 This video is sponsored by NordPass. The breakout feline cyberpunk game of the year, Stray, features a lost cat in a city populated by robots. It's a fascinating juxtaposition of organic and synthetic concepts, and it's inspired by a true story, several stories in fact. This is Murder, also known simply as The Boss. Once upon a time, Murder was a real stray cat, who was found under a car in Montpellier, France. Murder was adopted by Vivienne Mourmeur-Guinet and Colours Coula, the two co-founders behind Blu12's studio. Viv and Coula had been working at Ubisoft Montpellier, but decided they wanted to go indie. As much as they loved cats, there was something else that inspired them even more, the infamous wall city of Kowloon in Hong Kong. The walled city existed for hundreds if not thousands of years until its destruction in 1994. It was a densely packed urban city, cut off from the rest of Hong Kong, whereas many as 50,000 people lived and worked literally on top of one another. Viv and Coula were fascinated by this city, and what it would be like to explore its labyrinths, not as a person, but as a smaller animal. According to Swan Mataranger, the game's producer, every item that is usually just decorative in other games, like an air-con unit or a pipe, for us it's a platform and a path that the cat can take. Balancing the game design and environments while being inspired by Kowloon Wall City was a very interesting challenge. The team could have chosen to make a game about other small creatures, such as rats, but Murtur was the perfect inspiration, and he wasn't alone. Many members of the growing Blu12 team had cats. According to Mataranger, 80% of the team are cat owners, or are being owned by a cat, depending on how you look at it. We are really passionate about these animals, and seeing them every day felt like a constant source of inspiration. Seeing them every day gives us plenty of reference material for animation and sound, too. While Murtur may have been the initial inspiration for the game's eponymous stray, the protagonist is an amalgamation of many of these pets. Mataranger said, even though we knew that we weren't aiming for a 100% precise representation, having a character that feels really believable, especially for cat owners who are so used to seeing their companion every day, required a lot of work. Viv and Kula did a lot of very subtle iterations on the appearance of the game's cat to really try and capture the cuteness, but also the liveliness and playfulness of a cat. Rather than force any of these poor cats to wear motion capture, the game's main cat animator, Miko, spent hours studying the movements of his Sphinx cat, Oscar. Miko would bring Oscar to work every day, watching him carefully to figure out how to recreate his movements in a believable way. The studio's many pet cats also served as helpful playtesters. Said Mataranger, there was a moment in development when the cats in the office started to react to the cat in the game. That was a really good indication that we were on the right path, having them raise their head when there's a meow, or when the cinematic is focused on the cat, they would come trying to interact. We were really happy to see that. For a small team, though, cats proved easier to animate than humans. It became clear very early on that Blue12 simply didn't have the resources to create believable people, so they took a different approach. Said Mataranger, we started to do some experiments with robots that are a bit easier to modelise and place in the scenes. As soon as we did that, we felt utterly inspired by the contrast between the cats being small, alive and cute, and the machines being a bit more cold and angular. Also, it inspired a lot of questions about the background and the backstory. Like, who are these robots? Where are the humans? What is this place? So what was initially a production constraint, ended up being something that really utterly inspired us. So the team took a real-world setting, combined it with their real-world pets including one genuine stray cat, and then threw in the Cyberpunk Robot twist to overcome the limitations of their small resource pool. The result is a game that has captivated players across the world. The moral of the story is that limitations can lead to greater creativity, and that sometimes, when looking for the perfect inspiration, you need only turn to your loved ones. And now a word from our sponsor. Whether you're in a robotic walled city or just browsing the web, it's important to keep your passwords nice and secure. Hackers would love to steal your identity to commit crimes or take out loans in your name. NordPass is a cybersecurity tool that can help keep your identity safe online. It tracks all of your passwords so that you don't need to memorize them, it generates complex, secure passwords that keep your accounts nice and safe, and it has a data breach scanner to find out whether your information has been accessed by hackers. Plus, it auto-fills your details and can sync across up to six devices, making logging in an easy process no matter whether you're on your phone, PC or tablet. To get one free month of NordPass with an exclusive discount on a two-year subscription, head to NordPass.com forward slash storytime. There's a 30-day guarantee just in case you change your mind. Thanks very much for watching. I am really, really enjoying Stray, although not in the way that I'd first anticipated. When I messaged Kotor and said, hey, there's this game coming out and I think we'd really love it, I was imagining us playing ourselves and maybe allowing our seven-year-old a little bit of a turn controlling a cat because that's right up her street. Instead, given the games are 12 and our daughter is not yet of that age, we've been parentally supervising her playing the game and we don't get a look in. She's absolutely loving it and making great progress, which means we very rarely are called upon to help. So I've barely managed to get my hands on the controls at all, which is a shame because the game gives off wonderfully portly vibes, which is one of my favourite games. There's some nice sort of interaction with the characters and found object collecting. Firewatch was another one I really enjoyed in that vein. So I knew the game would be right up our street. I just didn't realise it would be so popular with our daughter that I wouldn't actually get a turn. So now I'm looking forward to her completing it so that I might get a chance to start it myself. Definitely worth checking out, really enjoying it. Hello, this is Matthew slash Kotor weighing in as well with my review of the Dali software. Um, yeah, I think I might retire. This stuff's way better than I am at drawing. Check out this picture it drew of Mario and Sonic high-fiving. And here's a picture of Mario hula-hooping. Yeah, who even needs me anymore?