Oh Deer Review (PC)

If asymmetrical co-op games have taught me anything these past few years, it’s that, thematically, nothing needs to make sense in order for the game to actually, you know, work. Take Call of Duty’s ever-popular hide-and-seek Prop Hunt, for example; if you can somehow pull the wool over your opponent’s eyes while taking on the role of a traffic cone, then you can,  theoretically speaking, win the round and even claim a few additional goodies along the way. As it turns out, Cozy Cabin Studios’ Oh Deer isn’t all that different, in the fact that, like Prop Hunt, players are able to embody an unlikely role, and blend in with the environment whilst avoiding the watchful gaze of a nearby hunter, whose only purpose is to separate the players from the NPCs, and whittle down the stowaways with a trusty makeshift bow.

It goes without saying at this point, but if you have endured a round or two in the likes of Dead by Daylight, Among Us, or Midnight Ghost Hunt, then you’ll no doubt have all the right tools needed to run a few quick and relatively painless bouts in Oh Deer. Do you need to have an undying love for wildlife and cattle to be able to fully appreciate it? No. Do you need to binge a few episodes of Animal Planet in order to identify the daily routines of a deer? Maybe — although to be honest, that mostly depends on whether or not your friends have done the same before slipping into the boots of a trigger-happy hunter. Spoiler alert: deer don’t often stand on their hind legs and dart around whilst farting. But that’s commonplace here, apparently.

Deer by Daylight

If you happen to fall into the category of folks who’ve never played a game of hide and seek before (you must’ve been hiding under a rock, if that is the case), Oh Deer isn’t going to make a lick of sense. But for the 99.8% of you who have somehow implemented hiding behind makeshift pillow forts and coat hangers at some point during your misspent childhood, then the thought of putting a deer with an upset stomach through the same motions won’t seem like that big of a deal. The game, which follows the same rules as the century-old activity, tasks one player with sniffing out and eliminating four deer—players who have the monumental task of blending in with NPC deer, and avoiding the piercing touch of a studded arrow. Sounds all rather straightforward and harmless, right? Eh — sure.

Of course, the rules themselves are pretty standard, as are the controls and abilities; sip a bit of water here, nibble a bit of grass over there, sort of thing. And doing these sorts of things are fine, so long as you’re not slumped into a group of friends who prefer to spear themselves into inanimate objects and completely blow your cover, thus giving your location away and sacrificing you to the kiss of a bullet. And that brings us to the real challenge of the game: finding new ways to act like a deer—a task that involves getting a little experimental with the maps and cloning others’ patterns. I’ll be honest, this isn’t that difficult to accomplish, or at least, it isn’t much different from pretending to be a needle in a haystack, anyway.

One With the Deer

The downside to the game’s simplicity is that, after a few short rounds, there isn’t much else to learn; in fact, you can embody the mentality of a deer in twenty minutes or less. It doesn’t help, either, that there aren’t all that many maps to explore. But where it lacks in creative detail, it makes up for in one major twist: the midnight rule. Sure enough, this is the segment that fellow deer are striving to reach, as the arrival of the twilight hours is the culprit for one dramatic change: the deer’s sudden ability to spiral out of control and embody a ravenous skinwalker.

The goal of the game, besides having to hide in plain sight and avoid a few fleeting arrows from the hunter’s bow, is to survive until midnight, and turn the tide on your opponent by transforming into a beastly creature that has the power to, well, hunt the hunter, if you will. The hunter, on the other hand, has another objective—a task that involves keeping a lid on a declining sanity meter, and using a cabin to monitor its imminent downfall. As you can imagine, time isn’t in anybody’s favor here, as one faction must forcefully defend themselves as each grain of the hourglass sinks to the bottom, whereas the latter must do all in their power to wipe the slate clean before it becomes engulfed in the itchy substance.

Oh Deer, Oh Deer, Oh Deer

I can’t help but reference Midnight Ghost Hunt when it comes to painting Oh Deer in a clear light — and for good reason, too. Similarly, Cozy Cabin Studios’ iteration is a slow burner to begin with, but eventually becomes an entirely different ballgame just as soon as the first eighty percent has been completed and allowed new mechanics to emerge from the roots. And I’ll just say this: it’s the final twenty percent that makes Oh Deer the real delight that it is; it isn’t a horror game by any stretch, but boy — just you wait until that crucial moment hits, and you have to flee from a seven-foot monster that’s coursing toward you on a cloud of leftover farts. That’s nightmare material, right there, man.

Of course, it’s one good thing to have a solid hook, but without a proper variety of locations to capitalize on its potential, it’s isn’t really worth talking about. Truth is, the latter portions of the game can be a lot of fun, but with little reason to progress other than to reignite an old feud with a former ally, there just isn’t a huge amount to come back for. Sure, the wooded locales are fun to romp through for an hour or two, but once you’ve seen all there is to see and done all there is to do, it does begin to grate and, unfortunately, the novelty soon begins to wear thin.

It’s still early days yet, and so, while I’m in no position to fully appreciate the beauty of Oh Deer and its limited range of features, I am able to recommend it to anyone who’s even remotely interested in slipping into a pair of shoes that just so happens to squeak, squelch, and fart. It’s a weird one, for sure.

Verdict

While it’s no surprise that hide and seek is a timeless pastime activity that can be enjoyed in short bursts — more so if you’re a fan of pretending to be a deer, from the looks of it — Oh Deer, similarly, is only fun to play for an hour or two before things start to wind down and become a little, shall we say, monotonous. Don’t get me wrong, it’s an entertaining little number, and a great way to slaughter a couple of hours with a few friends, but that doesn’t quite overshadow the fact that, when all’s said and done, there just isn’t a lot else to do besides hide and, you know, seek.

I won’t lie to you, the midnight moments that allow you to go full-on beast mode are great — especially if you’re saddled up with a good group of friends who’d do anything to scare the living daylights out of their former enemies. But then, seeing as the base version of the game does fall short in the content department, it does quickly dampen the overall experience. With that said, it’s early days yet, so we’re willing to give Cozy Cabin Studios the benefit of the doubt and say, as there’s still plenty of time to sew a few new patches into the stitching, it could be that a little more time in the oven is all it really needs. It isn’t mechanically unstable by any means, but it could certainly do with a few more maps and incentives to really get the blood flowing.

Whatever the case may be, the future is evidently bright for the folks over at Cozy Cabin Studios, so I’m willing to allow a few minor issues to disintegrate in order for Oh Deer to evolve and flourish.