Stray has definitely struck a chord with the audience, and it seems like everyone and their cat is playing the cute and cuddly kitty simulator. An aspect that perhaps gets slightly less focus than our furry protagonist, however, is the world in which the game takes place.
Set in Walled City 99 (inspired by the real-life Kowloon Walled City), the robotic inhabitants known as Companions have become self-aware and developed their own culture, including a mysterious written language.
Because we live in an age of wonders and people are incredible, the cryptographic code in which the language was written has already been cracked, by Josh Wirtanen of HalfGlassGaming.
Stray makes use of a substitution cypher, whereby each letter of the encrypted alphabet has an analogue in another system. In this case, each of Stray's mysterious symbols correlates with a letter of the English alphabet, as you can see below:
Wirtanen cracked the code by taking the game's chapter titles (which are accompanied by subtitles in the player's chosen language) and building from there.
Stray's language doesn't perfectly translate, and some text seems intentionally nonsensical. Wirtanen's original post contains numerous examples of translated text that you should check out if you are a fan of language, Stray, and doubly so if youre both.
In other Stray-related news, the titular stray cat's voice actor has been revealed, and our very own Assistant Editor Liam Croft isn't as enamoured as the rest of you are with the game.
What do you think of this video game version of the Rosetta Stone? Crack the code in the comments section below.
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[source halfglassgaming.com, via rockpapershotgun.com, eurogamer.net]
Comments 14
It's okay but boring when the novelty of playing as a cat wears off. I rate it a 6/10 glad it's on PS+ or wouldn't have bothered with it.
Really relaxing game, except trying to get that trophy on chapter two where you can get hit by those creatures. That was a pain took me 2 hrs lol
I was hoping this game would turn out something close to the masterpiece OKAMI, but I see it's nothing like that, just some 5hr game which looks cool but quite disappointing.
INB4 Liam shows up to tell us the letters don't really mean much if you remove some of the lines and dots.
Edit: Actually, is it just me, or is the image at the top showing plenty of characters not on this chart? There's characters with curved pieces not really in the chart, and characters with forked pieces also not on the chart. I might just not be matching up characters well, but it seems like there must be more to the conversion than just that chart.
The novelty wears off rather quick. It’s an adventure on rails with a cat for protagonist and the enemies being other robits.
@NEStalgia Say his name three times and he might appear in the comments section.
I like this game, but I definitely would not have played it if not for Plus.
Which is great as far as I'm concerned.
@NEStalgia, I looked at the original post of the translator (linked in the article), and he says that there's a second made up language in the game, but there isn't enough to go on to translate it.
@NEStalgia @jFug 👀
Did anybody else feel a chill wind just now? 🤔
@Americansamurai1 Same troubles here. I've been attempting for 4 hours with no luck.
Speedrun is supposedly easier in comparison.
Liam needs his circuits checked!
@Bunchesopuppies the game is NOT on rails 😂 look up the definition of that please. Stray isn't Virtua Cop or Time Crisis
@KidBoruto yeah it's rough,I put a podcast on and kept trying. I kept zig zagging but I think it has more to do with luck. I'm taking a break from it before I do the speed run.
@Americansamurai1 Yeah, definitely do the speedrun trophy separate from the zigzagging trophy.
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