Donut county getaway vehicle6/29/2023 ![]() ![]() “I don’t know,” he continues, “a lot of people are aware of that.” It made it more personal, so it’s not just like, ‘Hey you’re evil, you suck.’ “And that was the motivation behind switching up the perspective and making it front and center. “I know exactly who’s gonna download this, and I know who my target audience is,” Esposito says. So now the game is direct and tells players their role from the get-go. “I thought it would be a big surprise, but everyone knows they’re playing a jerk,” Esposito says. The gentrification themes were originally meant to be more of a reveal late in the game, but Esposito noticed that most players immediately picked up on the fact that they’re playing someone nefarious. Over the past six or so years of development, the game shifted perspectives. That tension is core to ‘Donut County,’ and I think it’s something that games do well.” But then there are also those moments at the end of levels where the music changes and I give you some extra time to sit with the nothingness. ![]() “So its been really challenging to balance people’s expectations, because the game looks really cartoony and the game is made for kids and adults to maybe play together. “I think the bittersweetness that you feel playing ‘Donut County’ is the core energy of the entire game,” Esposito says. There’s an absurdity when BK, interrogated as to why he destroyed the cat cafe, shrugs and says, “I hate it.” And “Donut County” works because of how it uses humor. The raccoons are the type who move next to a rock club and then complain about the noise. A Joshua tree, for instance, is described as an “old and ugly tree.” A trailer is a “dumpster you can attach to your car.” And the crocodile’s musical instruments exist solely to “make his neighbors mad.” Where the residents of “Donut County” see beauty, the raccoons see garbage that stands in the way of redevelopment. “He’s a crocodile character who’s just out sunning, and there’s a yoga studio that has moved in to his right, and fancy apartments to his left.”Īt the end of each level we get a rundown on what we guzzled via the hole, which also illustrates how the raccoons view the world. “I wanted to have different specific references to L.A., so there is a level called Gecko Park where one of the characters lives, and he’s the last one who lives in a tin can,” Esposito says. Most look on helplessly as the hole obliterates their livelihood, be it a cat-owned cafe - it earned a health grade of D - or a gator with his homey home (the raccoons may say run-down or, more bluntly, a “weird trash house”) in Echo Park. Through short vignettes we get to know the “Donut County” residents. “But it does end at the Griffith Observatory, like all good L.A. that’s why the game starts out in the Mojave Desert and then each level moves closer to the center of L.A., which is obviously very nebulous because there is no real center. “But I wanted it to have more of a slice of Southern California than just L.A. “It takes place in some version of Los Angeles,” Esposito says. Thus, “Donut County” became a game, in Esposito’s words, about the “gentrification in L.A. He moved west to make games - Esposito previously worked on Giant Sparrow’s “What Remains of Edith Finch,” a thoughtful fantasy about tragedy and death - and saw himself as part of the problem, a tech industry gentrifier replacing local color with juice shops, gastropubs and converted warehouse live/work spaces. As BK innocently (and ignorantly) says when describing his job, “I was just cleaning up the neighborhood.” Heck, the raccoons even build their own version of Disneyland: Raccoon Lagoon, “the happiest raccoon place on raccoon earth.”Įsposito began toying with the idea not long after graduating from New York’s Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and relocating in 2011 to Los Angeles. The raccoons offer “Donut County” residents jobs with decent salaries, company stock options, healthcare, fancy new tech and a Southern California remade in their vision. ![]()
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