Rather, it’s a little bit about each of the above. This is not strictly an environmentalist story or an anti-capitalist story or a story about race or gender or colonization or cultural appropriation. There are lots of different references here. ![]() One of the key points of the mid-game is that BK regards people’s homes and possessions as trash to be collected.Īt one point, Mira also tells BK off for trying to get her to absolve his guilt about everything the raccoons have done - a reflection, perhaps, of the way white people too often make their own feelings the center of conversations about racism. They’ve disrespected the lifestyles of people they didn’t understand, too. They’ve stripped the local resources to the point of nonexistence. They’ve got a macho lust for tough machinery. The raccoons - BK and his bosses included - are running the place to their own capitalist, colonizing and/or gentrifying advantage. I didn’t finish mine, but receiving a donut the size of a life preserver, still warm from the oven, at 3 AM, is an extremely good metaphor for consumer excess.) Something to do with barbecue perhaps? Answer: it is an ordinary glazed donut only way, way bigger. (By total coincidence, I was at Randy’s just a couple of months ago, where I ordered a Texas donut to find out what it was. The donut shop in question is reminiscent of Randy’s or something like it. The longer you play, the clearer it becomes that Donut County is the greater Los Angeles area: Hollywood sign, Griffith Observatory, 405 freeway. It’s a good talk and you can see it for free.ĭonut County in its final form tells a story that’s a lot closer to home. I first became interested in Donut County after seeing a GDC talk several years ago in which Ben Esposito discussed his decision to abandon a Hopi theme for the game because he realized it wasn’t his place to tell that story. I want to talk about where the story goes from there, but this will involve spoilers, so let’s have a break first. Where do you-the-player stand in all this? Are you BK, playing the game and destroying the entire community? Are you one of the other townspeople or perhaps Mira herself, telling the story of how the gameplay destroyed the community, a kind of interactive reenactment? Is there a possible redemption in store after you’ve done all this? Should you maybe stop being a hole? The framing introduces an undercurrent of unease and self-doubt in what is otherwise a relaxing, candy-pink game of playful destruction. This makes for one of the most convoluted triangle-of-identity problems I’ve yet seen. BK also happens to run a donut shop, and the hole tends to turn up whenever anyone orders donut delivery at home.Īs you, the player, play levels of Donut County, you receive experience points and rewards that correspond to the in-game points BK is trying to accumulate and then you cut back to the frame story in which the denizens of Donut County are talking about what has happened to them over the past few weeks and whose fault it all is. ![]() ![]() Mira, a human, blames BK, a raccoon who has all this time been playing an addictive video game that involves hole manipulation (and just incidentally manages to really swallow things in the real town). Let me start from the beginning because there’s a lot to unpack here.ĭonut County begins with a frame story that everyone in town is living at the bottom of the hole, after six weeks in which this hole has been terrorizing the community. The story? This is all a game-within-a-game presented within a flashback, with multiple protagonists, sort of. (Note for new players, by the way: I initially found the gameplay a little sluggish, but going to the settings and turning control responsiveness up to maximum made it a much more natural and enjoyable experience.) It’s Katamari-esque, but there are some nifty extra effects: the hole can fill with water, which makes things float on the surface sometimes items that are in the hole give off smoke or fumes, or leave appendages sticking out, which you can use to affect the environment in new ways. If you place it under something small enough to fall in, the object vanishes below, and the hole gets bigger. The gameplay: you control a hole moving across the ground. Donut County is a mellow casual puzzle game wrapped in story.
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