Things I Played: Donut County

In gaming circles there often emerges a furious debate about what games should be about. A certain party says gameplay. The other, equally vocal, party offers a counterpoint—story. This debate often reaches boiling point, to the extent where it seems like one group is about to enact a bloody revenge on the other. Humour tends to be cast aside, which is probably why neither group says games should be about comedy...

Truth be told, comedy games are a rarity. Good humour is after all, subjective. Off the time of my head I can name only a few of them—Jazzpunk, Dr Langeskov, The Stanley Parable and maybe Project Rub. Step aside though because there's a new entrant into the ring... Donut County, a whimsical comedy-cum-novelty game that's almost worth the £11 entrance fee I paid to play it.

Donut County is a puzzle game from one-man-team, LA based gamemaker Ben Esposito. It's described as a physics-based-puzzler but that doesn't do it justice. The gameplay only consists of moving a cursor about the screen to drop objects into a 'donut-shaped' hole. As you drop smaller objects, the hole enlarges so that you're able to drop bigger objects (think brick to car). It's trivial but the real quality of the game is the humour—an eccentric, joke-laden, easy-going style, featuring a cast of silly anthropomorphic animals, including a salty raccoon called 'Trash King'.

Like all comedy, how much you'll enjoy Donut County relies on how funny you find it. I personally love absurdist humour so got a lot of mileage from it. It has a brilliant riff on Wikipedia called Trashpedia which offers a silly description of each object you drop. I chortled heartily a few times, like when it described snakes as 'moving spaghetti'. I do wish the gameplay was more challenging, but another part of me realises that it works excellently with the game's simple intentions.

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