The Deer God - Switch Review

The Deer God is an interesting take on the platforming genre. After an accident while out hunting, you are reincarnated as a deer and must now live out your life as one for as long as you can. With treacherous terrain, plenty of other wildlife that would eat you and more hunters that are out to shoot you, expect to restart as a fawn several times.

Crescent Moon Games have created an interesting concept that takes the ideas of a platformer and works in elements of games that would see you continually run as well as those of a roguelike. While the experience isn't a hard one per say there are a ton of ways to die such as landing on spikes, getting eaten or starving to death if you can't find food in time. If you have lives stashed away then there's no problem as you'll come back exactly where and how you were. If you don't however you'll be brought back to the last checkpoint and start back off as a tiny fawn which is much easier to take out than a fully grown buck. At least you keep what you've already unlocked!

From the outset of receiving instructions for controls, the rest isn't exactly the most clear and it takes a bit of time to realize what to do in order to really move forward. As you continually run towards the right you'll have to tackle objectives that allow you to move out of one area and into another. Otherwise? You'll keep repeating the same area until you get it right. What do you need to do? It isn't always clear and often I wondered what I was doing wrong as I kept seeing the same space over and over again.

Honestly that's about it really. You keep moving forward, clear objectives and once again move forward. Visually however The Deer God has an interesting pixel art to it and the music tracks are something else. So even while you keep lapping around the same areas over and over again, the visuals change with both the rising and setting of the sun and once the music kicks in it all comes together. The most that I wish it had more was actual guidance when it comes to what you're supposed to do once you leave the tutorial.

What I found interesting was that alongside the ideas of resurrection there were also ideas on karma. If you take out any of the beings trying to kill you then your karma will stay in the positive. However if you take out anything that is another deer or a peaceful creature you'll go into the negatives. The issue with the second half however is that if something else kills the peaceful creatures while you're close then you get negative karma. If a deer follows you and misses its jump because it can't double jump like you do and dies on spikes. You get negative karma. You really need to watch both your actions and those around you since everything affects it on your quest forwards.

Overall The Deer God is an interesting take on the platformer that will keep you busy for a couple hours. While a little more guidance would have been nice, the audio and the visual elements are pleasant and the background story to make it all click in an interesting one as you keep an eye on your karma which if you don't keep in the positive will start possible changing what you resurrect into.

Game Information

Platform:
Nintendo Switch
Developer(s):
Crescent Moon Games
Publisher(s):
Crescent Moon Games
Genre(s):
Platformer
Mode(s):
Single Player
Other Platform(s):
Sony PlayStation 4
Microsoft Xbox One
PC and Mobile

Source:
Provided by Publisher

Article by Pierre-Yves