But I assure you that from the first moment you tip something into that hole and see it grow, you’ll be hooked. There’s no real skill curve, and most of the puzzles are simple enough that you can more or less accidentally stumble on the solutions, with a few rare exceptions. If you’re looking for something that will challenge you and twist your brain into knots, this game isn’t it. While this twist disappointed me at first, I actually came to appreciate the intimate moments that it provided, seeing how the all-consuming void impacted each resident of Donut County as the land became pockmarked like apocalyptic swiss cheese. Each story starts fresh with a new small hole that begins its assault on the objects and creatures in the area. You aren’t growing the hole until it drops the entire continent into its depths. If you played Tales From Space: Mutant Blobs Attack, you might be expecting Donut County to do something similar, with each level being larger and larger than the last (spoilers for the end of Mutant Blobs Attack, you eventually become so big from consumption that you eat the entire solar system). There are the obvious allusions to the absolute void that being addicted to technology can lead to, and Esposito himself has talked about how gentrification of where he lives gave birth to a many of the themes present. The addictive kind of peace that comes from completely clearing an area of all objects allows for the message to more easily be perceived. Throughout the tranquil moments of what should be rather horrifying, Donut County hides a number of messages to the player.
Even then, the game seems to be designed to push you into a win. The latter half begins to introduce more puzzle elements which rarely pose any kind of real challenge until the game’s final moments.
The first half of the game is nearly devoid of puzzles, simply asking players to drop objects into the hole. Donut County constantly pushes that what BK is doing is wrong (subsequently making the player feel bad for the relaxed manner in which they swallow up the town), so it needs a redemptive conclusion to some extent. Part of that is due to Donut County’s rather simple puzzles.Īfter living out the stories of each resident that got swallowed up and realizing the game’s clear themes regarding gentrification, addictive behaviors, and all-consuming technology, the whole thing takes an interesting twist. Donut County is simple enough that it never became a huge issue for things like puzzle solving and is a minor nitpick at best. Occasionally I had to move it around a bit before finding the sweet spot that allowed the next object to tip in and disappear into the earth. The sense of depth in the two-dimensional image can easily be lost in the art, which can make judging the size and location of the hole a little problematic at times. The flat and simple, modern look of the art is striking and unique, but can occasionally get in the way of gameplay. Yeah, sure, so you’re devouring an entire town and its inhabitants, sentencing them to a life nearly 1000 feet below the surface, but I sure felt calm and relaxed the entire time I was doing it. By harrowing, I actually mean that Donut County’s entire aesthetic and vibe is quite zen. You’ll relive the harrowing stories of how each member of Donut County’s community had ordered a donut and subsequently fallen victim to the gaping maw. Told across multiple brief chapters, Donut County is able to feel like an easily consumable bite-size experience. Are you starting to see the theme that this game might be going for? Order a Donut, Fall in Love In Donut County, the things you consume add to the nothingness, expanding the gaping well in the ground to allow it to consume even more. In those, the things you consume become part of you and add to your size. The idea of consuming to increase the size of the void is an inverse to mechanics that exist in games like Katamari Damacy and Tales From Space: Mutant Blobs Attack. With each object it consumes, it grows bigger and bigger until it’s large enough to eat entire buildings, enormous boulders, and even a roller coaster. Starting off small, the hole may consume some grass, bricks, or other pieces of trash. Rather than getting a delicious doughy confection, it eats them, their stuff, and everything around them. Whenever anybody in Donut County orders a donut from the local shop, they are sent this ground donut instead, also known as a “hole” in most circles. You play most of the game as BK, a raccoon with access to an app that controls holes that swallow an entire county.