So this one wasn’t in the backlog originally, but some of my friends started a “Video Game Book Club” and this was the first game! Donut County is basically inverse Katamari: you’re a racoon that sucks ““trash”” (your victims’ possessions) into an expanding hole. It was pretty good. The writing and art direction really carry this game. The characters and dialogue are fun and charming and what you should show up for. The blocky and colorful graphical style and electronic soundtrack (it reminded Tessa of Tuca and Bertie) also really lend themselves to the game’s overall vibe. The game part of the game though isn’t anything to write home about. It is pretty fun to suck things into a big hole, and it really tickled my Cleaning Bone. On the other hand, this game is very easy and each level goes by very fast. I thought the catapult mechanics introduced in the later half of the game, as well as the multi-screen format of the final level, brought a ton to the table mechanically but could have been fleshed out more. There are a TON of similarities here to Katamari, but what Donut County does not have is specific challenges or any sort of lose-condition. I wish there had been some sort of stakes so that I actually felt pressured to suck things up in a specific way or order or in a certain amount of time. As it is, it’s just sort of meditative (which to be clear is not a bad thing).
On the story front, I felt like the plot was trying to Say Something but I’m not totally convinced about what that was. Definitely there’s something in there about capitalism incentivizing people to do bad things for their own self-interest, and maybe also some sort of allegory about colonialism, with how the racoons are framed? It also could be read as like an anti-immigration message if you we’re being uncharitable, I don’t think that’s what the creators were going for though.
Speaking of the creators, we googled the guy responsible for this during Book Club and were impressed to find that this guy was not only responsible for What Remains of Edith Finch but also was involved with the iconic Sonic Dreams Collection and Bubsy 3D: Bubsy visits the James Turrell Retrospective. What a guy. Apparently Donut County was created during a game jam in response to a tweet from a Peter Molyneux parody account and knowing that really improved my opinion of the game. When I think of it not necessarily as an attempt to create a innovative or challenging puzzle game, but as a semi-serious exploration of a originally joke concept, I realize that the creators did a better job at achieving their goals that I’d first judged. I think the core concept of Donut County has a lot of room for exploration and I would definitely play a sequel where every level was the same degree of quality as the first game’s final level.
[[ backlog master post ]]