Since childhood I’ve been fascinated by the wildlife programs on Nat Geo. With the release of “realistic” sim games, it’s genuinely awe-inspiring to see the channel finally leverage gaming technology to give us an accurate depiction of a real deer in the wild.
See it for yourself!
DEEEER Simulator (yes that’s four times ‘E’) is a complete mayhem sandbox straight out of Michael Bay’s fever dreams! You can graze, yes, but who cares when you can equip two AKs and/or 9mm Beretta replacing your antlers and two SMGs as literal sidearms with an additional grenade launcher mod. Wait, did I mention the Katana Sword yet which the DEEEER equips like a goddamn samurai? And that’s just the first level! The game begins with a fairly detailed low-poly ‘human’ character customization in which I spent like 15 minutes to make a character to my liking.
The next cutscene is that of our character jumping in front of a bus to save a deer. You die. Deer survives. Screen fades to black.
Next thing you know, you’re controlling a deer with some haywire physics and there’s giant ancient fishes floating in the sky and a big-ass cow standing on the ocean surface. Maybe we’re playing as the deer we saved, maybe we got reincarnated as a deer, who cares? We’re DEEEER now! All we know is we gotta cause rampant destruction till our chaotic minds are satisfied. Or maybe DEEEER Simulator is a mirror presented to humans with the title reading ‘Deadliest Animal on Earth’. Doesn’t help when on pressing Shift key, our DEEEER goes bipedal and starts sprinting like an Olympic athlete, even on water!
A DEEEER Departed
The game’s title reads “Your Average Everyday Deer Game”. Big F, because you won’t be wandering the forest, foraging for fruits and nuts and trying not to get in the way of a certain actor and his gun. Instead, you wake in a low-poly island city with some basic walking tutorials and within seconds you start getting PTSD from Goat Simulator. Because once the game starts, Call of Duty and Spiderman will feel like a distant memory. Infinite ammo in every guns, but you know what’s better? The DEEEER’s neck extending and attaching to any surface you aim at, pulling you with it as if it were a grapplehook straight out of Just Cause 2. Even the game’s logo is that of a deer with an extended neck and you can test it in the menu screen itself. It’s not a bug, it’s a feature. You see those building over there? You can pulverize it while swinging from them. See that human being, that train, those cars? Well, you know the answer.
In fact the entire world can be reduced to dust within mere minutes, unless you want to interact with the mortally vulnerable human beings. There’s an option called ‘Deerify’, clicking which antlers grow out of their heads and they become your loyal followers, chasing you wherever you go by doing Naruto-run(sprinting with arms stretched back). Good for building a cannon fodder army usable especially in boss fights (yes, there are bosses). Oh, and you can dance with those deerified humans too!
There is no specific goal. Why should be, when a logical approach won’t do any good. Those who built this game knew what they wrought… and they went all out with it. However, the more you explore, the more wacky things get. There’s a bunch of cows playing basketball (no they aren’t standing on two legs). There’s a downed airplane hull, a giant Koala hugging a skyscraper which doubles as a boss fight if you fire at it, a giant hotwheels loop (well, because our DEEEER can ‘comandeer’ vehicles and drive them with the worst vehicle physics imaginable), a spot where you can turn yourself into bread, and an ancient Chinese palace – the portal to the next and final sandbox level which is set in a future cyberpunk world. Remember that giant cow? You can play ‘Cowthello’ with it which is basically Othello but with constantly moving cows scattered about. Things get even more weirder when you get to the futuristic second area (the game is extremely short). There are flying cars now, giant hamsters running on giant hamster wheels, laser and blaster weapons, a giant python coming out of skyscraper and plenty of anime references. Also, there’s a Transformer made out of two rhinos, two tigers and two cows. Form the picture in mind yourself.
Anything and everything can be grabbed – cars, trams, dead humans, giant cows and koalas, you name it. You can carry them around while sprinting on two legs, and in fact, I tried to perform a slam dunk by throwing one of the cows playing basketball, which I never succeeded though. For the faint hearted, there are slow moving horses which the DEEEER can ride and trot about… until you want to punch out their living daylights and drag their corpses across the town.
Horns go brrr!
What excited me more were the boss fights, consisting of animal police forces like sheep, polar bears with police cars attached to their backs, sniper bunnies, sniper bunnies inside a rhino’s mouth, polar bears inside a Deception police car straight of Michael Bay’s Transformers, bare-chested humans with sheep for their heads etc. Now, don’t get me started with the Corgi Megazord made out of sheep, polar bears and a Big Chungus. What’s more interesting is that you can edit the number of enemies that spawn per wave. The game does nothing to stop you from piling this to ridiculous heights, to the point that you can easily turn the game into an unplayable mess due to all the models on screen. What a stress test considering the small size of the game areas which are as large as a football field. Considering how fast you can run and destroy things, there’s only so much architecture and creatures to take down, and when you do, you’re left with just an empty sandbox and a bunch of weapons
The visuals were expected, however the developers nailed the sound department with high-energy beats especially in the second level. It’s a wonderful experience to blow the enemies to kingdom come as hard-hitting tunes play out.
Deer Talk
There’s no question that this is indeed a real life simulation of a deer’s existence… if you can accept the nonsensical manner at which the action unfolds. For a game that’s free to play on Xbox Game Pass, you have nothing to lose except maybe your sanity. Though it’s a decent stress-buster when you want to take the load off after a busy day at work but it’s extremely short and every weapon in your arsenal is available right from start. Do give DEEEER Simulator a try though.