Donut County (2018)

I was playing a pretty stressful horror game (Silver Chains) and just needed something to chill out my adrenaline. This strange game where you play as a hole in the ground that gradually expands as it swallows object in the world… it caught my eye. And I can safely say it works as advertised.

Not the kind of game made for me, so the rating is very subjective. I don’t love pointless easy chill-out games, but this one did keep me amused enough to see the ending. It’s very short and very mindless… you just eat the world. But its quirky personality and strangely satisfying mechanic did the job.

If you like katamari, this has a very similar feel to it. You slowly destroy the level while gradually getting more powerful. But it’s really not much more than that, so maybe wait for a sale.

I sat down and played through Donut County in a single session. It probably would be a better experience on the phone, spaced out over many days, but I binged it, and I'm happy to have played it.

Donut County is a fun, easy, light-hearted and funny, short game that doesn't shoot for the moon, but is a perfect distillation of what it wants to be. The gameplay is you are controlling a hole and want to swallow everything on the map; you do this by starting small and getting bigger by swallowing items.

It reminds me of Katimary Damacy as it tickled my brain with its incremental increases of the hole. At its core, Donut County is a puzzle game, but its approach is very zen and non-taxing. It isn't until the last level where you need to actually think, instead of just stumbling through a level -- thinking does make the levels go quicker, but it isn't required for most of its play time.

Kind of criticism time: Donut County does something that I've experienced before in The Painscreek Killings, and that's springing a death state on the player at the end of the game. As someone who has spent most of their life playing video games, this isn't much of a problem and I know the language of video games very well, but to someone who doesn't, and Donut County is a great game for someone just getting into video games or still fresh on their journey, this can be a problem. When a game does this it doesn't give the player time to get used to the new ask by the game. It does create a heightened effect of tension because you are caught off guard. I don't hate it, but I think some people could have problems with it.

The writing in Donut County is very sharp. It had me laughing out loud often, and it moved the story along quickly, developed the characters, and made me not mind the fact that the non-gameplay sections weren't animated. It's very impressive and one of the reasons why someone should play this game.

Closing out, I want to mention the music, artistic design, and other thematic elements quickly. For the music, it's enjoyable. I don't remember too much of it except for some nice acoustic guitar parts and riffs and a track with vocals that weren't English. For the artistic design, it looks like a mix of Adobe Illustrator vector designs and The Busy World of Richard Scarry. And themes, there are brief themes of consumerism and anti-capitalism -- I've got to be honest, I wasn't expecting that. It doesn't have much to say other than consumption can be wasteful and capitalism can cause evil in the pursuit of "profit" -- in the game profit's stand-in is trash because the Raccoons value trash.

I really enjoyed Donut County even though the gameplay is a bit simple. It's a surprisingly engaging story with some gameplay. I feel like the creator could make something masterful if they felt like it, but they just wanted to do a weird little game instead, and I can't hold that against Donut County because it is what it is.

Give it a try, for the time investment you can't go wrong, and I think most people will get some laughs from it too.

The title I wrote above seems like a pun. Unintentional.

The gameplay is very simple but fun and satisfying. It is almost medative playing. The music feeds into the... v i b e s of the game.

The game is very short, which is a good thing for me. I am happy to get in and out, the game does not wear out its welcome and I could finish it in one night. Coming off of Paper Mario which took me months to finish it was refreshing.

I think the story is interesting even if a bit muddied. I thought it was about gentrification, then racism, then capitalism broadly speaking, and in-the-end, I guess it is all of those??? I think it successfully takes a moral stance even if the actual moral might be a bit more opaque.

People complain that Donut County is too short, but I don't believe that's really its problem. Sure, it's like 2 to 3 hours long, BUT IS THAT REALY A PROBLEM WHEN YOU HAVE A BACKLOG AS HUGE AS THE ONE STARING AT YOU RIGHT NOW???? Lol I'm only (half) joking (though I do believe that would be a nice discussion for another time..).

Anyways I think Donut County faces a bigger problem with pacing than it does with its length. It takes too long to introduce its cooler mechanics! You spend the majority of the game just moving the hole around and picking stuff up. It's ridiculously easy and I'm not sure if it could be really called a puzzle. When we start to have some new mechanics and interesting environmental puzzles, puff, the game ends. I think that if those were more evenly spread out, less people would complain about it being too short.

A positive part of being this short though it that it doesn't take too long to get to the interesting part. In the meantime you are treated to a whole bunch of amazing music, a great presentation with great art style and to the trashpedia which is pretty funny (funnier than the dialogues to be honest lol).

In the end you're left with an experience that is well worth it! The later stages and ending are very very cool and it has the coolest credit sequence I've seen yet. I give it like a pretty strong 7 me thinks.

p.s. Sorry for the repost, everyone. I had mistakingly posted this as a status update previously.

If I went to the store and bought a bag of chips on sale, and the chips were really tasty, but the bag was only half full- I wouldn't be okay with the bag being half full because the chips were tasty and the bag was on sale. I would want the full bag of chips I was supposed to get.

That is a bit of how I feel with this game. From the moment you start the game, it feels like it is trying to end. Perhaps the dev realized the task of coding and designing each little sinkhole puzzle was too time consuming and made the tough decision to drastically cut the game's length to get it out in a reasonable time. But you feel it. BK the raccoon feels like his character arc is about to conclude about ten minutes into this game. It is a shame because I like BK. I wanted to spend more time with him.

I bought this game on sale. And the game is fun, playfully animated, and charmingly written. These chips are kettle cooked and sea salted. There just aren't very many chips to crunch on.

Donut County will almost certainly remind people of Katamari Damacy on first glance, which gives people unrealistic expectations. No, Donut County is not groundbreaking. It's a small and cute game that doesn't stretch the limits of its own idea but performs a sweet presentation with some destructive fun.

Taking place in a small town filled with mostly anthropomorphic animals, the story revolves around a girl and her raccoon friend; the raccoon friend is a lazy scumbag who delivers "donuts" to people's houses in the form of a surreal hole that eats everything in its path. It's got some message on gentrification but the message is unfortunately a little too pretentious and juvenile to really resonate.

As for gameplay, swallowing up objects is laid-back but good fun, especially from the comfort of a mobile device. Players start with taking in small objects like grass and cans and make their way to entire buildings over set stages. At times a small puzzle element is introduced such as campfires to emit smoke from the hole or a catapult to throw specific items. It's loose at worst, but at best it's fun to watch destruction unfold.

The game doesn't last long and could use a sequel or more refinement, but the presentation is pretty top notch. Items that are eaten get silly captions in a Trashpedia, the art style is gentle and pleasing, and the music is inoffensive.

All in all, Donut County could be less than it actually is, but it has a charm to it and really takes advantage of the fun of destroying things and throwing them down a large hole.

I absolutely adore this game. The idle chats between the characters is a really fun representation of dialogue between tweens these days, the look and feel is charming in a relaxing kind of way, and the soundtrack is magnificent. Gameplay wise it is an interesting take on the "katamari"-idea, and it executes it in a very satisfactory way, mixing it up just enough to make it interesting while keeping it mostly about enjoying yourself and not really about challenge. I love challenging games, doesn't mean they all have to be challenging.

Most reviews seem to thing length is an issue, not for me. The fact that it is completable in 3 hours was probably the reason I picked it up in the first place as someone who doesn't have the time to play games all that much these days. Getting a complete experience within a reasonable amount of time (I played it over the course of three days) is very satisfactory to me and it means that I will remember it fondly in contrast to 30+ hour games I have a tendency of dropping and then feeling bad for not picking up again. Each to their own I guess. This is just my defence of short games and why I think they are important.