SPOILER-FREE REVIEW
Combining engrossing light puzzles with witty humour and just the right amount of silliness, Donut County makes for an immensely entertaining experience.
There’s something undoubtedly feel-good about tidying up, and in the end, that’s ultimately how Donut County works its way into your heart. Its tiny puzzles scratch an itch I’ve had ever since the credits rolled on Portal 2, and the very act of playing it is oddly therapeutic. Decluttering this game’s stages by sucking everything in them, from simple rocks to entire buildings, down through a sinkhole into the depths of the Earth, was the kind of enjoyable zen that many developers dream of creating. Couple that with a tale that’s both tragic and absurdly hilarious, and you get a game that’s more than the sum of its parts. If Donut County existed in donut form, it’d be stuffed with a generous serving of jam and dusted with sugar. Did I mention how it also makes you wish for a donut?
The residents of Donut County are in trouble. You see, ever since the raccoons (yes, another game with anthropomorphic animals) arrived in town and took ownership of the local donut shop, sinkholes have been mysteriously appearing all over town, sucking everyone and everything underground. Now that everyone’s trapped 999 feet below the surface, the blame seems to fall on BK the raccoon who claims that he was only doing his job, innocuously fulfilling orders for donuts to pay for a new quadcopter.
This is a game that embraces the inherent silliness of a world filled with talking animal people and sinkholes that grow ever larger, from consuming small rocks to swallowing entire buildings whole. Despite the dire predicament of the townsfolk, there’s also something absolutely hilarious about the whole thing. The humour is wonderfully droll, and the dialogue is sharp and witty, lending the whole game a kind of whimsical, quirky charm. Donut County is split into different chapters, revealing how each of the town’s residents got sucked underground. The chapter by chapter, slice by slice approach doesn’t hurt the game, which is surprising in itself. After all, this is a mobile game, designed so you can pick it up, play a chapter on your commute, and put it down again. Remarkably though, the story doesn’t lose any coherency because of it. In fact, you might just find yourself playing through the whole thing without stopping.
Gameplay-wise, you control a sinkhole that grows in size the more it consumes. Your task is to move the sinkhole through the game’s carefully crafted dioramas, sucking in everything from small rocks to cars and even entire buildings underground. Donut County is something of a physics puzzler, and as you progress through the chapters, they become more complicated. Each puzzle feels distinct from its peers. Early on, clearing a stage is just a matter of consuming objects in the right sequence to make sure everything fits in the hole. Later on, the game has you draining water, catapulting frogs into the air and consuming lit fireworks before firing them back out to knock down objects.
It’s silly and fun, but the chaos you cause is usually pretty clean. The game realises that it has potential, both as a funny game and as a therapeutic way to declutter and engage the mind. It always ramps things up to the next level. It always tries to get crazier. The question it asks is: what if? It seems to know how you chuckled when you finally managed to swallow that car. So, what if you were able to swallow rabbits and chickens? What if you could swallow a whole barn?
Perhaps the only downside to all this is the lack of replay value. Once the two hours are up and you’ve been through the whole story, there isn’t really a whole lot to bring you back. Between the wonderful pastel colour art style, the amusing story and simple yet creative gameplay (and of course the fact that it somehow made me crave donuts), Donut County is a near-perfect pocket-sized treat. But much like a real donut, once you’ve eaten it, it’s gone.
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