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Pardon the dust! This page includes some jargon that hasn't been added to the site's glossary yet. I'll be around to fix this later, but sorry for the inconvenience in the meantime. |
Review: The Deer God
At a Glance
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How to Save and Pause:You can save your game in one of three save slots, but there isn't an autosave. Instead, you must find and stand next to special structures in the world in order to record your progress. To pause the game at any time, bring up the pause menu by pressing ESC. Time needed per session:Longer sessions are a bad idea here, as the longer you play, the more unstable the game gets.
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Does this game pose issues for Christian players?
 | Maybe While there are supernatural forces (such as the titular Deer god) and some mild violence, this game's just too unstable to really enjoy. |
Screenshots
![[view screenshot]](../images/screenshots/the_deer_god_0.jpg)
![[view screenshot]](../images/screenshots/the_deer_god_1.jpg)
![[view screenshot]](../images/screenshots/the_deer_god_2.jpg)
Game Overview
Every so often you'll come across a game that promises to make you think about things, possibly even challenge whatever you believe in. Plenty of games like this exist; the trick to making them work lies entirely in their execution. Done well, a game will strike a chord with players and show them things from new perspectives. The Deer god claims to be one of these games, but it turned out to be nothing more than a basic platformer with a mystical theme behind its mechanics.
The game opens with a pair of hunters camping in the woods. It's late, and the rain has made it unlikely that anything more will happen tonight. Yet, one of the decides to stay up, and soon has an opportunity to shoot a buck. Just as he's taking aim, a wolf attacks him from behind, and he accidentally shoots a fawn instead. As he dies from the wolf's attack, a bolt of lightning carries him away to a white void where he is confronted by the titular Deer god. She is extremely angry at the hunter's treatment of her kind, and gives him a warning that he must redeem himself or face an even worse fate.
This is where you come in. From this point onwards, you control the hunter, who has been resurrected as a newborn fawn. You'll need to find food, learn valuable skills, and avoid many different enemies in order to survive. As you progress in your journey, you'll also set right some old wrongs, and eventually face down many great monsters.
But, your main driving force is likely to be hunger. Food doesn't just respawn, so you'll need to continually head to the right in order to find new places to graze. Surprisingly enough, the best places to find food are caverns, as they often have a large amount of edible mushrooms. In addition to food, new areas may have Power Statues. These giant deer statues offer magical powers to those who can solve their puzzles. It's possible to complete the game without any powers, but they can be useful.
Speaking of the power system, a karma meter plays a role in this game. Depending on your actions, you'll gain either positive or negative karma. There is a branch of magic for each side, and the powers that are available on each branch reflect the sort of deer you are. For example, an evil deer gains offensive and destructive magical powers, while a good deer gains abilities to bless and heal creatures. While the evil path is the more useful of the two, it does come with a price: the Deer god may punish you further by turning you into a lesser creature, like a rabbit.
This is more of a punishment than it sounds, as you have a limited number of lives to complete the story. Thus, spending a life as a creature that can barely move around and can't defend itself wastes your time and prevents you from making any real progress. On the plus side, additional lives can be earned by either mating with certain does found throughout the world, or by finding deer skulls scattered around the landscape.
Ultimately, there's a good idea here. The story is approached well, the randomly generated worlds adds to the replay value, and being able to choose to play as a good or evil deer (as silly as that sounds) has possibilities. But this is undermined by several serious bugs and a $15 price tag. This might be worth playing if you can get it at a steep discount (such as Steam Summer Sale), but this level of quality isn't worth that much.
The game opens with a pair of hunters camping in the woods. It's late, and the rain has made it unlikely that anything more will happen tonight. Yet, one of the decides to stay up, and soon has an opportunity to shoot a buck. Just as he's taking aim, a wolf attacks him from behind, and he accidentally shoots a fawn instead. As he dies from the wolf's attack, a bolt of lightning carries him away to a white void where he is confronted by the titular Deer god. She is extremely angry at the hunter's treatment of her kind, and gives him a warning that he must redeem himself or face an even worse fate.
This is where you come in. From this point onwards, you control the hunter, who has been resurrected as a newborn fawn. You'll need to find food, learn valuable skills, and avoid many different enemies in order to survive. As you progress in your journey, you'll also set right some old wrongs, and eventually face down many great monsters.
But, your main driving force is likely to be hunger. Food doesn't just respawn, so you'll need to continually head to the right in order to find new places to graze. Surprisingly enough, the best places to find food are caverns, as they often have a large amount of edible mushrooms. In addition to food, new areas may have Power Statues. These giant deer statues offer magical powers to those who can solve their puzzles. It's possible to complete the game without any powers, but they can be useful.
Speaking of the power system, a karma meter plays a role in this game. Depending on your actions, you'll gain either positive or negative karma. There is a branch of magic for each side, and the powers that are available on each branch reflect the sort of deer you are. For example, an evil deer gains offensive and destructive magical powers, while a good deer gains abilities to bless and heal creatures. While the evil path is the more useful of the two, it does come with a price: the Deer god may punish you further by turning you into a lesser creature, like a rabbit.
This is more of a punishment than it sounds, as you have a limited number of lives to complete the story. Thus, spending a life as a creature that can barely move around and can't defend itself wastes your time and prevents you from making any real progress. On the plus side, additional lives can be earned by either mating with certain does found throughout the world, or by finding deer skulls scattered around the landscape.
Ultimately, there's a good idea here. The story is approached well, the randomly generated worlds adds to the replay value, and being able to choose to play as a good or evil deer (as silly as that sounds) has possibilities. But this is undermined by several serious bugs and a $15 price tag. This might be worth playing if you can get it at a steep discount (such as Steam Summer Sale), but this level of quality isn't worth that much.
Points of Interest
Random environments
It's important to continue travelling eastward in this game, as you'll quickly run out of food if you try staying an area for too long. But, each leg of the journey is chosen randomly, ensuring that no two journeys will experience the same world. It's a good way to give a game some replay value, but this is also the source of some of the game's major issues, as you'll see below.
Two endings
If you manage to survive long enough to defeat the deer's long-time enemy, the Deer god will grant you a choice. You can either become human again, or ascend to become an Elder stag. If you choose the latter, the game will continue with the new goal of saving your fellow deer. This amounts granting them a protective aura when you touch them.
Steam community features
There are 30 achievements to earn as you explore the world through the eyes of a stag. Only a few of them reflect your progress in the story, so you need to be creative to earn them all. Some are more challenging than others, as you'll often need set up the situations specific to an achievement's requirements on your own.
There is also a set of Steam trading cards, for those who enjoy collecting them.
There is also a set of Steam trading cards, for those who enjoy collecting them.
You can get blamed for things
The idea behind a karma system is that the player is rewarded or punished for their actions. In other words, when the player does something good, they get rewarded, and when the player does something bad, they get punished. But, this game seems to treat everything that happens as if the player deliberately caused it to happen. For example, if an enemy falls on spikes and dies, you'll get good karma, as if you defeated them. Likewise, if another deer dies for any reason, the game treats the situation as if you caused the animal's death. Thus, doing nothing is just as good or bad as doing something.
Bugs that interfere with gameplay
Randomly generated worlds are all fun and games until the world generation code decides to become unglued, and there are several ways this occurs in this game. The game can stall as you continue your journey, as the world generation procedure sometimes takes longer than it should. This is bad enough, as it interrupts your game, but it could easily be worse. It's possible for the next area to not generate at all, leaving a massive hole in the game world. Along these same lines, there are areas where the player can move through the landscape and leave the play area.
Now, it's not unheard of for players to fall out of the map, as this can happen in many games, but in the Deer god it stands out as this game doesn't seem to know how to handle this situation. You'll just keep falling. And falling. And falling, until the camera can't follow you anymore. All you can really do at this point is quit to the menu and reload your last save.
Another issue that players have encountered is that the game stops generating Power Statues once you have every power in a given branch. It's like the game assumes that since you completed one set of powers, you must have both sets, and thus no more Statues appear. Not only is this rather inconvenient, it can also make it impossible to earn one of the achievements.
Now, it's not unheard of for players to fall out of the map, as this can happen in many games, but in the Deer god it stands out as this game doesn't seem to know how to handle this situation. You'll just keep falling. And falling. And falling, until the camera can't follow you anymore. All you can really do at this point is quit to the menu and reload your last save.
Another issue that players have encountered is that the game stops generating Power Statues once you have every power in a given branch. It's like the game assumes that since you completed one set of powers, you must have both sets, and thus no more Statues appear. Not only is this rather inconvenient, it can also make it impossible to earn one of the achievements.
Concerns and Issues
Some blood and violence
When an animal is injured, there's a brief splash of pixelated blood. You'll also find bloody spikes randomly decorating the landscape. This contrasts heavily with how death is depicted, as creatures die in a puff of blue, red, or purple light (the color depends on the type of karma you gain when they die). On the other hand, the player's deer simply falls over when defeated.
Deer Reproduction
Producing offspring is one of the ways the player may gain an extra life. Not all does can become mates; the ones that can will display a heart over them when you get close. If you remain close long enough for the heart to fill up, a newborn fawn will appear in via a ray of light.
Supernatural elements
It's somewhat obvious that there will be supernatural themes in a story about a god and reincarnation, but I'll elaborate on this a moment. Both the player and the Deer god are capable of various magical powers, and there are some magical enemies like ghosts and mummies wandering around in the game world. You'll also encounter a witch during the storyline.
On the flip side, you'll also encounter a dilapidated church and a lonely pastor during the storyline; like the witch, he's one of the people you need to help in order to redeem yourself.
On the flip side, you'll also encounter a dilapidated church and a lonely pastor during the storyline; like the witch, he's one of the people you need to help in order to redeem yourself.
Hunting buddy has a bad time of it
Regardless of whether you choose to become human again or remain as an Elder deer, your character will meet up with his hunting buddy from the opening again. If you remained a deer, you'll discover him on a train and learn that he's gone more than a little crazy. As he tries to kill you, he'll fall out of the train car and die on the side of the road. Unlike anything else in this game, his body will remain behind.
Or, if you chose to become human again, you'll discover that he died and came back as a fawn, about to undergo the same journey you've been on the entire time.
Or, if you chose to become human again, you'll discover that he died and came back as a fawn, about to undergo the same journey you've been on the entire time.