Donut County (PC)

Developer:

Ben Esposito

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Release Date:

2018

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Systems:

Win, MacOS, iOS, PS4, XBOne, Switch, Android

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This week on Super Adventures, I'm writing about indie puzzle game Donut County, from 2018. Because who doesn't love doughnuts? Donuts. Whatever.

The game was inspired by a tweet from Peter Molydeux (the twitter parody, not the notorious Bullfrog/Lionhead/22cans game designer and NFT fan), who suggested the idea "You play the role of a hole, you must move around an environment making certain elements fall into correct targets at the right time." He didn't mention anything about raccoons or doughnuts though, so that's all from the mind of creator Ben Esposito.

Oh no, I've looked at the title screen a little too long and now I need to go get a cup of tea and something to dunk in it. Then I'm going to play the first few levels and see what kind of game it is.

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It seems that the game's got a... distinctive art style. It's all real time 3D by the way, with the camera moving around the house during the intro, though you really can't tell from these still screenshots. I'm not quite sure what I think about the flat, unshaded style but right now I'm leaning towards thinking it looks great.

This is Mira and she's just got a text from a bored raccoon, but it's up to me to choose how to respond. I can click the duck button, which just sticks the duck icon in the chat and does nothing, or I can press the reply button and let Mira say what she feels like saying.

I don't get any say in anything she says, but that's fine, she picked some pretty good lines by herself.

Here, I might as well give you the whole conversation to show you what the dialogue's like.

It seems like the kind of game where the dialogue's half the appeal, so if this doesn't appeal to you then you'll be missing out on a lot.

I pulled the blinds and opened the window to let the camera out and it flew over to the honking man outside.

Turns out it's a doughnut delivery goose, out delivering doughnuts at the crack of dawn. Though he's mostly just sitting on his scooter at the moment, glancing down at the mysterious moving hole in the ground.

The hole is following my mouse cursor around and my cursor's currently leading it to swallow up all the letters in the logo. It just felt like what I should be doing. It's a pretty intuitive game, as once you've figured out that you're controlling a hole and stuff falls down into it, the rest comes naturally. It's a bit like Katamari Damacy, as it taps into the player's innate desire to keep collecting stuff, and the more you acquire, the bigger the hole gets.

Soon it got almost big enough to consume the honking man's scooter, though he just bounced back out. Wait, can I actually do this? Can I get the hole big enough to swallow him up if I get him in at the right angle?

Damn, I managed to get him into the hole! Mira is revenged! Though I did just drop a person into the ground and that seems kind of bad. Sorry honking man.

Mira calls BK up and the raccoon claims that he got rid of the honking man by delivering him a doughnut.

Then he quickly changes the subject to talk about how he's nearly at level 10, and that means he earns his quadcopter! He is really hyped to get that quadcopter.

SIX WEEKS LATER

Six weeks later, BK's new quadcopter is in ruins and Mira was the one who did it. Betrayed by his closest friend!

Turns out she's mad at him because he destroyed the town and trapped them all underground.

Yep, that looks like a trashed town trapped underground.

They're currently 999 feet below Donut County. That's 305 meters. Or 0.19 miles. It's a long way to climb back up and just 1 foot short of being a full kilofoot. Though they've got a campfire going and a few of the houses seem intact, so things don't seem that bleak.

BK protests his innocence, saying that he's never destroyed anything. But Mira knows he used an app to open up holes all over town.

There's no voice acting, only fairly tolerable dialogue typing noises, but she's getting her point across. BK still feels like he's the victim however, because she smashed his quadcopter!

One of the other townsfolk, called Potter, backs Mira up, saying it was obviously BK's fault. They got dropped down a hole right after ordering a doughnut from his shop.

LEVEL 2 - POTTER'S ROCK

Then the game cuts to a flashback of the events in question, as the hole comes to consume Potter's home and everything they value. The little picture in the top left reveals that yeah it's definitely BK controlling it. Which means this is one of the few video games where you get to play as a raccoon.

Every time I clear a screen of objects the camera pulls back a little and swoops around to the next side of the yard so I can hunt bigger prey. Though things got a little weird once I caught Potter's furnace.

It's turned my regular ordinary hole into a burning hole emitting heat!

I figured that since there's a hot air balloon here I should give it a bit of a boost and see what happens. It went up! Not a huge shock there. Though I was a bit surprised that it put enough strain on the cables to tear the rocks apart. More stuff for me to grab!

Once I'd gotten the hole big enough and dropped everything into it the level was complete.

Huh, the music here sounds like it's from a Saints Row game or something. Usually the soundtrack is more like weird catchy indie game music.

Anyway dropping Potter's stuff down a hole got BK a little bit closer to Rank 10 and that quadcopter, so now that's all been explained. Also there's a Trashopedia button for me to click on!

Seems that BK doesn't just collect the trash, he also writes a description of every item he picks up.

You can learn a lot about a person by his understanding of the purpose of the various everyday items he's dropped into a hole, and I'm starting to learn that there's a lot BK doesn't know about basically everything. But then he's literally a raccoon so what do you expect?

Here, have a pretty loading screen image.

The tiny text below the logo says:

GARBAGE DAY IS MONDAY AND THURSDAY.
RACCOON COMPANY "HURL ME INTO A DUMPSTER"

In case you were curious.

After the flashback we get to spend a bit more time with the townsfolk, talking about the events we've just witnessed/participated in. Potter is a little upset that their lone pup is floating away. Damn, that hot air balloon must be long gone by this point. This game's dark.

Wait, hang on, I'm sure I saw the balloon in the original establishing shot of the cave.

Yeah, there it is on the right. I suppose BK could've grabbed a different balloon. The guy puts the work in.

LEVEL 3 - RANGER STATION

Alright I've done some more stuff and the game's getting a little more complicated now as the snake I just grabbed has gotten stuck in the hole. That means I can use the tail to hit buttons and activate loudspeakers, which scares the chickens! It's all part of my cunning plan to keep doing things until those chickens are finally knocked down to where I can grab them.

This feels more like a toy than a puzzle game at this point, but I'm cool with that. I just want to keep dropping stuff into the hole.

Though here's a question: what actually is a snake?

Ah! Okay, yeah, that makes a lot of sense.

At this point BK's gone from protesting his innocence to trying to spin events to make him seem like the hero, seeing like it was obviously him who did it.

Oh, wait, he's still trying to protest his innocence at the same time. He's also a bit confused about why everyone's so mad with him anyway, plus he's really offended that Mira's turned on him. They were true bros in the prologue, it's a real shame to see them butting heads like this!

By the way, I was curious so I looked up what 'BK' stands for. The game's Twitter account claims that he used to be called 'Brooklyn Trash King', which makes sense. The guy's relentless in his acquisition of trash. It's just that he defines 'trash' as 'everything everyone owns'.

LEVEL 4 - RIVERBED

I was wondering what would happen if I tried pouring water into the hole on this level. Turns out it fills up, leaving me a soggy useless hole! Fortunately there's a giant drinking bird here who'll drink up anything I put in front of it. If I'm very lucky a fish will leap out while he's doing it and give me something else to collect.

Also this is a nice effect. The puddle never empties, but it looks good.

As usual the goal here is to get everything, enlarging the hole until it can consume even the caravan. I can't get the bird just yet, its perch has very long holes that go deep deep into the earth, but someday it will be mine. I'm in no rush as there's no time limit I'm aware of. It's a very chilled out, low stress game. Well, for me anyway, I'm sure all the occupants are freaking out. But if they really cared that much they'd get up and walk away or something!

LEVEL 5 - CAMPGROUND

The game gets a bit physicsy sometimes. Right now my hole isn't big enough to get the campfire so I need to pick something else up first. That means dropping this corn down so it rolls inside.

I should probably mention the controls at some point. Uh, I'm basically just moving a mouse around, though you can use a controller instead. The hole lags behind the cursor very slightly, just so it feels better, but the controller gives you direct control. That's pretty much all I can think of saying as it's a very simple game.

Oh damn, why didn't it occur to me that the corn might explode into popcorn?

A pair of crows were lured down by the temptation of the popcorn, and there's no scarecrow here to keep them away, so I decided to drop them in the hole as well. I need to keep feeding it if I want it to be big enough to grab that tent. It shouldn't take long though as the levels in this are really short.

LEVEL 6 - HOPPER SPRINGS

I've been flying through the stages so far and this didn't take long to figure out either, even though they've been clever and fenced off part of the ground. Seems like holes can't get past fences, so the rabbit in there is well protected from the all-consuming abyss.

Though the thing is, I just picked up a giant carrot, so big that it's gotten wedged in the hole, and that bunny can't take its eyes off it. All I need to do is lure out of the carrot patch and I'll be one step closer to complete domination.

Oh no, I didn't consider the consequences of putting a male and female rabbit together! The bunnies are breeding so fast they're tearing the level apart; there'll be nothing left but rubble! Which is great, because I can eat rubble with the hole and make it even more powerful.

Man, BK's causing some real devastation in his selfish quest for a quadcopter. But he's not as bad as rabbits I suppose.

Rabbits are sinister.

LEVEL 8 - BEACH LOT C

I was really flying through the game up to this point but I'm finally stuck. I dropped everything I could into the hole until all that was left is a car that's too big, an infinitely respawning firework and a stall that lights the firework for me. Clearly the solution involves the fireworks, I can drop them into the hole and fire them off wherever, but I don't know where I'm supposed to fire them! The only clue is that the birds on the beach hop whenever one goes off.

Man, this is ridiculous; the game's too easy for me to be so completely lost like this. I'm going to have to admit that I'm an idiot and go look up what the solution is... oh, it turns out that the birds aren't on the beach.

LATER

Anyway, some stuff happened and BK made it to level 10. That means he's gotten his quadcopter!

The thing is, the whole game looks like it's being played from quadcopter view so it's kind of weird that he didn't have it from the start.

Now I've finally ran out of flashbacks and caught up to the present day, but I need to keep playing to find out if Mira and BK ever repair their friendship, or escape the hole. And what the deal is with the holes anyway.

EVEN LATER

Okay I've beaten the whole game. Turns out you unlock a level select when it's over, which is handy for searching for secrets. I'm sure there must be a couple in there at least.

You're not really going to get different outcomes to levels though, it's not that kind of game. It's a straightforward linear series of stages that takes you to an inevitable conclusion, and you can apparently be done with it in two hours. Took me longer than that though, as I was taking notes and enjoying myself and stuff.

Maybe it could've been longer if it actually reused elements of previous levels, like the multiplying rabbits or the snake tail that pushes switches, and built on them to create real puzzles... but that's not really what the game's about. Okay maybe some of them make a reappearance later, but the game usually drops what it did on the last level to let you play with something new, and that can be fun too.


CONCLUSION

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Donut County has more than enough doughnuts in it. You wouldn't necessarily think so, seeing as your doughnut shop delivers destruction rather than doughnuts, but it does. Plus you get to deliver destruction, tearing down everyone's trash houses and dropping their precious belongings into a hole! Because that's your job.

For some reason I keep thinking of Mira as being the protagonist, I guess because you play as her during the intro, but for the most part you're playing as BK, Donut County's amoral agent of demolition, and he's actually very good at what he does. Because it's actually kind of hard to screw these levels up to be honest, they're pretty straightforward. It's almost more of a toy than a game and the puzzles gave me no trouble. I only had to look up what to do once and that's because I misread the graphics. But there is a bit of variety to the gameplay, you're not just collecting items in order of size to make your hole bigger... not that there's anything wrong with that. I mean Katamari Damacy built a whole game around it.

This isn't on Katamari Damacy's level, but it does have some of its own charms. Maybe you'd consider the fact that it's really short and you'll have it finished in an afternoon to be one of those charms, I don't know. Its originality is also a definite positive. But for me the best part of the game is probably the writing, and there's a lot of it, so if you're not into the dialogue that could be an issue. Every level leads to another daft conversation with the subterranean occupants of Donut County and if you're lucky you get to browse the Trashopedia as well to see BK's notes on all the trash he's found. It makes it hard to be too harsh on him for his apocalyptic actions, as it's clear he ain't the brightest or most educated raccoon. Though maybe he actually is, as raccoons don't come off great in general in this game. Either way he's great and so's Mira. They're true bros and it's a shame that the holes do so much damage to their friendship.

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Thanks for reading and justifying my site's entire existence! I really do appreciate that.

If you want you could leave a comment about Donut County, or maybe take a guess at what the next game's going to be.