Oh Deer is an Asymmetric Multiplayer hide-and-seek game by Cozy Cabin Studios that pits one player (The Hunter) against up to four player-controlled deer scattered across a brightly-colored map among computer-controlled deer. The gameplay loop is simple: player-controlled deer attempt to evade the Hunter while grazing peacefully, occasionally violently pooping for an emergency escape, while the Hunter uses trail cameras and a bow to try to identify and kill the player-controlled deer. Complicating matters is the Hunter's sanity - if it runs out, The Hunter Becomes the Hunted, and he'll need to book it to a cabin before he gets ripped apart.
Oh Deer was released on Steam on Jun 27, 2024.
Tropes:
- Darkness Equals Death: When night falls, the forest becomes extremely dark, making it difficult for the Hunter to navigate his way to safety, much less see the monsters now pursuing him.
- Disguised Horror Story: At first blush, this game is a brightly-colored, low-poly competitive hunting game with a dash of Toilet Humor. However, if the Hunter's sanity runs out, night will fall, the deer will change into wendigo-like monsters, and the Hunter will find himself running for his life to the nearest cabin before his former prey can rip him apart.
- Disturbing Deer: The player-controlled deer don't appear all that menacing, as they're at the mercy of the Hunter's arrows and must either blend in with the other deers or run away to survive. But once the Hunter's sanity is diminished, The Hunter Becomes the Hunted; the deer stand up and change into Wendigo-like creatures with a new objective: "KILL".
- Foreshadowing: The fact that the player-controlled deer can display many traits unlike that of a regular deer — exclusively standing on their hind legs when hungry/running, their stomach growling exceptionally loud that it can be heard from across the forest and ejecting themselves via pooping — may be the first indication that they aren't natural fauna. And once the Hunter's sanity runs out, that becomes quickly apparent.
- Lost in a Crowd: The player-controlled deer are scattered across the map among computer-controlled deer, and part of the Hunter's goal is to figure out which ones are human, as his sanity drops faster if he shoots computer-controlled deer.
- No Name Given: The Hunter is only known as exactly that.
- One-Hit-Point Wonder: Each deer (player or AI) takes a single arrow to die. When the Hunter's sanity drops to 0, he also takes one hit from a now-transformed deer to die.
- Sanity Meter: The Hunter has a sanity meter that constantly runs down throughout each round. If he successfully shoots a player-controlled deer, he regains sanity, but if he hits a computer-controlled deer, he loses sanity. Should this hit zero before he can kill all the player-controlled deer, the tables turn and he'll need to flee to his house before the now-transformed deer find and kill him.
- Spot the Imposter: The Hunter needs to find and shoot all the human-controlled deer among a number of computer-controlled ones. Successfully hitting a player deer replenishes the Hunter's Sanity Meter, but hitting an AI deer causes a huge hit to the Hunter's Sanity Meter.
- Toilet Humor: The player deer's main method of moving fast to get across the forest or evade the Hunter's arrows is by letting loose their droppings so hard they fly forward.
- Wendigo: If the Hunter's sanity runs out completely, night abruptly falls and the deer turn into murderous, deer-like humanoids whose goal is changed to simply, "KILL".
- Wizard Needs Food Badly: One mechanic to keep the player-controlled deer moving around is a Hunger meter that constantly runs down unless they graze or eat Red mushrooms — the latter scattered across the map and can restores a chunk of their Hunger. Fail to keep the meter in check, the deer's stomach will sound across the forest and the deer will be forced to stand on their hind legs, cluing in the Hunter on where to shoot.
