I’ve just downloaded The Deer God on Xbox One, since it’s part of the free games with Xbox Live Gold this month. If you’re a gold member and haven’t downloaded this game yet, then go do so! It’s beautiful! 😀 Then again, I’m a retro gamer, and anything pixelated is just candy to my eyes ^_^

In this game you’re playing as a human hunter who has been transformed into a deer to learn some deep life-lesson. You start off as a small fawn, it’s a side-scrolling platformer and you just begin running to the right. Along the way you can encounter all types of forest animals, some are peaceful bearing a heart as their health bar, and others will attack you, like foxes, wild boars, snakes etc. These you can kill by charging into them, as a small fawn though you don’t deal much damage, but as you advance you grow up. Eventually you’ll become a fully grown buck, being able to jump higher and attack harder. Be aware though, hurting innocent animals might bring punishments… but there’s also achievements to be gained.. 😀

At first I had trouble figuring out what to do in the game, I kept dying and losing health and didn’t understand why. Even when I died I usually just respawned at the same spot, unless I had mated with a doe, which made a new fawn spawn that would become my “second life”.

After a while I figured out that the green middle bar is hunger! So you have to constantly eat in order to keep your health up. I first had trouble finding food, cause the only thing I found edible was the apples in the trees, until I realized you could press down when standing by a berry bush to eat that too 🙂 I have since found several other edibles, like mushrooms in caves for example 🙂

The Deer God also offers boss battles, these can be a bit tricky, I recommend attempting to go in there more or less fully grown to stand a chance ;D Bosses can always be found in caves along the way, I have so far encountered a badger, a cobra snake and a giant toad. There’s also power ups you can find by smashing bushes or gain from talking to NPCs. Most of these can be used to your benefit in boss battles.

Boss Cave

Inventory & Skill tree

You’re also  collecting relics and other special powers as you go along. You can enter houses and talk to people, or they talk to you, since you’re a deer it’s hard for you to communicate ;D They usually have a mission for you to solve. Sometimes you need to backtrack once you’ve found something they were looking for. I think these missions are more or less compulsory to complete in order to advance in the game and get all the relics.

Old man’s house

Church

Relic

There’s puzzles as well, deer statues appear once in a while with blocks around them. If you manage to push them so that the statue lights up you will have a spawn point. Other than that I haven’t found a particular use for them, but it’s fun trying to solve them, unless you get stuck for too long and die from hunger ;D There’s also some big deer statues that show your progress, I haven’t discovered another purpose of the big statues so far..

Deer Statue Puzzle

Progress Statue

The Deer God is filled with amazing sceneries! The colors and the pixel art are just amazing! There’s also a lot of action even though it’s a simple idea. Just run along as a deer, eat not to starve and avoid anything dangerous. Apart from other dangerous animals there’s also hunters trying to shoot you, forest fires and other hazardous environments! And of course secrets to be found ^_^

Beaches

Igloos

Desert Scorpion

Pillar

Forest Fire

Rocky terrain

You can have up to three save files and every time you start a new game the environment is randomized. Just go and begin your adventure as a deer, it’s a lot of fun! 😀