First impressions can be very important, and The Deer God makes an excellent first impression. It's a shame, then, that it loses momentum so quickly.
Let's get that first impression out of the way first, though. The Deer God is an absolutely beautiful game. In it, you play a hunter whose soul has been trapped in a deer after his accidental death in order to atone for his crimes against nature. In your new form you'll travel through dense forests, arid deserts, frozen tundra, lush jungles and many more breathtaking environments.
Visually, the game has a modern retro feel to it. It employs 3D pixel-style art and makes smart uses or parallax scrolling to give the illusion of depth to its varied environments. All of the environments feature beautiful lighting effects that really make them come to life. The Deer God is truly one of the few games that as is attractive in motion as its marketing materials may try to make you believe.
Admiring the sights in The Deer God is indeed a pleasure, but there is a game lurking underneath those gorgeous visuals and it isn't nearly the work of art you might expect. Mechanically, The Deer God is very similar to 2D side-scrolling games of old. You can run left or right, jump and attack, but that's about it. As you travel, you'll grow from a fawn into a strong buck. The world is similar to that of a roguelike in the sense that the environments are randomly generated.
The idea of randomly generated maps is good in theory, in that it provides the player with something unique and interesting in each play session - however, in the case of this game it's the biggest failing. The goals in The Deer God aren't immediately clear; you'll meet with an elder early on who will give you the ability to double jump, and this sets the pace for the rest of the game. Occasionally you will run into someone in need of help, or find a simple puzzle in need of solving. The game progresses through completing these quests, but the environments often get in the way more than they should.
The majority of quests in The Deer God involve finding an item and returning it to the person that requested it. Sometimes this means the item is mere steps away from the person, but at others you can be running for 15 or 20 minutes before finding it, coupled with another five or ten to find the NPC again. Running through the colourful environs of The Deer God is fun, but the environments are built out of only a handful of pre-defined elements, meaning you'll see frequent repetition of puzzles, cave structures and platforming challenges. Moreover, the longer you play, the more pronounced the load times become as the game struggles to build more elements for you to explore. In our experience we noticed considerably longer load times the more we ran.
The disappointing decisions don't just stop at the world building, either. This game is incredibly easy, even in hardcore mode. In hardcore mode the idea is that once you are out of lives the game is over, permanently; your save is deleted and you must start over from scratch. However, the world is littered with opportunities to resurrect yourself. Extra lives are available in the form of deer skulls, but you can also mate with deer which will let you reincarnate should you die. Each time you die you will be reincarnated by the Deer God as a different animal, depending on your karma. If you have good karma, which you get by killing hostile creatures and humans, you'll be reincarnated as a fawn. Amass too much bad karma, and you'll be reincarnated as a helpless bunny until enough times passes, at which point you'll change back into a fawn and be allowed to mature again.
Enemies in general didn't seem all that threatening in our experience, and combat was unsatisfying. Combat is essentially just charging at enemies, though none of the enemies pose much of a challenge, bosses included. Aside from the karma aspect, The Deer God offers no real motivation for killing enemies, as fleeing is often easier.
We also would have liked to see The Deer God make better use of the Wii U's GamePad. In it, action is mirrored to the display, but we wish we could manage inventory from there. Hitting the Y button during gameplay pauses the game and displays an inventory screen which allows you to assign items to one of two inputs; everything is laid out in a practically GamePad-ready grid, and it would certainly feel less cumbersome to drag and drop items than highlight them with the d-pad and select them.
Conclusion
The Deer God is beautiful. Sadly, that beauty is only skin deep. Poor design choices take away from fantastic visuals that really have to be seen. With the right level of polish, this could have been one of our favourite indie games on Wii U.
Instead, clumsy quest design, repetitive environments and poor performance ensure The Deer God will be remembered as little more than eye candy.
Comments 45
Dang it, I had some hopes for this... a Deer pass from me then.
Deer lord, what a shame. Was looking forward to this, I'll grab it when it's on a sale most likely.
Oh deer...
My God Steve, you really deerided this game.
Kind of a surprise Nintendo allowed the word God in. Well done Nintendo.
"a hunter whose soul has been trapped in a deer after his accidental death in order to atone for his crimes against nature"
I stopped reading. Pretty sure animals killing other animals is an essential part of nature.
A pity, I will give this a miss, fawn-now at least.
@FantasiaWHT
Maybe he was illegally poaching or something like that? Otherwise, yeah, hunting in general is not a crime against nature... I suppose purely trophy hunting is up for debate.
A shame. I had high hopes for that, it looks great.
Quick! Deerstroy the comments section before the deer-puns become too powerful!
Deerie me, another poor game on the eShop.
@ekreig I applaud you, sir.
I had high hooves for this. I guess I'll try to save a few bucks by waiting for a sale.
Not enough bang for your Buck it seems.
//passes the A-1 steaksauce around the comments section....
I guess I'll be saving my bucks then.
Other than fawning over the graphics, there's nothing for me here. I'm passing on this hunt.
It's a shame, the artistic deerection looked amazing.
I see I'm not alone. I found this game shallow and repetitive so I dropped it after 10 minutes or so.
That's a shame. It does look rather cool.
Too bad, I had this game on my reticle...
I hav'antler the time or the money for games like this.
Could be good for a bambi'nos though!!
I backed this on Kickstarter and it's the first (and only) backed game I've actually gotten, out of nearly a dozen projects I've supported. That includes Mighty No. 9, sadly. ANYWAY, I generally agree with the review... the game really is gorgeous, but the deer sprite is so small, I pretty much play exclusively on the GamePad because I die far too often while playing on TV due to not seeing where my character is and falling into a spike trap or something.
This game really had a lot of potential. I don't regret backing it, but I'm a little bit disappointed in the final result. I do find it relaxing and fairly enjoyable if played as an endless runner, though.
I got this game for free on Xbox Live. it's pretty to look at but it gets boring real quick.
...I had no ideer this was out..if playin this game..I herd ewe better have a Doe's Equis or a Star bucks bfur startin...yeehaw...
The art design is amazing. Some of my favorite I've ever seen. Shame the gameplay is deer roadkill.
Sad, I Kickstarted this game, and played early builds on PC, but just got my WiiU code when it came out recently. I think adding better gamepad support and improving load times would go a long way to improving the game. Otherwise, the point is that it's sort of like an endless runner with a plot and objectives, and reincarnation, in a beautiful parallax-scrolling-pixel world, and I think it delivers on that.
I still like the visuals, maybe when discounted.
I got it free on XBL...played it for about 30 minutes, and never went back. The visuals are the best part, the rest is awful.
Such a shame, I was genuinely interested in this one.
D'oh! (a deer, a female deer)
This game looked indeeresting. Unfawntunately, it's looks more like a deer in headlights. Guess I won't be shelling out the bucks for this one. Doe not undeerestimate the power of a bad-deereview. I hope the Xbox One venison is reviewed better.
Dang. Too bad.
It was free on the xbox one a while back.
Oh deer god whyyyyy?!
I had really high hopes for this Deer.....
@eltomo Might not be such a bad game.
Dang. I really wanted to like this too. Maybe if it's price hits rock bottom, I'll consider getting it, but it looks unlikely at this point.
"you can also mate with deer"
i have been waiting 36 years for a game that lets me personally do this. my dreams have fallen in my lap. GOTY
bring it on.
Are the graphics supposed to look 16-bit? They should learn from Freedom Planet on how to do that.
This game seems to have got stuck in a rutt.
Doesn't surprise me. I heard it was already a stinker on other platforms. Besides procedurally generated is VERY lame!
@Henmii points at terraria
I wish there was a game where the DEER is the hunter and hunts people...then again, who knows what it will be rated! XD
This is supremely disappointing. I thought it looked and sounded quite promising.
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