On Games 8: Donut County

Annapurna Interactive’s Donut County is, for my purposes, the best game made in 2018. It doesn’t take more than an afternoon to play. It has relaxing mechanics and simple controls that play well with my arthritis. And it’s got cute cel-shaded graphics and an adorable story about a raccoon learning to respect people of other species and a human girl learning to stand up for herself and her community against the rising tide of capitalism.

Story and puzzle spoilers below.

In Donut County, you control a hole in the ground. Your job is to collect everything on the ground above you, in a way that feels a lot like a reverse Katamari Damacy. Like a katamari, your hole starts out small, only able to collect small rocks, tufts of grass, and the occasional gecko, and grows as it consumes until it becomes a building-swallowing sinkhole. In the PC version, your hole is controlled by mouse movements, with a couple of accessory mechanics introduced in the second half that are activated by clicking. For my hands, a trackball was the perfect tool for the job.

Unlike in the Katamari games, you will have to solve some puzzles to get all the objects. Not to worry, though; the puzzles are all about simple interactions between things you’ve picked up and things still on the ground. For example, in a couple of levels, after you pick up a fire, your hole starts burning, and this lets you heat objects up or set them on fire. In other levels, your hole can be filled up with water, preventing you from picking up other things; but not to worry, there’s a drinking bird around the corner.

Like in Katamari Damacy, making your hole grow and picking up bigger and bigger things produces a nice straightforward empowerment fantasy, made problematic when you really stop to think about what’s happening to all the people and animals you’ve picked up. Donut County's story does address this, though; after the tutorial, the story begins in medias res, reassuring you that everyone you're going to pick up will survive the fall and merely be extremely annoyed with BK, the character through whom you control the hole, for destroying their homes and businesses.

BK is a raccoon. He's part of a group of raccoons moving into town and doing the raccoon equivalent of gentrifying--that is, getting all the locals out of the way, using a donut-delivery app that creates the sinkholes, so they can use the trash left behind. (Because raccoons, as we all know, love trash.) The app comes with its own progression system, as well as a hilarious Trashopedia that describes the objects you've picked up in ways a raccoon would appreciate.

The first half of the story is told through flashbacks, as various townsfolk accuse BK of sending them holes. As BK hears their stories, his attitude toward his neighbors moves from "I did you a favor and you owe me" through "hey, I was just doing my job" and eventually arrives at understanding that what he did was wrong and that he needs to cooperate with his neighbors to use the technology that created all the trouble to fix the holes and challenge the raccoon CEO, Trash King.

Meanwhile, we learn that Mira, BK's human employee at the local donut shop, knew about the holes for a surprising amount of time before she did anything about it. (As a millennial desperate for job security, I understand the urge to ignore the kind of amoral corporate behavior that pays for your rent and health insurance.) But when Mira's best friend is swallowed by a hole, she realizes she can't keep quiet any longer. She confronts BK and takes control of the app, sending both of them and the donut shop into the same massive sinkhole that swallowed everything else.

In the second half of the game, Mira and BK take on Trash King's corporate empire, deploying a hole into his headquarters and wrecking the place until he agrees to meet with BK and hear his demands. The scene in which Trash King tries to tempt BK into betraying his friends with full employee status and health insurance will be nail-bitingly familiar to any millennial who's ever had an interview at a megacorporation.

Fortunately for us, though, BK now has both principles and the luxury of sticking to them. He rejects Trash King's offer and returns to help Mira defeat Trash King in a boss battle that will make use of all your hole piloting skills. The town is rebuilt, the townsfolk mostly forgive BK, and peace is restored.

Even when Donut County's story hits close to home, the game remains beautifully made and full of adorable detail. My favorite aesthetic touch is in the instant messenger client some of the characters use: as you're clicking through conversations, you will have opportunities to click a button with a duck on it. If you do, it plays a quacking noise and adds a duck emoji to the conversation. I enjoyed using the ducks as silly punctuation, and really appreciated that I had the opportunity to set the tone of conversations and have some say in how characters related to each other. It didn't affect later dialogue, but it went a long way toward making me care about Mira, BK, and their town-saving adventures.