Donut County is a lil' indie I've had my eye on for a while and finally went on a good sale on the switch. Seemed like a decent enough "break" game so I bought it and gave it a shot. I played through the entire game in two short~ish sessions, maybe 3 or so hours? The game has two~ main characters, a raccoon fellow "BK" and a young lady whose name I do not recall.. you both work at the Donut Shop in Donut County however there is a cataclysm coming - ordering donuts through this shop is actually creating suction holes that grab people and things on the ground and pull them into the hollow caverns below the earth! The story begins with all of our characters already in the hole together, and they're all mad as heck at BK for getting them stuck here. BK is a pretty funny guy who is misanthropic and refuses to take responsibility for fucking everything up in their small town and his antics with the fellow villagers (they're all animal folks outside of our one human lady) are what lead into each level - we learn the circumstances of why they ordered donuts and then we take over as the hole coming to gobble everything up.
Gameplay wise, it is essentially a reverse Katamari Damacy. You suck up smaller things into your hole to make it bigger, then slowly consume everything on the map including people until the map is empty. There are no real 'obstacles' or enemies you need to worry about, and no fail states at all as far as I can tell, you just keep on suckin'. There's definitely a better way to phrase that but I refuse to budge. Eventually you do however get to the Big Bad's place and have to fight him using your hole machine so that kinda counts as an enemy! But most of the time you're just happily gobbling things up. This is a pretty simple but also very satisfying loop - the simple act of 'cleaning' things up.
All in all, a pretty straight-forward little puzzle game with a well told story, cute characters, damn solid music and an addictive main mechanic. It was a pleasant few hours over a weekend but I am not sure I will remember it much in a month, or let alone by the end of the year.
Final Grade: B
Gameplay wise, it is essentially a reverse Katamari Damacy. You suck up smaller things into your hole to make it bigger, then slowly consume everything on the map including people until the map is empty. There are no real 'obstacles' or enemies you need to worry about, and no fail states at all as far as I can tell, you just keep on suckin'. There's definitely a better way to phrase that but I refuse to budge. Eventually you do however get to the Big Bad's place and have to fight him using your hole machine so that kinda counts as an enemy! But most of the time you're just happily gobbling things up. This is a pretty simple but also very satisfying loop - the simple act of 'cleaning' things up.
All in all, a pretty straight-forward little puzzle game with a well told story, cute characters, damn solid music and an addictive main mechanic. It was a pleasant few hours over a weekend but I am not sure I will remember it much in a month, or let alone by the end of the year.
Final Grade: B