My Deerest Friends!
Welcome back to our dev diary series. Last time, we talked about the choice to tell our story without a single word of dialogue, and why silence, for us, is not an absence but a language of its own. Today we want to take a step back. Further back... Back to the very beginning.
Where it all began! We want to talk about why Deer & Boy exists at all.
We wanted an animal that was wild. Not domesticated or safe like a pet, rather something that carries an instinct to keep its distance from humans. That untouchability is what makes the friendship precious. If it were easy to befriend a wild forest deer, then it wouldn't mean anything.
But we also didn't want something that could be read as a threat or wild animal like a predator. A bear changes the story entirely. A deer sits in a different perspective, it can be close to people, and yet it keeps its mystery. There's a reason deer appear in so many stories and fables across so many cultures. They occupy that rare territory between the human world and something just beyond it.
And then there's what a deer becomes. It starts small, wobbly, fragile, the fawn you carry in your bag pack at the beginning of the game. And it ends as something majestic. Long legs. wide shiny antlers. The elegance of the forest... That visual & emotional arc, from something you protect to something that carries you, that's the whole game in one simple silhouette.
Deer & Boy is a cinematic-platformer, a dialogue-free emotional-narrative adventure (wow that's a mouthful) about a runaway boy and a frightened fawn who find each other at exactly the right moment.
But to understand why we made this game, you have to understand what type of inspirations that we were drawn to before a single line of code was even written or any art drawn!
We looked at INSIDE for its atmosphere, and for the quiet fragility of its protagonist. At ICO and The Last Guardian for a relationship between two characters that evolves across time. At Alan Wake for what light can do as more than just a visual choice. At The Pathless for the texture of a bond with a companion. At Death Stranding for the idea that the space between two worlds can be where the most meaningful things happen.
On the cinematic side, we kept coming back to The NeverEnding Story, Bambi and The Lion King, the personal stories and their emotional journeys. Stranger Things for two worlds bleeding into each other until they become inseparable. And Moonrise Kingdom for its poetic atmosphere, and its way of making nature feel like a living, breathing character.
These were not really our exact mood boards as such, but rather they were lived experiences of our dev team consuming these pieces of art & media as an audience per se. They were questions that we asked ourselves when developing the game... What do we want the player to feel? What does this relationship need to do to earn its ending?
There's a feeling that's very hard to put into words. Most of us have felt it at least once for sure. A summer camp or a holiday where you met someone you knew you'd never see again. Be it in your childhood or adulthood. A moment shared with someone that was so complete, so alive, that it almost doesn't need to be remembered, because it already was (perfect).
Art doesn't always try to explain that feeling. Sometimes it just tries to hold it still for a moment, trying to capture it like sand flowing through the fingers...long enough for someone else to see it and for you to feel it but never to hold on forever... it lingers long after you've reached home and find sand particles in your shoes or hair...smiling about those bittersweet memories. And that is an example of an emotion that we tried to recreate and hope that the players end up feeling that after they have completed a playthrough.
That's what Deer & Boy is reaching for, not to tell you what to feel, not to explain the relationship between the boy and the deer. But only to create the conditions for you to bring something of your own to it, a memory, a loss, a friendship, a version of yourself that felt very small in a very big world and found, unexpectedly, something to hold on to.
Art imitates life. Or maybe life, sometimes, finally makes sense through art.
Last but not the least...
Ask us anything. About the game, the inspirations, the mechanics, the team, the story, the deer. Drop your questions in the comments below, on our Steam discussions, or head over to our socials or even Discord and leave them there. We'll pick our favorite questions or the most commonly asked ones and answer them in the next dev diary! Promise!
Something a little wholesome is coming your way tomorrow, June 6th. We can't say more than that. 🌿Ssshh... keep our secret 😉
- The Deer & Boy team
In the meantime, if you haven't already, add Deer & Boy to your Wishlist. The deer will know.