AFP, published on Friday, December 9, 2022 at 11:55

The French video game “Stray,” whose protagonist is an alley cat, won the award for best independent title at the Game Awards, a major international ceremony held Thursday night in Los Angeles.

Created by BlueTwelve studio, based in Montpellier, “Stray” features a guy in an underground city populated by humanoids and strange creatures. Using a drone, tomcat must solve a series of puzzles to get back to the surface.

The game is available on the PlayStation console and on the Steam shopping platform.

In the large room of the Microsoft Theater in Los Angeles, the producers first received from the hands of the actress Jessica Henwick the award for “Best First Independent Game”.

“Thank you very much, it’s an incredible honour”, responded Swann Martin-Raget, producer at BlueTwelve, thanking the gathering “on behalf of the whole team in Montpellier”. He greeted their relatives, friends, but also “the cats, of course, very important”, amid the laughter.

“Stray” was later named “Best Independent Game”.

The cat in “Stray” purrs, curls up to take a nap, and takes malicious pleasure in damaging the furniture. In terms of the visual aspect, BlueTwelve was inspired by Murtaugh, a stray cat adopted by the studio’s co-founders. And Oscar, one of the team members’ sphynx, served as the model for the animations.

The game also appeals to “real” felines: on Twitter, the account “Cats Watching Stray”, which shows the craziest reactions of cats observing the adventures of the mustachioed hero, has about 36,000 subscribers.

In the other categories, the RPG “Elden Ring” (PlayStation, Xbox, PC) was named title of the year and received awards for best direction, best art direction and best RPG.

The next chapter in the saga “The Legend of Zelda” (Nintendo Switch) has won the award for the most anticipated game.