Goo Deer news & patch notes

Patch 1.3.1 is live

Your save file

• A failed save or load can no longer damage or delete your saved game. If anything goes wrong mid-save, the game backs off and keeps your existing data intact.
• After a game over, that run is now over for real. Fixed several ways a finished run could be brought back — relaunching at just the right moment, restoring an older Steam Cloud copy, or syncing the save onto a second PC.
• Steam Cloud is more reliable overall: deleting a save while offline now sticks once you reconnect, and the game pulls your latest cloud data down before the main menu.

Gameplay fixes

• Jumping can no longer become permanently unresponsive — the game now detects the broken state and repairs it automatically.
• Fixed a rare tutorial soft-lock that could leave you without controls. Once the tutorial lets go of the world, it stays gone.
• Deer now die where they're hit: corpses no longer slide around, get shoved by the rest of the herd, or end up unharvestable. Eye-shine also switches off on death.
• Traps: fixed a sprung trap occasionally failing to produce its catch, and fixed already-collected traps triggering again afterwards.
• Fixed the store's post-raid recovery sometimes never kicking in.
• Employees now sweep up outdoor messes correctly.
• A large batch of hardening so a single hiccup can no longer strand customers, employees, deliveries, or fires mid-task.

Audio

• Fixed the gas station music being completely silent.
• Traps now have proper sounds for throwing, landing, and picking them back up.
• Reworked how roughly a hundred sound effects and the large music tracks are loaded — same sound, noticeably less memory.

Steam Deck & controller

• Fixed menus refusing controller navigation on Steam Deck when SteamOS presents the pad as a keyboard.

Under the hood

• Texture streaming is now enabled on High and Ultra, cutting video-memory use with no visual change.

Update 1.3.0: Performance Overhaul, Trap Rework & a Pile of Fixes

Hey everyone! Quick follow-up to the big 1.2 controller & Steam Deck update. This one is all about making the game run better and play fairer. Here's what's new in 1.3.0:

⚡ Performance Overhaul

• Major optimization pass on the forest and store: a reworked grass system, leaner shadows, cleaned-up scenes, and less background processing per frame.

• Smoother framerates at every quality level. The biggest gains are on Steam Deck and lower-end PCs.

• Steam Deck: the graphics menu is now a simple two-option choice (Low/High), both tuned to run well on the device.

🪤 Trap Rework

• Thrown traps now settle naturally and lock in place once they land. No more traps sliding around or ending up somewhere weird after loading a save.

• Traps can always be picked back up, survive save/load correctly, and can no longer be lost or duplicated, including when a catch fails or your backpack is nearly full.

🏆 Leaderboards

• Player profile pictures now display correctly on the global leaderboards.

🦌 Fixes & Polish

• Punching raiders now gives proper hit feedback.

• Fixed the gas station music going silent.

• Item pickups no longer lose or duplicate items when your inventory is almost full.

• The janitor now actually finishes sweeping outdoor leaf piles.

• Ammo pricing at the cabin market has been rebalanced.

• Audio polish: better NPC footstep audibility, consistent menu click volume, and improved night ambience.

• Various smaller fixes to UI, cleanup effects, and stability.

Thanks for all the reports since the last update. Several of these came straight from your feedback. If anything looks off, let us know in the discussions. See you in the store. Watch the treeline. 🦌

Hey everyone! This is by far our biggest update yet: quality-of-life across the whole game, new ways to play, and a mountain of fixes. Highlights: 🎮 Full Controller Support Goo Deer is now fully playable with a gamepad: menus, shopping, stocking, the register and payments, price setting, the basement machines, and hunting. Button prompts switch automatically between keyboard and controller, and the key-bindings screen now shows a controller layout. 🕹️ Steam Deck Support The game detects the Steam Deck and configures itself for it: tuned default settings, readable menus, working videos, and controller navigation everywhere. Couch shopkeeping is officially a thing. ☁️ Steam Cloud Saves Your progress now syncs through Steam. Start on desktop, continue on your Deck. 🎯 Difficulty Selection New games now let you choose Easy, Normal, or Hard, mainly changing how much ammo you start with (40 / 20 / 10 bullets). Pick how scary you want your nights. 🦌 Hunting & The Deer Man - Hiding in bushes now genuinely conceals you. Deer have a harder time seeing and smelling you - The Deer Man telegraphs his strikes, making the fight dangerous but fair, and he can no longer vanish if you save and quit mid-fight - Slaying him earns a new achievement and a slayer badge next to your name on the leaderboard - Added protection against cheated leaderboard scores 🏪 Store & Economy - Customers now judge prices fairly relative to what an item is worth, and the pricing screen hints at the "always sells" sweet spot - You can now toggle which machines the operator is allowed to run, per machine - Trap prices scale with how many you own; the cabin market restocks every day - A broad economy balance pass: upgrade costs, ammo prices, product batches, and mission goals ⚡ Performance We hunted down a whole family of stutters: hitches when opening menus, entering the gas station, crossing into the forest, during store raids, and at checkout. Raids especially are dramatically smoother, and frame pacing is steadier everywhere. 🔧 Fixes & Improvements - The operator no longer starts a machine while you're using it (or eats the ingredients you loaded) - Machine products no longer end up scattered on the store floor above the basement - Fixed the janitor occasionally getting stuck mid-clean - Fixed shop music sometimes playing two tracks at once - Fixed an out-of-bounds shortcut over the gas station fence - Fixed deer occasionally spawning under the terrain - Store products no longer disappear when viewed up close on lower graphics settings - The fire extinguisher now sits properly in view when held - The office PC boots to the correct screen every time - The flashlight tip now appears the first time you're actually out in the dark - New settings: mouse sensitivity slider, and a DirectX 12 / DirectX 11 selector - Quieter, better-balanced footsteps - Save-system hardening and many smaller fixes Thanks for playing, reporting bugs, and climbing the leaderboard. More to come.

Goo Deer: Update 1.0.1

A polish pass focused on fixes, display options, language support and performance. Thanks for playing!

✨ New & Improved

• New display options: added a Gamma (brightness) slider and an FPS Limit (frame-rate cap) to Graphics settings, alongside V-Sync options.

• More rebindable controls: Crouch, Jump, Run, Aim, Fire and Reload can now be remapped in Settings → Controls (Crouch defaults to Left Ctrl).

• Better language support: Steam names, typed names and on-screen text now display correctly in Thai, Russian, Chinese, Japanese, Korean and more (no more missing-character boxes).

🎮 Gameplay Fixes

• Items handed to the operator machine are no longer lost when its stock is full.

• Fixed the rifle blocking your scope view when aiming in the forest.

• Fixed the woods merchant's ammo box and scope vanishing on lower graphics settings.

• Fixed getting snagged in doorways while carrying a box.

• Secret doors now stay open after loading a save.

• Fixed a black screen that could occur after the boss cutscene.

• Leaderboards: improved score accuracy and reliability. Runs are no longer occasionally lost.

🎨 Visuals & Audio

• Improved deer shading in daylight and fixed lighting glitches under the flashlight.

• Fixed a strange moving reflection in the basement floor puddles, an over-shiny rug, and workshop light flicker.

• Basement workshop ambience and machine sounds now respect the SFX volume slider.

• Fixed a misplaced highlight outline on goo-canister pickups.

⚡ Performance & Stability

• Further graphics and shadow-quality improvements across the quality tiers.

• Optimized and re-compressed additional textures for lower memory use.

• Fixed a crash that could occur on lower graphics settings.

• Additional bug fixes and stability improvements.

Thanks for the support. Keep the feedback and bug reports coming! VMLStudios

Goo Deer is now available on Steam.

Goo Deer is a dark, first-person gas station management game from VML Studios. Your job sounds simple: craft and sell Goo Deer, manage inventory, hire employees, and keep the station running in a world obsessed with one strange drink.

The problem is what keeps that drink flowing. To stock the shelves, you will need to head into the misty forest, hunt deer for ingredients, and avoid the dangerous creature moving through the fog.

Watch the trailer:

Play Goo Deer on Steam: 

Thank you to everyone checking out the game at launch. If you play, we would love to hear what happened during your first shift. A Steam review also helps other players decide whether Goo Deer is their kind of strange.

Goo Deer: Patch Notes (v1.0.0)

Employees & Store

• Stockers now reliably restock shelves on every wall. They no longer get stuck and stand idle in the basement while product piles up.

• Employees now turn to face a box before picking it up, instead of grabbing it side-on.

• Added footstep sounds for all employees. The cashier, stocker, janitor, and basement operator are no longer silent.

Deer & Wildlife

• Trapped deer no longer disappear if you leave them overnight or for several days. Your catch stays in the trap.

• The Deer Man now moves much more smoothly; his walking and running no longer look twitchy or jerky.

Combat & Raids

• Your held box is now dropped automatically when a raid forces you to raise your fists.

Audio

• The Deer Man's music now fades out smoothly instead of cutting off abruptly, including when daybreak ends the encounter.

• Rain and thunder now fade out gradually as a storm passes, with the rain thinning out over several seconds, instead of stopping instantly.

Performance & Polish

• Customers and employees no longer slide or stutter their walk animation when turning or squeezing past one another.

• Optimized textures across the game for a smaller download and smoother performance.