Video game cat breaks records and sends pets wild

This brand new cat game is driving players and their pets crazy.

If you’ve been spending time on social media recently, you’ve likely seen clips floating around of a digital cat doing cat things — climbing on top of objects, knocking stuff down from heights, and generally anything you can think of a real-world feline doing.

That’s because a brand new game, Stray, has just launched and taken the gaming world by the scruff of their necks.

Stray, the latest title from Annapurna Interactive, places players in control of a stray cat separated from its family. Along the way, players will travel across a cyberpunk-styled city and solve plenty of puzzles in ways only a cat could.

It may sound strange, but a game that gives players a dedicated meow button and the ability to use trees as scratching posts is currently the number one trending game on Steam, the most popular PC digital game marketplace.

Instant hit game Stray is the number one title on Steam now. Picture: Annapurna Interactive

Stray has shattered Annapurna Interactive’s previous day one sales records according to the analysis website SteamDB. In one day, Stray has racked up over 60,000 concurrent players on Steam alone — a massive number for any indie game and breaking Annapurna’s previous record by nearly 50 thousand.

RELATED: 10 best games coming in July 2022

The previous record holder, Twelve Minutes, only had 8 thousand concurrent players on launch day. To put this all in perspective, Stray is currently outselling Grand Theft Auto V and the latest Elder Scrolls Online expansion.

It’s not just cat lovers that have fallen in love with Stray either — plenty of pet owners have discovered that their cats also love the game. A New Twitter account, @catswatchstray, has been collecting and retweeting images of various cats trying to interact with the digital felines on screen.

For example, just take a look at this tiny kitten trying to paw one of the in-game cats:

@CatsWatchStray

She is one with them pic.twitter.com/MvcX07jSVi

— James Arbogast (@Arbogastic) July 20, 2022

Or this cat that really wants in on the action:

OMFG ELLIE 💀💀💀💀 pic.twitter.com/At0ARxVeUs

— King Narukami (@KingNarukami45) July 19, 2022

Stray is now available for PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, and Steam for $39.95 AUD, and while it will take you around five hours to complete the game, if you have cats of your own, it may take considerably longer.

Written by Junior Miyai on behalf of GLHF.