Deer & Boy

Deer & Boy is the latest example of an excellent side-scrolling puzzle-platformer. It blends a beautiful art style with unique deer based puzzles and a silent story that will pull on your heart strings.

Overall, Deer & Boy offers a worthwhile experience for fans of games like Inside and Limbo. Its varied environments, well-executed stealth sequences, cooperative gameplay between the boy and the deer, comprehensive Chapter Select system, and several genuinely inventive gameplay ideas are enough to fill, at least in part, the void left by Playdead’s classics.

"An Emotional Cinematic Experience" Deer & Boy offers an emotional and cinematic experience that relies more on visuals and sound than words. The game successfully builds a compelling relationship between its two main characters, supported by distinctive art and sound. Despite some navigation and control issues, it remains a beautiful and moving experience that leaves a strong impression on fans of narrative games.

If you're not welling up by the end, I don't know what to tell you.

Deer & Boy delivers a heartfelt cinematic adventure with beautiful art direction, emotional storytelling, and enjoyable environmental puzzles, even if its slow pacing and occasional technical issues prevent it from reaching its full potential.

If you love Limbo or Inside, you’re going to adore Deer and Boy. It is a linear exploration title where basic puzzles, stealth, and a heartwarming story take you on a fantastic journey. Furthermore, it deals with some challenging topics, so expect some tears and sombre moments. This linear, side-scrolling puzzle platformer was developed by Lifeline Game Studio. It is a single-player game that evolves at a pleasant pace. At its core, you’re expected to use stealth and your grey matter to overcome an array of simple puzzles. As the game progresses, you’ll use your deer companion to reach otherwise unreachable places. This change of pace keeps you entertained while changing the way you think.

Despite issues like an unnecessary maze and out-of-place sci-fi premise, Deer & Boy is an adorable narrative adventure that I would recommend. Some of the puzzles are a bit confusing due to a lack of visual cues, but the puzzle gameplay is rewarding for the most part.

A charming and touching platformer that may seem formulaic and basic from the outside, but in fact turns out to be quite original and memorable.

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.

As far as story-based indie adventures go, Deer & Boy is one of the most memorable with its lovely sights and sounds and intuitive gameplay. 🦌