I love a game that asks the big questions about life. In Donut County’s case, that question is, how far would you go to win a really sick quadcopter?
In Donut County, you play as a raccoon named BK. Or maybe it would be more accurate to say that you play as a hole, which BK controls. As the game starts, BK has taken up the noble profession of delivering donuts, only to find that the delivery part of the whole deal is a real drag. So rather than just start slacking off like most fed-up workers would, he begins using a mobile game to make the deliveries for him. Oh, also, instead of delivering donuts, he’s just delivering the holes.
You may have picked up on the fact that Donut County is a very silly game. Rather than just a minor detail, that’s one of Donut County’s defining features, and a good reason to play on its own. Most of the time when games try to make me laugh, I don't even crack a smile. But Donut County is infused with goofy absurdism that’s a genuine delight to experience.
That goes for everything from the game’s premise to just about every piece of writing inside. Using his mobile app, BK wants to drop his entire town down a hole in order to earn the aforementioned sick quadcopter as a reward. Playing as that big hole in the ground, your goal is to devour everything in your path, one level at a time. You start out gobbling up tiny bits of trash, rocks, and small animals unobservant enough not to get out of the way, growing bit by bit until you can fit cars, houses, and more. Like Katamari Damacy, which it’s often been compared to, part of the charm of Donut County is just how weird the task it sets before you is and the blithe disregard your character has for just how destructive he’s being.
The game’s utterly silly concept extends to the rest of its writing. Donut County is full of bizarre dialogue, but its best jokes come from Trashopedia, a running list of everything BK has dropped down the hole. In the eyes of Trashopedia, a tire is a glove for a car, a snake is a piece of living spaghetti, and drinking from a dog bowl is “like kissing a dog but not as fun.”
Donut County also keeps it light when it comes to gameplay. Its puzzles feel more about persistence and experimentation than anything resembling deep thinking. Using simple physics interactions and quirks of the environment is almost always the key to solving any puzzle, like when you need to capture a campfire and an ear of corn to make popcorn. That makes the game perfect when you just want a low-stress toy to play with rather than really challenging your critical thinking skills. While that might be a turn-off for anyone looking to test their brain power, Donut County’s chill puzzles fit perfectly with its charmingly laid-back story.
The game has more going on under its cuddly exterior than you might think, though. It’s easy to read BK’s devouring of the town for his own gain as a metaphor for gentrification or unchecked capitalism, and his app-based motivation as an indictment of the amorality of the tech industry and addictive game design. It’s also about what it means to be a good friend, and why that sometimes means calling out the people close to you if they’re — just for example — collecting an entire town in a giant hole in the ground for their own benefit.
More than its humor or its casually satisfying gameplay alone, what makes Donut County so special is how it combines both of them with a subtle but potent condemnation of selfishness and materialism. While taking every side of Donut County together makes it a much more satisfying experience, it’s still a wonderfully chill diversion if all you want to do is make a town disappear in the funniest way possible.
