Occasionally I indulge in a little gaming and thought I’d mention one I’ve been playing recently. I’m certainly not a big gamer so do feel free to suggest other beautiful / moving games that you’ve found. Anyway this is one of those that has drawn me in to play over and over again.
I’m not normally a fan of cats in games, but yeah … Stray (PS4/5) – what an absolutely incredible game. Beautiful, barely a word spoken, and balances moments of calm with terror really well. Feels like a good game to play during a dark winter, anyway. It conjures the Spring as you near the end, and invokes this incredible feeling of freedom.
Perhaps the key to good computer games is the same as with good comics – a story that’s relatable. I always think that when I’m pondering the beginnings of a comic series and the slowly-slowly initial few chapters I tend to create. If it’s not believable then it cannot be sexy … it cannot challenge us nor move us. And if we’re not moved, then … what’s the point? I might as well just stare into the fridge for a few hours. Porn does this too; personally I can’t see the point in medically-lit fuck-fests between people who clearly hate each others’ guts. What’s the point?
Perhaps it is the believable aspects of this game that make it so good, despite the context (you’re a cat in a dystopian future … yet it’s still somehow pretty relatable..). It has these serene moments of beauty, then plunges you into scenes of real scrapes with death and misery; only a dip though, enough that you can then appreciate the beauty wherever you find it.
Bit like real life.
I’ve never mentioned this on a blog before (though some years back I did hint at being brought up in a bit of a petrolhead family); I ride motorbikes ~ those two-wheeled things that people explode on. I always have, hopefully always will. It’s never been relevant to my comics or blog before, so I’ve never really spoken about it, but here we are. Swoop swoop brrrm brrm.
Anyway, last week I found myself with a few hours to kill, so I went out and took the ‘scenic’ route home – onto a bit of an ancient Roman Road and across country, through fields and down dirt tracks lit by a beautiful low winter sun that really took my breath away. I was riding through tiny patches of woodland that held crocuses and the last of the snowdrops still shining in the light all around the path I was navigating. Having never been on this particular track before, I found it really affecting, taking big gasps of cold February air and steadily thud-thud-thudding amongst such gorgeous countryside. Like, um … like a cat? There’s a link there somewhere …
… anyway, that very same evening [deathy subject incoming], I found myself at the bedside of someone who is simply … not going to be here much longer, let’s put it like that. And it struck me the juxtapositions we experience in life – comedy and tragedy – nature and destruction – misery and joy. Perhaps its these great differences in our days that remind us to live, that make the joyful moments so utterly transcendent. We appreciate the lights so much more when we’re familiar with the dark.
So I thought I’d mark the tearing, ripping nature of existence with a hat-tip to a computer game that was so clearly created by a team of humans who get it. Who pore over the tiny incandescent details of every grimey, littered, discarded joule of the real world and present it, jewel-like to us so we can explore it through the innocent eyes of a young cat just trying to get through its day. Beauty and misery in triumphant harmony, where day and night, in glory …
