This is the most California game I have ever played, and I’m not going to apologise for thinking it.

There will never be anything nearly as satisfying as dropping the 405 down a hole.

Donut County is nominally a puzzle game, but is more accurately a destruction game. You play as BK, a raccoon happily dropping various elements of Los Angeles into an ever-growing hole in the ground. Joshua trees, trailer parks, happy retirees, and the 405, all of it gets merrily slurped up by a hole. Where does the hole go? It goes down. Nothing else matters. The hole must grow.

Donut County is nominally a puzzle game, as the hole doesn’t start out massive. Over the course of each level, players must guide the hole, devouring larger and larger objects to grow the hole until it’s large enough to devour the entire map. Occasionally, players launch objects out of the hole or use environmental mechanics - devouring fire then fireworks causes explosions! - to facilitate devouring the map, but these elements are straightforward and not particularly puzzly.

This leaves the main mechanic as piloting a hole around a map and watching things fall into it, and god, if it’s not the most satisfying gaming experience I’ve had all week.

It is valid to be suspicious of the hole.

Donut County isn’t just the most California game I’ve played because of the joy of chucking traffic in a hole (though, again, I cannot understate just how satisfying an experience that is). While its story isn’t the main point of the game, the sheer snide humour with which Donut County approaches its already absurd story is an absolute delight. Couching itself hard in the self-deprecating and absurdist tropes of millennial humour, Donut County’s writing is a fantastic combination of silly jokes, wry turns of phrase, and weird sense of community that further accentuates the delight that is this game. It’s one thing for a hole-wielding raccoon to devour all of LA County in search of trash. It’s another for his friends to chastise him, him to defend himself, and then everyone agree to join together against another, more trash-obsessed raccoon.

It’s a delight, is all I’m saying. Whatever I want in a game, I can find it in Donut County.

We all need bread to live.

If there is any downside to Donut County, it is perhaps that there isn’t much to do beyond throw California into a hole. However, when the main premise of the game is that there is a hole and you are throwing things into it, I’m hard pressed to think why I would want anything else. There is a hole. I am throwing things into a hole. Sometimes there are explosions. This is all I ever need from life.

Donut County, more than anything else, is a game that knows what it wants to be and revels in it. It is a fun romp of a game, laced with writing that understands exactly what it needs to be to highlight the absurdity of its premise, that doesn’t overstay its welcome. It is a delight, and I loved every ridiculous minute of it.

Developer: Ben Esposito
Genre: Indie
Year: 2018
Country: United States
Language: English
Time to complete: 1-2 hours
Playthrough: https://youtu.be/XSTeJ4kOWSY