Stray pulled off AAA quality on a tiny budget using something loved by a lot of people (cat protagonist) but it had a number of advantages, primarily you don’t need licensing fees for cats, and the dev time was deep into “purely a labor of love” length
They were probably thinking they could get AAA game quality and indie game budgets, just by injecting a well known license.
I kinda hate that about companies. The ones who make hairbrained decisions are never the ones who pay the consequences.
Stray pulled off AAA quality on a tiny budget using something loved by a lot of people (cat protagonist) but it had a number of advantages, primarily you don’t need licensing fees for cats, and the dev time was deep into “purely a labor of love” length