Donut County to swallow us on August 28
Nibble nibble munch munch nibble nibble munch
Stealing trash is all fun and games until someone loses a town, as Donut County will demonstrate when it at long last launches on August 28th. Greedy racoons with remote-controlled holes are sucking up trash, see, but we get a bit carried away with it and... turns out, trash pandas can be a real force of nature when they're bored on the toilet fiddling with their iPad. The curious object-swallowing puzzler is coming from Ben Esposito, of Arcane Kids fame, and a new trailer below introduces us to the consequences of this mischief.
While I've not played Donut County yet myself, what I've seen reminds me a bit of the playful puzzling of Vectorpark games like Windosill, poking and feeling our way to solutions. And if you want trash-stealing urban mammals, Jazztronauts for Garry's Mod is coming tonight to send us ram-raiding through player-made levels.
Donut County has changed a fair bit since we first heard of it as Kachina in 2013, switching its subject as well as its name. But why raccoons? Esposito explained in a PlayStation Blog post accompanying today's announcement:
"My first apartment in Los Angeles was basically run by raccoons. They were sleeping in the laundry machines, stealing pool floats, and howling from rooftops. The raccoons kept to themselves usually, so I wasn't scared of them until one night when I heard a chittering sound from right above my head. I froze. Four feet away on the rooftop a raccoon stared at me, dead eyed, chewing on a battery. He was eating the battery. That was when I knew – raccoons cannot be stopped.
"Until then, Donut County didn't feel right – it was kind of cruel because you were playing as an evil force of nature: a creepy, destructive hole. Since you played as the villain I knew I needed a character who was dumb and wanted to steal people's trash. It was staring me right in the face. Chewing on a D battery."
Donut County is coming to Windows and Mac via Steam and GOG on August 28th, priced at $13. It's published by Annapurna Interactive, the folks who also helped bring us What Remains Of Edith Finch and Gorogoa.
Disclosure: Arcane Kids once DJed a set at a Wild Rumpus event I helped run.