Donut County
Donut County offers a portal into a tale of raccoon wrongdoing.
Donut County is delicious. A story-based physics puzzler where you play BK; a raccoon who ostensibly works as a donut store delivery dispatcher. But instead of dispatching donuts he is dispatching holes (via a mobile game interface) in order to suck up objects, people, and creatures because a) raccoons LOVE to collect trash and b) BK really wants to level up his game and earn a sweet quadcopter. After he ends up at the bottom of one of his own holes with pretty much everyone else in town, BK’s bestie, Mira stages an intervention. The game alternates between citizens detailing their gripes about a Certain Raccoon Jerk and you playing BK’s mobile game, controlling the hole to enact the events that led to the animal’s specific complaint.
The puzzling is light, but enjoyably so. You move the hole with your cursor, and if something on the ground above it is small enough it’ll fall in. The more trash you collect, the bigger the hole gets. In addition to sucking things in, you can also occasionally spit things back out, which is how you gobble up hard-to-reach morsels like picnicking birds and dangling beehives.
Every completed section earns experience for BK and propels him to level ten (and an explanation of what happened to his beloved quadcopter).
The game-within-a-game idea works well, and it allows relatively slight gameplay to feel in keeping with the idea of a daft but compulsive and damaging app. Levels are short and sweet, the cast is entertaining, and the story moves at a fair clip so, even though you can get through it in about an hour, it’s a jam-packed hour.
And that’s to say nothing of the Trashopedia entries, which describe objects from a raccoon point of view, or the flourishes which infuse the animals with personality. My favorite was cutting to BK in the donut shop while he’s texting with Mira. He’s on his back, feet waggling, and tapping a screen. It’s so “teen-lounging-on-abed-with-their-legs-up-the-wall”.
There was one dodgy moment in terms of puzzling, where I couldn’t get the solution to a late-game scenario to register—a rare moment of fussiness where I repeated the only possible action over and over until one time it worked. But it was a lone irritant in a lovely experience.
Short and sweet
In terms of reference points, there’s something of Lost Constellation (Finji’s Night in the Woods free sidestory) in here—it’s less about solving puzzles and more about interacting with a vivid world in an easy manner. The absurdity and fact you grow your collecting tool by picking up a ragtag assortment of objects and wildlife has echoes of Katamari, which is no bad thing!
Donut County is an entertaining diversion; it’s simple to play, and doesn’t outstay its welcome. Given so many games-as-a-services are vying for your time, small gems like this are a valuable and finite source of relief.
It’s simple to play, and doesn’t outstay its welcome