget – producer, Blue Twelve Studio
