Shrek Comes To Stray In Disturbingly Funny Mod

"Stray," the puzzle platforming game about a cute cat in a robot city, seems to attract some of the strangest mods, despite its relatively cute premise. For instance, someone has modded the game to change the cat to CJ from "Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas" in one disturbing mod. Another person took the orange cat from "Stray" and put it into "DOOM" so it could slay demons from Hell. Some mods are closer to what you would expect, allowing cat owners to change the fur color of the cat to more closely resemble their real-life felines. However, the most recent mod to surface has gone to a truly bizarre new level.

A mod titled "Be Shrek Be Love," created by alefinthedeepdark and posted on Nexus Mods, takes the 3D model of the cat from "Stray" and wraps it in a mismatched version of the titular green ogre from "Shrek." The result is a cat-sized Shrek, with an overly long torso and front legs (arms?) that are far too big and long for comfort. The creator also made a beautifully disturbing trailer for the mod, teasing it as the event of the summer. The trailer says that you can "return the swamp" and that "the great power awaits" players who download the creepy mod and play "Stray" as everyone's favorite green ogre. 

Alef appears to be on a real "Shrek" kick at the moment, with their last two YouTube uploads also being "Shrek"-themed, including one where they replaced video game covers and movie posters with "Shrek." 

If the "Be Shrek Be Love" mod is a bit too disturbing for your taste, there are plenty of other wacky mods that can make "Stray" a different video game, including changing the noise the cat makes when you press the meow button. Some of the current options are the "Boom" noise from Vine (listen here) or the Jason yell from "Heavy Rain" (listen here). Maybe you can get Shrek to yell like the protagonist from "Heavy Rain" while you explore the cyberpunk city of "Stray." Why not?

As for what makes "Stray" such a popular game for modding, there are a few possibilities. In a Reddit post discussing whether the game would be moddable prior to release, several people commented on the fact that since it uses the Unreal Engine, it should be relatively easy to mod the game, especially the cat model. As for why the mods keep getting so weird? That's a mystery for another time.