Greetings everyone! Finally! After so many years of hard work, we’ve got our release date: Misguided Will be publicly available on July 19, 2022! And as you can see during today’s State of Play, we’re glad to make sure that Stray will be available for PlayStation Plus Extra and Premium members * at that time.
It really means everything to our small but oh-so-dedicated team, and we can’t wait to see the world explore that we’ve given so much heart and passion to create.
The vision for the game – originally called the “HK Project” – was started seven years ago by Kula and Viv, co-founders of Bluetool Studios. It is really amazing to see that it is now a real full game and will soon be experienced and expected by many players around the world. We have developed and learned a lot along the way. Of all the unexpected challenges and discoveries we have made, creating an interactive cat was certainly the hardest!
Trying to control a cat – whether in real life or making a video game – is definitely not walking in the park! From the very beginning, we knew that our star character controls and animations needed to be absolutely spot-on to accurately express this delightful feeling of skill and movement. So Miko, our cat animator, took the challenge to heart and spent enough time looking for pictures and video references. The good and somewhat amazing thing we found out is: it really seems like the whole internet was originally invented for the sole purpose of hosting loads of beautiful cat pictures and videos! So we have a lot of good material to work on for reference.
Also about 80% of the people in the group own cats (or own a cat depending on how you view it) and even two cats in our studio work with us almost every day! They are called Oscars and June and – even if they are not the most productive employees to be honest – they certainly add a lot of cheerful vibe to the studio.
Watching them interact with objects around the office (sometimes turning off our computers at the worst possible moment!) Has given us enough inspiration for the various cat interactions that are possible throughout the game. And of course they have all been reviewed and approved by the June and Oscars themselves!
But all these efforts were made to enliven the cat so that people could properly enjoy exploring as a cat in the game. We’re excited to finally get a glimpse of some of the new environments in our release trailer, such as “Antvillage” that this village is built around a huge reservoir. This is a good example of how the exceptional ability of cats allows us to gain more freedom in level design, especially to explore the highs and lows of the world vertically.
When we decide to add backpacks and small drones called B-12s that follow the cat everywhere, it opens up a whole new level of ways for us to communicate and learn about the environment. Especially the ability to talk to the characters of the world was really important to tell some basic things about the environment or to learn a little more back story from some of its inhabitants.
Our journey as a small team to create our first game has finally reached its final goal, and we all can’t wait to get players to respond to exploring this unique world and engaging with the colorful inhabitants of July 19th. So on behalf of the whole team including June and the Oscars: Have fun everyone!
* Availability of Classic, Game Trial and Game Catalog varies according to time and plan. See https://www.playstation.com/Plus for details and updates on PS Plus offers. The PlayStation Plus is an ongoing subscription subscription which automatically charges a recurring subscription fee (at the then PS Store price) at the frequency you choose at the time of purchase. Terms apply: play.st/psplus-usageterms
