Stray, PS4 + PS5 + PC exclusive lets you play a cat, drops on July 19

If you've been waiting for the first game ever made that took playing a cat seriously, you don't have much longer to wait -- Stray is nearly here.

Stray is being made by developer BlueTwelve Studio, and had its release date unveiled at Sony's recent State of Play event: July 19. Stray will debut on the PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, and PC on July 19... but it'll also be available to PlayStation Plus Extra and Premium members on the same day.

How did Stray come to be? It all started 7 years ago now that was called "HK Project" internally between BlueTwelve Studio co-founders Koola and Viv. The team explained on the official PlayStation Blog: "It really is amazing to see that it is now an actual full-fledged game and will be experienced and hopefully enjoyed by so many players all across the world very soon. We have developed and learned so much along the way. Of all the unexpected challenges and discoveries we found, creating an interactive cat was definitely the most tricky one!"

• Read more: Stray: a new 'cat simulator' game, purring for release in 2021

The team continued: "Trying to control a cat - whether it's in real life or when making a video game - is definitely not a walk in the park! From the very beginning, we knew that the controls and animations of our star character needed to be absolutely spot-on in order to properly convey this exhilarating feeling of skills and movement. So Miko, our cat animator, took the challenge to heart and spent considerable time looking for images and video references".

"The good and somewhat surprising thing we found is this: It really seems that the whole internet was basically invented for the sole purpose of hosting loads of cute cat pictures and videos! So we ended up having a lot of very good material to work with for references".

"Also about 80% of the people from the team are cat owners (or are being owned by a cat depending on how you look at it) and we even have two cats in the studio working with us almost everyday! They are called Oscar and Jun and - even if they are not the most productive employees to be honest - they definitely add a lot of cheerful liveliness to the studio".

"Seeing them interact with objects around the office (even sometimes shutting down our computers at the worst possible moment!) gave us quite a lot of inspiration for the various cat interactions that are possible throughout the game. And of course they all have been reviewed and approved by Jun and Oscar themselves!"