Most levels will still be fairly straightforward instances of collecting everything and then moving on, but certain objects like water and fire can enter your hole and must be dealt with or used to alter the environment. There are moments where Donut County begins to use its hole for some light puzzles, many of these cropping up once you get the catapult upgrade to the hole that can fire certain objects back out after they’ve dropped in. It may be simple what you’re doing with your hole most of the time, but guiding it around and collecting stuff in it is relaxing and just satisfying enough that it fills the game’s short length without having the time to get dull. Levels can be completed in a few minutes and have a few stages of hole growth to move you from one section of stuff to another. Levels don’t often have much in them to really challenge your mind on what to drop, but the game actually progresses at a pretty quick pace. The game actually has very few ways to impede your task of collecting objects with the hole, most of your progression focused on the very easy identification of what things you can drop down the hole based on its current size and what needs to go next to help it grow. A hole in the ground has pretty much all the freedom of movement it could want, the only thing blocking it really being the borders of the area you’re in. The ball in Katamari Damacy has to navigate around objects, can be hit by them, and can get stuck in tight spaces if you aren’t careful. The hole is the core gameplay mechanic of Donut County, and guiding it around with your mouse cursor is as straightforward as it is easy, but there is a bit of an issue Donut County has that Katamari games don’t. Donut County captures that same satisfying feeling of clearing a messy area of objects but has you instead dropping it all down a hole that grows bigger as more stuff enters it.

In Katamari Damacy you roll up objects in the world with your giant ball to make it bigger and able to pick up larger objects. Controlling a hole in the ground is one of those off-the-wall video game concepts that really shows the delightfully weird areas video games can explore, and it’s not too odd that this game seems a bit like a flipped version of one of gaming’s poster children for kookiness, Katamari Damacy.

Donut county game length