I am continually amazed; now that we have the most powerful gaming systems of all time, how gaming has devolved back to the days of Commodore 64 and Tandy computer. Pixel art adventures are taking over the PC and console digital marketplace, and to their credit the designers are churning out some impressive titles given the limited scope of their artistic pallet. The first pixel art game I played was back in 2011; a slick little adventure for my iPad called Superbrothers: Sword & Sworcery. Little did I know just how prolific this genre would become over the next four years.
The Deer God is one such pixel art adventure, recently released for the Xbox One, and reviewed here. After hearing about how beautiful this game was, I decided to do a review for the PC version that had previously released back in February. After spending several long and delightful hours with this original title I must confess, the game is indeed strikingly beautiful given its blocky nature, but it was the actual gameplay and overall concept that hooked me into this adventure for the long haul.
In this game you start off as one of two hunters out in the woods a night. Your buddy heads off to bed while you tend to the fire but then a buck shows up. You grab your shotgun and prepare to shoot, unaware of the two wolves who are stalking your campsite. Just as you pull the trigger, the wolves attack. The good news is that you shot the deer, but the bad news is the wolves killed you – or vice versa if you are anti-hunting.
Imagine your surprise when you arrive at the pearly gates, and it turns out God is a giant stag who banishes you back to earth in the form of a baby deer to experience the pain and suffering you have inflicted on their kind all these years. And that is where The Deer God truly starts its clever and original ride.
It starts off as a simple side-scroller where you can run and jump around, exploring for items and encounters that will provide you with quests to unlock skills and abilities. You have a light and dark meter that judges your karmic actions, so while you are free to kill bunnies and squirrels you should probably save those antler attacks for foxes, snakes, spiders, hawks, and every other critter that seems bent on your demise. Along the way you’ll discover ten shrines, each with a puzzle to solve to unlock its secrets, and lurking behind hidden doors below the surface are epic boss battles.
All of these elements are just the highlights of a fairly routine system of gameplay set in procedurally generated levels so no two games are ever alike. You have three meters indicating health, hunger, and stamina. Much like real life the quest for food is a huge motivational force. As the days tick by, as noted by the day and night sequences, your deer will grow along with his antlers, allowing him to jump higher and fight better. Some areas are simply off limits until you are old enough to jump high enough to reach them, and boss fights are best attempted with a fully grown deer.
While almost every critter you encounter is out to get you, every now and then you’ll encounter a doe and sparks will fly. Not the kind of sparks that will trigger any of the numerous forest fires you must navigate, but rather the sparks that trigger your own baby; babies that will serve as your checkpoints should you die. It’s up to you how you play the whole family element. You can have your offspring follow you around and risk the same dangers you will be facing or tell him to lie down and proceed with your own agenda. Should you die you will spawn as your spawn wherever he may be and at whatever age he may be since he ages right along with you.
Thankfully, the procedurally generated levels kept things fresh, even when I was forced to restart new games from scratch three separate times due to the same bug in the game. Early on you are asked to meet an old man at his home to find his monocle. Your reward for doing so is a magic mushroom that allows you to bounce-jump over a high cliff that keeps you from advancing. On two occasions that man’s house never appeared, so I could never complete the quest or get the mushroom needed to proceed. The third time I did get the mushroom but died shortly after jumping over the cliff. My baby (respawn point) was back on the other side, but the mushroom was gone, and the man wasn’t handing out anymore. Interestingly enough, this all happened the first three times I played the game, but once I finally did get past that point it never happened again.
The Deer God is a soothing, almost therapeutic experience thanks to its marvelous presentation of gorgeous, stylized visuals and enchanting soundtrack by Evan Gipson. It’s a nice balance of item and food quests mixed with the occasional combat that is nothing more than 2-3 head-butts at your enemy, at least until you unlock the fireball attack. The environments are varied. You’ll be sliding across icy cliffs one minute, sinking into scorched deserts the next, and bouncing off alligator backs like Pitfall Harry in the swamp the next. The minimal interface for hot-slotting inventory items and skills and learning what they all do fits the casual nature of the game perfectly.
There is so much to do and so much to discover that you soon realize life as a deer is infinitely better than life as a redneck hunter, but what will you do when you encounter your hunting buddy looking down the barrel of a rifle aimed at you?
