"Donut County" Review - Dunkin' Delightful!

Available for: Playstation 4, iOS, Windows, Mac

Reviewed for: Playstation 4

Games, as a medium, can allow players to step into any number of shoe pairings. Quite a few titles in the medium’s history have cast the player in the tried-and-true role of the confident hero cutting through hordes of zombies, fascists, and aliens.  Others have taken more unorthodox routes, thrusting the player into the unsung shoes of a frightened child, a journalist, or a flower in the wind. That’s simply the kind of freedom that this medium boasts. However, few games truly dedicate to the absurd in this regard. Few games give players a sense of what it would be like to be something such as an international highway, the concept of love, or an ever-expanding hole in the ground. Enter Donut County, a game that dares to force the player to confront what it would be like to be a sinkhole. Unless you're really into gaming and follow a lot of critical outlets, chances are good you’ve never heard of Donut County until you opened up this review. Well, I invite you to sit back, relax, and allow me, through this short review, to explain why I believe this game is delightful.

Though you technically play as a sinkhole, the title of protagonist belongs to a raccoon named BK, who works at a donut shop in the titular Donut County. The donut shop in question delivers donuts via an app. However, rather than a donut, the raccoons who own the donut shop have the app rigged to send a sinkhole to the delivery location. BK, one of the raccoons who manages the sinkhole operation, is an irresponsible raccoon obsessed with earning the rewards that come from opening the sinkholes, so he regularly swallows up the properties of his friends in the hopes of one day having a high enough level in the sinkhole app to afford a cool drone. At the start of the game, the animal denizens of donut county (including one of my all-time favorite animals, the noble opossum) are all living 99,999 feet below the surface because of BK’s exploits. As the plot progresses, each citizen of the county explains more or less how their property ended up being swallowed. That’s essentially the story in a nutshell. It won’t make any of you cry, nor will it inspire you to be better people, but it’s an amusing enough concept to make anybody with an appetite for all that is silly and charming want to stick around.
Adding to the silly/charming nature of Donut County is BK himself. He’s unapologetic, self-centered, and cunning, all without becoming a more realistically-proportioned Rocket Raccoon. He’s a character who grows with the plot, but who never loses what makes him lovable. Tell him he ruined your yard, and he’ll say, “c’mon, Joe, you were telling me just yesterday that you were looking to do some yard renovations. I did you a favor!” with a smile on his face. Tell him he murdered your wife and he’ll say, “granted, I am sorry for your loss, but when you see how much you save each month, buddy, you’ll be able to get little Susie as many ponies as she wants. Think about it, man, that kid’ll be so happy!” He’s a character who cannot take responsibility for his actions, but when cornered, he’ll always try to think of a positive spin on whatever wrongs he’s committed. It suggests quite a bit of unexpected character depth the likes of which wouldn’t necessarily be needed for a game as simplistic as Donut County. In addition to the delightfulness BK brings when he's on screen, there’s also the “trashopedia.” After clearing each level, you have the ability to scroll through a picture dictionary of all the items the sinkhole has swallowed up, as described by BK. Each entry describes the relevant item as a raccoon might view it. A pond might be described as “do NOT wash your cotton candy in this. Reblog to save a life.” A gecko might be described as “can you imagine if your feet were sticky all day?” It’s consistently amusing, and at times it actually made me laugh out loud. Sure, it doesn’t really add that much to the story, but if you’re like me, you’ll always check the trashopedia after a mission.
Oh, but we’re not done talking about this game’s sense of charm just yet, dear reader. While BK is, of course, the center of the game's delightful nature, the writing across all the characters is quite good. None of the characters are quite as well fleshed-out as BK, but they’re all well-and-funnily-written. This is a game in which the dialogue is meant to be humorous in a recognizably millennial way, and it manages to accomplish this goal without just being memes…unless the meme in question was raccoon-related in the first place (you’ve got to admire that dedication). For instance, there are a few conversations that happen via text message, and you progress through these messages by clicking “reply,” but you also have the option to send a duck emoji complete with a quacking sound. You can send it as much as you want, and whoever is on the other end of the conversation will respond with varying amounts of duck emojis in return. A lot of the humor is like this: unmistakably millennial without being so millennial that it warrants eye-rolling and snarky comments about avocado toast. The result is that the charm and humor is relatable and lands well. So much care is put into polishing the living hell out of the charm of this game, and it’s rare to see such effort in such an unbelievably simple game.

Gameplay in Donut County essentially amounts to “swallow all the things.” You move the sinkhole around, swallowing objects on the screen and growing into a larger and larger sinkhole with every object swallowed, and the level ends when you've swallowed everything in sight. Every level contains a new challenge to solve in order to accomplish this goal: Sometimes you’ll have to swallow a campfire, causing the hole to emit flames, then swallow corn to create popcorn. Sometimes you’ll have to swallow an animal of some sort in order to get another animal to come down from a ledge to be swallowed as well. Sometimes you’ll have to use a catapult to flip switches to bring more things into the scene. However, all these puzzles are in the greater service of “swallow all the things.” In this way, there’s very little variety in terms of game mechanics, but when it comes to utilization of the mechanics you’re given, there’s enough to keep the game from getting stale. Equally responsible for the game’s lack of stagnation is its length. Donut County can be completed in around 2 hours, which on its own isn’t a problem, however, I would’ve liked to see some additional post-story content. After the credits roll you can go back and play any of the levels, but there isn’t really any incentive to do so. Perhaps races to clear already-finished levels in a certain amount of time, an expansion of the “don’t swallow the roach” sections that challenge players to think more strategically, or (dare I say) a couple of competitive modes where two sinkholes compete to see who can swallow the most things could be added? The existing story missions and base runtime could’ve remained intact, but I would’ve liked to have seen additional content such as this to give players a little more to chew on for their money. As it stands, I'm not too sore about having spent $12 or so on such an incredibly short game considering how much obvious effort and care is behind it, but for the price it does feel a little content-poor, all things considered.

From a technical perspective, Donut County is pretty doggoned good. There’s brief bit of loading when you start the game up, but for most of the game’s runtime there’s little to no loading at all, and the levels themselves run at a perfectly consistent framerate. The level complete sound is a little bit too loud in comparison to the rest of the game’s sound effects and music, but that’s really the only issue to be found from an audio perspective. Beyond that, I never experienced any bugs, glitches, texture pop-in, hard/soft crashes, or any other technical flaws.

Folks, Donut County is just delightful. It's silly, somewhat therapeutic, and polished to the point of perfection. I can almost 100% guarantee that you won't regret your time with it if you decide to pick it up. As I've said, for the current price the game could stand to feature just the slightest bit more content, but what you get for your money is still quite good. If you don't like millennial humor, then you should still give this game a try simply because of how well it balances the millennial nature of the humor. If you don't like the idea of having just one game mechanic for a full game, then you should still give this game a try simply because of how many ways it shakes up how you use your one mechanic. If you only like action games, then I should mention that there are some levels that behave almost like boss fights. If you just don't like animals, then you don't have a soul anyway, so you might as well pick this game up to kill time before you're inevitably swallowed up by the sinkhole leading to hell. The point is that this game, while simple, can conceivably appeal to just about anyone. For the uninvested gamer, it can be a fun and stress-relieving time waster. For those of us who really get into this hobby, this is a well-polished, well-written, and well-realized product the likes of which most AAA titles can only dream of being. And one of the characters is a conspiracy theorist opossum. What more can one ask for?

Let us review:
Lacking in content for the price - 0.6

The final score for Donut County is...

9.4/10 - Fantastic
Excellent work, Ben Esposito, excellent work.