I’m no stranger to the ruins of human civilization. From Mad Max to Fallout to The Last of Us, I’ve seen countless visions of post-apocalyptic decay, typically involving getting shot at by scavengers or chased by irradiated monsters. Way to the Woods offers a soothing alternative look at life after the fall. Sure, humanity may be gone, but why’s that your problem? You’re a deer.

Ahead of its appearance in the XBOX section at Summer Game Fest Play Days, I played a brief demo of this lovely little treat of a 3D narrative game, and spoke to its creator, ant tan, aka OnePixel.Dog. In Way to the Woods you are a deer leading a faun through abandoned urban environments in order to get back home to the woods.

tan cited “cinematic story games like The Last of Us and INSIDE” as major inspirations, along with aesthetic and experiential cues being taken from Deltarune, Katamari, and Kirby. “The game plays like a mix of all my favorite experiences,” he tells me. Even as the first game from a young developer, however, it doesn’t feel like an everything-and-the-kitchen-sink approach to just throwing all of his favorite things together – Way to the Woods has a strong, focused sense of aesthetic unity.

You solve puzzles by gathering light into your antlers from discarded electronics such as lamps and cell phones that you find lying around, then using that light to transfer power elsewhere or push back globs of black sludge. The puzzles are designed more to engage you and create opportunities for interaction with the world than to challenge. According to tan, “they’re challenging enough to be satisfying to solve, but you can turn your brain off and enjoy this game easily. If you have to open a walkthrough, you can email my spam inbox and let me know of my failure.” It’s much more about the experience.

The game opens by asking you your name, and then to name “that most precious to you,” which is the name given to the faun that follows you around. This sets an emotional tone that could risk verging on schmaltz if overwritten, but it’s held up by the minimal writing and animal perspective. “I want to remind the player that they are animals too,” tan said. “Things like anxiety are key to our survival, which is why it is so difficult to switch that part of your system off. But is that all life is about? Is life really a constant struggle against being eaten? This is why in this game you must be a deer, you must be prey, in order to understand true strength.”

The tone felt sweet and sentimental throughout, but also a little cold and alien by virtue of being an animal exploring human environments that they don’t really understand, which was important to tan throughout development. “Because role playing as an actual deer, an animal, is an important part of this game, I spent a lot of time imagining what it is like to live in that consciousness. What does my cat think when it watches TV with me? As the deer, the threat of predators is the realest, most immediate. But what about everything else? The memories and thoughts the deer has outside of survival, I imagine as elusive, like dreams. They exist in the deer’s subconscious. I tried to represent this through every part of the game’s design and interaction.”

To the game’s great benefit, it’s more sensory than wordy. It has lovely, minimalist, cel-shaded graphics and really cute animations — the deer and faun are adorably expressive, and some of the other animals I ran into like cats and mice were animated with a charming minimalism that did remind me a little of Katamari. What really ties together and elevates the whole thing, though, is the enchanting soundtrack from electronic duo aivi and surasshu, who are perhaps best known for scoring the Cartoon Network show “Steven Universe.” He described the chance to collaborate with them on it as “a dream come true, because I would listen to their music all the time when fantasizing about this game.”

It’s very clear that Way to the Woods is a labor of love from a passionate, young creator, and I look forward to experiencing the full magical journey when it arrives on XBOX Series X|S soon. For more information, go to waytothewoods.com. Content creators and media can sign up for future announcements and opportunities here.