Nothing is ever conveyed to you via a prompt or anything when it comes to these puzzles, but nothing ever needs to be said. Sometimes, objects that fall into the hole might give you a special ability required to solve a particular puzzle.

Donut County taps into that primitive desire. If you know anything about human nature, it’s that when given the chance, hurling objects down holes without consequence is perhaps on the top 5 of everyone’s fantasy lists. Much like a Katamari, the hole starts out small, only able to trap proportionally-sized objects in its gravity pit, but with each capture, the hole expands to a larger size, able to move on to victims that were previously a little bit oversized. When I first tried out Donut County at PAX South earlier this year, I, and I’d imagine a lot of other folks, likened its central gameplay mechanic to a kind “inverse hole Katamari” – and this goes beyond using Katamari Damacy as just a buzzword the lessons learned from Keita Takahashi’s classic PS2 title are very apparent, in the best possible way, even including a satisfying liquid-like sound effect used to register once your hole swallows something that is nearly identical to the sound Prince’s Katamari makes when it grabs a new object.Īesthetics aside, the biggest draw for this comparison is in the gameplay. If there isn’t a donut-themed record release planned for this score, it’ll be pretty disappointing.

“Chill” would be a good way to describe Donut County, and its killer OST goes a long way in accomplishing that vibe, while simultaneously descending into glitched-out breakbeat absurdities. The game’s world is what you’d expect from an eccentric indie game concept such as this, but all done in a flavor of its own: bright colors subdued in sunset tint, comfy-looking landscapes based on the Californian part of the Mojave Desert, and charming townsfolk that talk in Animal Crossing voices, though with attitudes borrowed from Internet-age textspeak smarminess.

Donut county game switch