Story

Donut County is a story-filled puzzle based physics game where you play as a hole in the ground swallowing up items and growing in size. You play the main story as a Raccoon named BK that uses an app trying to earn enough points for a quadcopter. Getting a quadcopter requires BK to deliver “donuts” that are actually holes in the ground that you control. While playing as a hole, you meet the locals around the areas and levels, steal their trash, and swallow them.  

Full thoughts and Review of Donut County

One of the stranger concept games I played, Donut County, is a quick game with a simple premise, swallow all of the items you can on a stage. Donut County reminds me almost instantly of Katamari Damacy. Instead of rolling a ball of items to grow your Katamari, you swallow items to grow your hole size. You start with a small hole, and as you collect items, the hole size will increase, and you can swallow larger items. There aren’t any time limits on the stages, and the hole stops growing once you reach the end of the level. I’ve heard this game is called a reverse Katamari Damacy, and I see it for sure.  

The game isn’t that difficult. A couple of times, you may run into a section that requires you to solve a puzzle on a stage, but they are all to make your hole grow bigger and advance to the next section. Not everything requires you to swallow an item with a hole to solve a puzzle. You get a catapult to launch items to solve some puzzles. It breaks up the monotony of constantly swallowing up items throughout the game. That is all you can do in the game. I get that there are only a couple of mechanics you can do with a hole and solving puzzles. I don’t know if there would be a benefit to having different gameplay elements to add replay value to the game. Since I beat it, I don’t see a reason to go back and play it again.

The game has a simple art style that was very reminiscent of another indie game Untitled Goose Game. Unlike Goose game, most characters have faces, although they don’t seem to emote feelings during the cutscenes. They do show their feeling, at least with dialogue. It’s a neat touch and adds a simplistic charm to the game.  The simple art style also makes it easier to know what you need to swallow with your hole. Without a busy screen full of items and details around the stage, anyone can figure out what they need to swallow next with the hole in the ground. But no challenge is had since there isn’t a timer and no real way to lose.

The story revolves around the victims of BK’s deliveries to show him the error of his ways. Without facial expressions on some characters, you need to read the dialogue to see what reactions characters are having for BK actions. Thankfully, the dialogue did match the tone for each character that spoke at that time. BK was my favorite character. BK is a raccoon that doesn’t seem to acknowledge right from wrong and is very immoral. At times, he convinces others that they might be the problem, or he fixed their problems he caused, and some will go along with it. The dialogue had made me laugh, and I enjoyed some of the lessons that BK learned; they were all wrong lessons and his reasoning behind them throughout most of the story.

I liked how the story starts in the middle. The story is told in flashbacks that led everyone up to how they wound up in their situation. As you work towards the end of the story, you learn the reasoning for everyone ending up where they are. I found it made a lot of sense because of the characters involved and the traits the animals possess to led them to the end of the story. It’s not something amazing, but I can get behind the idea of the how and the why the story led us to the conclusion it was building up to.

Summarized thoughts and review of Donut County

Another short game, but Donut County, has a simplistic charm that you might like. Getting past levels and puzzles won’t be that difficult. There is no replay after you beat the game either. The story and characters are charming and helped me to enjoy the game from start to finish. It’s worth checking out if you like simple puzzles, quirky characters, and an enjoyable story.