Dedicated to the the hit adventure game Stray, The Stupendium presents Open the Sky. It’s glorious.

Here we have an example of an artist having reached an astonishing height, yet still standing firmly within the world of geekdom, and that’s a very rare thing indeed. Have a listen.

In a future too distant to measure, in a city lost to time, a lone stray cat finds themselves trapped in the mysterious ‘Walled City 99’ after a fall. In BlueTwelve Studio’s ‘Stray’ and with the help of your new drone guide B12, you must guide this cat home and along the way discover the secrets of this ancient city and its society of automaton ‘Companions’ left behind for millennia since humanity long since ceased to be…

The Stupendium himself, writes the best description of the project, so we’ll let him tell the tale:

I’m back! That ‘scheduled vacation’ I mentioned in my previous video was much needed and much enjoyed but I’m excited to be back and working on a heap of new and upcoming projects! This being the first! For certain a smaller project to facilitate that time away, this song was written and recorded, with the video mostly completed before I left and now I’m back just took a little more work to have ready for you.

It’s certainly the saddest/most emotionally intense song I’ve uploaded to the channel in a long, long time. In truth this song was written on August 5th, which not only was my birthday but also the day of Nerdcore Party Con, an event I had been looking forward to performing at for years after it had been delayed several times due to the Pandemic. And an event I would have been attending had it not been for the Covid I had contracted the day before my flight on the 3rd.

Alone and isolating as the friends I had been desperate to see were partying on the other side of the world and with my US vacation cancelled (though thankfully later rescheduled the following month, sans the convention) I tried to write a song to distract myself. But I guess I needed an emotional outlet and it turned out to be this song.
I sat down with the intent of writing first and foremost about the cat. But ultimately, I didn’t have much interesting to say about the cat. The cat is adorable but really serves as a vehicle to learn about the world, lore and characters of the forgotten city.

The idea of a city filled with abandoned sentient robots so ancient that they don’t even remember how they gained that sentience was fascinating to me. There are various theories about the Companions and how they came to be, but I found the idea that they simply don’t know and that uncertainty to be what was really interesting. So I chose to write from their perspective, unsure and theorising, based on some of the ideas the Companions put forward in game.

I hope you all enjoyed this slightly heavier and less cat-centric take on the game. It’s not often I flex those more serious writing muscles but I’m very proud of the result. Rest assured, there is some trademark Stupendium brand silliness, bureaucracy and sinister authority figure-ness on the horizon. Stay tuned!

Thanks to all of my fantastic Patrons for supporting the channel and making my videos possible!

Check out the full Stupendium originals playlist for all of my original songs!
STUPENDIUM ORIGINALS: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLV…

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Lyrics and Vocals by The Stupendium
Video by The Stupendium & Lizzy CJ
Beat produced by @DansonnBeats
Mixing and mastering by @OxygenBeats

Stray, its world and characters are the property of BlueTwelve Studio and Annapurna Interactive.

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The Stupendium is a musician, animator and content creator, creating weird, wonderful and usually incredibly nerdy songs and animations. Join them on their journey to obscure, niche internet stardom! They have some pretty decent videos, wonderful facial hair and a great sense of discomfort describing themselves in the third person.

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