Deer & Boy is a cinematic platformer built around a single relationship: a boy who sneaks out of his home and a baby deer he meets along the way. What starts as a cautious encounter in the wilderness grows into a bond tested by dark corruption, wolves, underground mines, and a final sequence that hits harder than most games twice its length. This guide walks you through all 53 levels, section by section, so you never stay stuck longer than you need to.
Where the bond begins
Sneaking out: how do levels 1-3 work?
The game opens with the boy leaving his house at night. Head right and cross the first road, then wait for the police car to pass before crossing the second one. Pull the planks away from the fence and keep moving.
You'll pass an abandoned house with a car parked outside. Drag the car to the wall and use it as a step to climb over. Keep going through the parking lot until you reach a statue of a man and a deer. Rain starts here.
The construction site ahead requires timing. You can only pull planks from the path while the construction workers are running their drill. If you try during silence, they'll spot you. Once inside, climb the ladder, move right, and wait for the man on the phone to turn away before passing through the corridor. Drop onto the haystack below.
A baby deer appears near the road, dashes through traffic, and eventually joins you at the bus stop. Morning arrives, the deer is gone, and your journey continues.
Into the wilderness: what happens in levels 4-9?
A diner ahead shows news coverage of the boy's disappearance on TV. Officers are waiting further up, so keep running. You'll enter a warehouse where you need to walk the beams without being spotted by workers carrying cargo.
In the second warehouse section, hide behind the second shelf first, then move to the first shelf when an officer comes to check. Once the coast is clear, use the ladder on the far side to descend. The boy falls, and when he wakes up, the baby deer is nearby.
Cross the road to reach the wilderness entrance. A log blocks your path ahead, so climb the cliffs in the background instead. Use the vines to get higher. When you spot the deer in the distance, don't rush toward it or it will run. The deer leads you into a ditch.
At the cliff that's too high to reach, climb to the top of the left cliff, push the log all the way right, and use it to jump up. A similar setup follows using a tree branch. Keep progressing until you find the deer with its mother at the waterfalls. A gunshot sends them both running.
The mother doesn't survive. The baby deer runs from you, but follow it anyway. A short cutscene plays, and the two become friends. The deer now rides in your backpack.
Navigating the water mill
When you reach the water mill, a gap too wide to cross with the backpack forces you to put the deer down and jump alone. Land on the wooden planks below, climb the structure, go down the ladder, and push the planks outside. Return to the deer, place it on the planks, then climb back up and pull the planks inside.
With the deer retrieved, place it on the wooden switch to redirect water flow to the wheel. Cross past the wheel, push the wooden cart into it to jam the mechanism, then go back for the deer and cross safely.
Freeing the trapped boar
A trapped boar blocks the path. It's too aggressive to approach directly and you can't pull the trap from the ground. Find the downward path nearby, which leads above the cliff beyond the boar. Jump on the branch holding the trap's rope. The branch breaks, the boar escapes, and the path opens.
Shortly after, the freed boar crashes into a car on the road and gets absorbed by dark matter, turning violent before disappearing into the forest.
Backpack puzzle at the cliffs
Dark boar: how do you survive levels 10-13?
Dark matter puddles now cover the ground. Contact with them starts filling the boy with corruption, visible as a spreading effect on his body. If corruption covers him completely, you restart from the last checkpoint. Stepping onto any clean surface immediately removes the corruption, so use solid ground as your safe reset.
Deep in the forest, the puddles multiply. You'll reach a spot where climbing with the backpack is impossible. Put the deer down, climb the nearby tree, and drop onto the weakened log below. Jumping on it breaks the log, creating a crossing you can use with the backpack.
The corrupted boar patrols a field ahead. Hide behind huts and wait for it to look away before advancing. One spot forces you to drop down to an alternate path. Later, you drag a small boat along with you to keep the boar's line of sight blocked.
A tunnel leads you back up, but a large dark matter puddle sits inside. Use the ledges to navigate, then pull tree roots away from a stone slab on both sides to drop it into the puddle as a stepping stone. Back on the surface, keep hiding behind objects while the boar patrols.
Eventually the boy finds a bicycle in the trash. He rides it with the deer, stumbles, and the boar catches up. Here, the deer uses its purification powers for the first time, cleansing the boar completely.
Partnering with the baby deer: what changes in levels 14-19?
After the boar encounter, the deer moves freely instead of staying in the backpack. A Call button lets you summon it when it hesitates, such as at river crossings. The two of you reach a field of fireflies, then a barn.
A ditch before the barn stops the deer. Climb the crates on the side and enter through the upper section. Inside, push the large haystack off its platform and drag it to the ditch so the deer can jump across.
The fence net sections introduce a new mechanic: the deer can squeeze through small gaps and operate levers and buttons on your behalf. Command it to pull the lever that lowers the haystack so you can climb it.
At the train station, get on top of the cartons to jump the fence yourself, but push the cartons away on both sides to reveal a small hole the deer can use. The game keeps building on this pattern: you handle height, the deer handles tight spaces and remote buttons.
Navigating the train yard
On top of the train, a flickering light bulb creates a hazard. Walking under it while the bulb is active alerts the workers. Time your movement between flickers.
When the deer accidentally presses the alarm button inside a fenced area, hide in the empty box nearby and wait out the alert. Follow the worker into the building, then alternate between moving the boy and signaling the deer. When workers focus on the deer, you advance. When they look your way, the deer moves.
For the reception counter section, drag a crate near the counter, command the deer onto the crate and then the small gap on the counter surface, and it gets inside the room to press the gate button.
The apple factory sequence is timed. Watch how the worker on the escalator controller discards certain crates. When the deer's crate is about to reach the packing point and the worker steps away, sprint to the button and press it.
Corrupted tunnel: how do you get through levels 20-30?
A long ladder takes you underground. Dark matter puddles fill the area, but the deer's purification powers handle them. The tunnel section is the most puzzle-dense part of the game.
The most stressful moment in this section: pressing a button causes the entire corridor to flood with dark matter liquid. Sprint right at full speed without stopping. Pull the lever at the far end to open a path for the deer, clear the corridor, then drag a shelf right and escape through a vent.
After a long elevator ride down, corrupted creatures chase you. The deer distracts some of them. If it gets caught, help it. The creatures in the later rooms shoot on sight rather than charging, so stealth matters more here.
The section ends with a quiet scene above ground. The deer grows up.
Snow and wolves: what's the strategy for levels 31-36?
The grown deer changes traversal significantly. It can boost you to ledges that were previously unreachable, and many puzzles now depend on commanding it to interact with the environment at a distance.
Follow the flags through the snow. At the first dead end, command the deer to push a log down from the mountain above, then roll it left and use it to reach the cliff. Further ahead, ask the deer to kick a snow-laden tree so you can land safely on the pile below.
Wolves attack the small house you find. The deer blocks the gate, so go underground through a hole in the floor. Push the wooden block away from the pillar to tilt it, climb back up, push the pillar the other way, then climb the ladder. Push the crate to the door the deer is blocking, return to the right section, and jump onto the ground door from the shelves to open the escape route.
Inside the mountain cave, the deer lights the path. A boulder blocks the exit. Ask the deer to move it and step aside before it rolls down.
A blizzard sequence follows. Hold onto the deer to move through it. Wolves attack again at the end. Run and jump at the cliff edge. The duo reaches the mines and rests for the night.
Corrupted mines: how do levels 37-45 end?
The boy wakes to find the blocked path now open with signs of corruption everywhere. The elevator in the first room is a trick: activate it, then jump off because the real path runs underneath the elevator platform.
The mines introduce the friend, a strange creature the boy encounters alone after the deer gets separated from him. It controls tentacles and launches you to great heights. Use it to pull tentacle sources, drop stones, retract and extend tentacles as bridges, and reach glowing jump patches on the ground.
When reunited with both the deer and the friend, use the deer for height and the friend for tentacle-based traversal. A locked gate opens automatically when the friend interacts with it.
The sequence ends with a betrayal. The creature breaks the elevator, the deer gets consumed by dark matter, and the boy falls into the liquid.
Memories and conclusion: what happens in levels 46-53?
The boy carries the deer's broken antler through darkness. A line on the ground marks the correct path. Stay close to it.
Glowing orbs reveal memories when interacted with. Some require holding the interact button to absorb multiple orbs floating in the air. The antler destroys tentacle sources directly: use it on the orb-like nodes to clear the path.
The path leads through a corrupted version of the boy's hometown, including the statue from the very beginning of the game. Purify it with the antler. At the boy's home, interact with the father's phone inside his jacket to trigger a key memory.
The final area pulses like a heartbeat. Each pulse sends out a shockwave that throws the boy if he isn't holding onto something. Grab whatever is available before each pulse, then advance during the gap. Stones on the crumbling bridge provide cover as you close in on the core.
At the core, the deer is freed and becomes a fully adult deer. The final sequence puts you on its back. You can jump long distances, dash through corrupted tentacles, and use glowing circles as jump spots by stepping in and holding the jump button. Orbs floating in gaps grant a free mid-air dash to extend your reach.
Complete the sequence, watch the final cutscene, and the credits roll.
The final ride together
For more guides covering every section of this game, the Deer & Boy guides collection has everything organized by chapter. If you enjoy story-driven adventure games with puzzle mechanics built around a companion bond, Deer & Boy sits near the top of the genre.