I played through all of Donut County, including unlocking all the trophies, in under three hours. Donut County’s brevity doesn’t bother me, but I feel that it’s worth mentioning. If you think $12.99 is too much for a two or three hour-long experience, you can stop reading right here. This isn’t the game that’s going to change your mind. The rest of you are in for a treat.
Donut County is a pleasure to look at and listen to thanks to a charming art style and a gentle soundtrack. I would go so far as to call Donut County one of the most relaxing games I’ve played this year thanks in large part to its aesthetic. The problems begin when Donut County shifts from gameplay to story between levels. The characters aren’t the sort you’re going to find yourself getting attached to, and the dialogue contains more “text speech” than I would have liked. Donut County’s story does little more than the bare minimum to string the levels together.
I find the narrative faults tolerable, however, because Donut County is not a game about narrative. Donut County is a game about holes. Specifically, holes that need to be driven about to consume whatever happens to be lying around. Consuming items causes the hole to become larger, enabling it to consume larger and larger objects. Most levels begin with collecting wads of paper and end with the consumption of entire buildings.
All of Donut County’s levels, except for the final confrontation, are focused entirely on figuring out how to consume every object in the stage. The early stages are as simple as collecting the smallest object you can find and working your way up. Donut County slowly ramps up the difficulty over time, requiring the player to figure out what combination of items will allow them to knock objects down or progress to the next area. None of the puzzles are overly complex, partially due to the small size of the levels, at least until you near the end of the game.
There is a sequence of three levels near the end of Donut County’s story that show how complex the game can be. For the first and only time, puzzles become the objective rather than obstacles. Mechanics are brought back and combined in satisfying new ways. Those three levels represent the height of my enjoyment of Donut County, but the game was over almost immediately afterward.
Donut County was a pleasant experience from the time I turned it on to the credit roll three hours later. The problem is the game feels like it could have been something more. By the time you’re making the most of Donut County’s mechanics, the game is over. The game spends too much of its short length ramping up its basic mechanics too slowly. As a result, Donut County feels more like a solid proof of concept than a fully-realized idea. I don’t regret buying Donut County by any means, but I don’t know that I’ll go back to it.
Score: 3/5
