BlueTwelve Studio based Stray doesn’t take too long to beat, but players can spend a lot of time exploring the city, and it’s worth knowing the background of the real-world urban environment that inspired its design.
[Warning: This article contains spoilers for Stray.]
Stray takes place in the distant future, set in a dystopian city called Walled City 99. The city was built inside a massive dome-like structure that shields it from Earth’s surface. It is mentioned that humans created the city to protect them from threats and dangers on the surface, but this is left a mystery. Due to a plague, humanity has died off, and the only remaining inhabitants of Walled City 99 are sentient robots called the Companions. They’ve based their society and culture on the human that came before. The game follows a cat, played by a talented voice actor who brought Stray's character to life, on an adventure to make it back to the surface after falling to the bottom of the city.
According to Wikipedia, Kowloon’s origins can be traced back to the tenth century. It served as a military fortress for a long time. In the late 1800s, British Imperial forces eventually attacked and seized control of the city. They remained in control of the city for a while. After World War 2, the Chinese government began efforts to reclaim Kowloon. Starting in the 1960s, a new wave of construction began that led to the development of the iconic image of Kowloon as a densely packed city built high into the sky. This is the image that inspired Stray’s devs when they designed Walled City 99, which is packed with Stray’s coolest secrets, easter eggs, and references.
How Stray’s Walled City 99 Differs From The Real Kowloon Walled City
Kowloon Walled City, as one may imagine, was never enclosed in a dome that shut it off from the outside world. It used to have a wall surrounding the city, but it was torn down before the city developed into its most famous state. Unlike Walled City 99, which is underground, the walled city was on the surface. Walled City 99 is an amalgam of various dystopian cities, like Blade Runner’s Los Angeles or Night City in Cyberpunk 2077, and this is reflected in its high degrees of social stratification, where the poorest residents occupy the city’s lowest levels, while the wealthiest residents live near the surface access in the higher parts of the city. However, these characteristics, and those of other dystopian cities, are not indicative of actual life in Kowloon Walled City.
Overall, the actual Walled City of Kowloon wasn’t as seedy and harsh as Stray’s Walled City 99. Kowloon mainly influenced the developer's level design aesthetic, as it offered a great deal of densely packed architecture, much of it eight stories tall or more. The atmosphere and culture of Walled City 99 is more inspired by cyberpunk dystopias, but takes some key visual elements form the real-world place to give it a striking aesthetic and an air of authenticity. The game left behind a few mysteries, with plenty more potentially hiding in its back alleys, so hopefully a sequel to Stray's cat-themed gameplay will let players explore even more of its fascinating world.
