REVIEW | Deer & Boy

Deer & Boy is a narrative platformer about a boy running away from home who is joined on his journey by a young deer who ages throughout the adventure. They face increasingly dangerous environments and enemies and learn to work together as they grow closer to each other.

It’s a beautiful but short game that does a lot of things well, but rarely feels like it does something new, but I grew to like it more in a second run in which I was cleaning up some missing achievements. Hold on to your antlers as we dive in for a review breakdown!

Things I liked!

• The deer | I really like that they went with a deer as the companion animal, simply because it’s something fresh that hasn’t been done before. We also see the young animal gain powers to repel the darkness, and watch him grow into an adult buck from level to level (most of it through a “montage” video around the halfway point).

• It looks great | There are some more boring environments like the snowy mountains or the inside of a factory, but most of the game has a nice look to it with amazing lighting effects and very atmospheric shots. It’s got a very polished low-poly artstyle and the later levels often reminded me of Fe, another game I really enjoyed and reviewed before I joined LifeIsXbox.

• Companion does as asked | Games where you have to rely on a companion character solving half of the puzzles can be really frustrating if they don’t do as they are told. I recently had a few such issues with Little Nightmares III, and if it gets really bad, it can be reason enough to put down the game. Here, you can activate a cursor on screen and tell your deer friend exactly where to go, and it just works as expected.
  
• Level select |This is something we’ve all grown to accept in modern games, but still requires praise: you can pick a level to replay after having beaten the game, making it really easy to go back for missed achievements. I call this out because I’ve also had games where it was required to play the entire game from A-Z just to get a missing collectable (note: there are no collectables in this one)

Mixed & disliked!

• Very linear | Other than a single hidden level where you can discover what I assume is the developers working on the game behind the scenes, there is not a single moment where exploration plays a role or is even possible. It’s a very linear game with just one path forward to the next setpiece.
  
• It feels like I’ve played this before | I think my biggest gripe with the game is that it feels like I’ve played all of its setpiece moments before. A giant boar, a pack of wolves, and black sludge that needs to be cleared. If you’ve played a lot of similar games to it, like Limbo, Inside, Planet of Lana, Little Nightmares and others like it, you’ll get a few déjà vu moments throughout the adventure. That doesn’t mean it’s a bad game by any stretch, but I was left hungry for something really innovative or something that surprised me.

• The story is vague until the end | It’s only at the very end of the game, right before the credits roll, that it’s explained why the boy ran away from home. The deer is just a coincidental encounter, and the many monsters you face along the way are never explained. I was left wondering if the supernatural elements of the game were even real, or if they were supposed to be some kind of allegory to deal with real-life trauma he faced and show to the player in a different, more fantastical way. Having not a single spoken or written word in the entire game didn’t help much in that regard.
  
• Unreliable platforming | There are a few jumps in the game that aren’t very forgiving and that are very poorly placed. To give an example, there was a jump from wooden platform to wooden platform in a cabin, but at the very end of my jump, there was also a ladder down, and the character seemed to get confused by which of the two inputs to follow. Another similar jump led to my death each time I failed, and I had to replay a small section to get to the same jump.

• How long did I play the review before publishing? 7 hours
• How long to beat the story? 4 Hours
• How many Achievements did I earn before publishing? 910/1000 G (27/28)
• How long to get 100%? | 4 hours (if you get everything first try)
• You’ll love this game if you like these | Planet of Lana, INSIDE, Koira

Score: 70/100

A beautiful journey that treads familiar ground.

Deer & Boy is a short but beautiful narrative platformer with a charming deer companion, strong atmosphere, and polished visuals. The linear design, familiar ideas, vague storytelling, and a few frustrating platforming moments keep it from standing out.