Donut County

0:17 Hello, everyone, and welcome back to The Other Castle. The Other Castle, I'm Andrea. And my name is Tom. And here on The Other Castle, we do the plot, lore, and more behind all your favorite video games, even if they're indie darling cozy games, like this week. Yes, this week we are doing Donut County. I'm so excited. And if you want to hear more about other games, maybe some Annapurna games, maybe some Ben Esposito games, we have all the games we've covered on our website, theothercastlepodcast.com. That's theothercastlepodcast.com. And over there, you can also sign up for all sorts of things like our Instagram, our Discord, our Patreon, which is just $2 a month. And there's a free week trial. If you just want to pop in, see what's up, see if you like it, I get it.

0:59 Yeah. So come on over and sign up for that. Yeah, or you can also just join our Discord and we can bully Tom about onions. Why are you constantly promoting bullying? Is that toxic? That is super toxic. Well, I'm kind of a cunt. If we're being 100 about it, I'm not a great person, but I'm kind of funny, so people listen. Well, we're going to bully you into covering bully. How's that, then? Honestly, I've been wanting to play that, so that actually works out for me. You know, it's just one of those games that's so many hours that, like, I don't have the time to dedicate to it, you know? Well, we're going to bully you into it. All right, deal. That's fine.

1:39 We're going to get you to get a fucking tramp stamp. Not happening. It's going to happen. So, like Tom mentioned, this week, we are covering Donut County. Now, I have not heard of this game prior to you selecting it. You haven't heard of it at all? Not at all. Oh, it's so darling. It looks cute as hell. It's just the sweet, silly, cozy game. And I fucking love a cozy game. To the point of, like, bully, this is, like, a two-hour run. I think you can speed run it in about 30 minutes if you know what you're doing. Yeah. Okay, so this is like an untitled Goose Game-style game. Oh, down to, like, the art-looking, like, untitled Goose Game. Okay. You have no idea. So Donut County comes from the mind of American video game creator Ben Esposito.

2:22 We know him on this show for being the lunatic mind behind 2016's Tattletale. Oh, okay, so we have covered Ben Esposito before. Yes, and he was also on the game design team for 2017's What Remains of Edith Finch. Oh, goodness. So he's been working with Anna Perna for a minute. Yeah, and I constantly get messages of like, why do you hate this game so much on What Remains of Edith Finch? You know what, it wasn't for me, and maybe I should redo it, because I probably was just a little bishy about it, but I wanted to shoot something. It's not violent enough for me, I think, is the issue. Anyway, Ben Esposito, not a violent man. He's just this sweet boy who loves Enya.

3:04 Enya? The musician Enya? Yeah. Okay. He moved to LA, and when he got his first apartment, he was terrorized by a pack of neighborhood raccoons, which is something I can fucking relate to. I was gonna say, your first apartment in Los Angeles wasn't raccoons, it was possums. Yeah, so when I was 19, I moved from Oakland, where I grew up, was born, all that good stuff, to LA for college. And my first terrible apartment was like $7.50 a month. And it showed, because there was a tree right in front of my fucking door. It was like a motel set up almost, it was like two stories, and it kind of like went around the middle part, like courtyard.

3:44 Yeah, like one of those little courtyards in the center, very motel. That's a good way of describing it. Yeah, it was clearly a converted motel. It fucking sucked. Anyway, there's this tree directly in front of my door, and a possum lived there who fucking hated me. This fucking possum would like crawl on my windows and hang on to the actual window pane and stare into my apartment through the cheap shitty blinds that never actually closed all the way, because again, terrible trash apartment. And his glazed over eyes that looked dead into my soul would just watch me every day. He would scratch at the windows and the door. He would wait for me to come home drunk as shit in the middle of the night, or sometimes the morning, it happens.

4:26 And he would scamper over my feet and like hiss and yell at me in his fucking little possum world language. I fucking hated it. He would take tiny shits around my walkway, like knowing where my foot patterns were. Oh my God. He enjoyed toying with my fear and threatening me with my own mortality. For me, being terrorized by a woodland creature was hell. For Ben Esposito, being terrorized by woodland creatures inspired one of the best indie games of 2018. If only you had been equally as inspired by that little possum. It inspired me to drink more than to create.

5:08 If you recall, that's near when we met. I was going to say, those times when you were stumbling home drunk, it was usually from my apartment, which happened to be across the street. Do you remember the one time I blacked out and sleptwalked home? I think I left my shoes at your place and you're like, I don't know how the fuck you did this. Not a clue in the world to this day. This wasn't safe. So development on Donut County started in early 2012 based on a game jam that Esposito found on Twitter. Now, a game jam is a sprint with developers to create a game very quickly based on a very specific theme or prompt. There's a really great video from Polygon on a game jam based around the great Gatsby that I'll drop in the Discord.

5:49 It's fun. Okay, cool. The prompt for this game jam was, you play the role of a hole. You must move around an environment, making certain elements fall into correct targets at the right time. That was posted on Twitter on January 4th, 2012. I feel like I've seen this as like a mobile game. This is a mobile game. Like, I feel like I see that ad on Instagram all the time. Of like the hole? The hole that gets bigger and bigger and like starts swallowing entire cities. Okay, well, spoilers. Oh, okay. The original form of Donut County started as a little game from the jam called The Pits. A hole moves around an environment and stuff falls into it.

6:31 Pretty much just nailed the prompt there. Yeah. One element that Esposito brought into the game jam here was something that he's called a reverse Katamari. Where in Katamari, the ball increases in size with progress, the hole in the game increases in size with progress. Oh, okay. Bigger hole means more shit can fall down into it. Just ask your mom. Come on, we've gone over this. You can't make your mom jokes to me. That's your mother-in-law. Legally? That was a general, your mom. Literally, all there is to make an in-law is legally. Exactly. I'm not talking shit on Sharon. The pits evolved into a game called Kachina.

7:12 Kachina is a spirit that embodies nature in Native American lore, which I think feels like really ominous with this kind of structure. No, I'm very familiar with Kachina dolls. Oh, cool. As Kachina evolved as a game, the setting became more and more inspired by the boss, Bruce Springsteen. Oh, that boss. Not the boss of the game. The boss of, I think, music? Yeah, apparently he is. Ben Esposito has said that Springsteen's songs are always about hyper-specific places, like the New Jersey Turnpike or Asbury Park, places that are super rich in meaning to him. So with that and the raccoon terrorists in his mind, Esposito was like, you know what? I'm going to be inspired by my surroundings as well, with his current surroundings being Los Angeles.

7:57 So why a story about holes in Los Angeles? Gophers are fucking everywhere. When asked, Esposito has said simply, Los Angeles is full of holes. Yeah, potholes. LA holes. To elaborate, he said, there are some literal ones caused by earthquakes, but the hole is any process of erasure. It swallows up places and things. What about people, cultures? What are some of the forces that cause groups of people to disappear? Los Angeles has a history of rapid expansion, which causes a lot of people to be displaced, and you can bet it's the people with the least amount of power, people who are systematically oppressed. Oh, yikes, wait, let me backpedal for a minute.

8:39 I love donuts. What? So he's going on this entire tangent about gentrification purely. And donuts. And then just switches gears to donuts. Just to take it down a notch, to make it not too much of a bummer. But this is about systematic oppression. Yeah, no shit. This very real world commentary on gentrification and capitalism is constantly balanced by the effortless international charm of donuts. So I feel like we should explain what gentrification is, because that's actually a word I didn't even know until I met you. That is so telling that you're like, I didn't know this word existed until this lady started screaming about it. So I'm from Oakland. Yeah.

9:20 And like Tom's mentioned, we met in LA in 2011, but we both moved there about a year or two prior. And gentrification is simply, you know, there's a neighborhood, and then other people move into that neighborhood because it's cheap. Perhaps it has lower resources or is farther away from large landmarks, like airports and highways, shit like that. Because of this influx of new money, new people, new opportunities, the people that were in the area originally end up getting displaced. They get priced out. They are unable to sustain the lifestyle they had because of this migration. To their area. So I grew up in Oakland. I can't shut the fuck up about it.

10:01 I will never be able to afford a home in my hometown. They are million-dollar homes. My parents bought their house for $150,000 in the late 80s, and they sold it for nearly a million dollars. That's insane to me. A couple of years ago. Yeah, it's absolutely insane. It's been great for them. They are very happy about that, because of the recessions, inflations, and, like, specific to Oakland, the boom of the social media world and Silicon Valley and just everything about Northern California that brings people in has forced the original people that live there out. Like, my best friends pay an exorbitant amount of rent just to stay in the city, to be with their families, and be with their friends and their culture that they love so much and grew up with.

10:45 But they really, it's so fucking unaffordable to be there. That's really wild. We had a terrible, snake-infested apartment, and I'm not being hyperbolic. There were fucking snakes in that building, and I would take pictures of them and send them to our landlord, and she'd be like, well, just don't touch them. And I was like, bitch, I wasn't fucking planning on it. And those apartments easily more than double what we paid maybe six, seven years ago for them. Yeah. Which is fucking crazy. Ugh, gentrification is horrible. The rent is too damn high. It is, and you know, you lived in San Diego for times of your life. Yeah, I grew up in San Diego County, and that is a place I will never be able to afford to live again. Absolutely. It's just so wild to me.

11:26 Right? And it's not all just inflation. It's a lot of just migration. It is, yeah. Which sucks. It's just when there's a lot of money that's brought in, it raises the prices of everything. Exactly. Anyway, back to the game about a donut. Exactly. So Esposito has expanded on Los Angeles' donut culture, saying, When I moved to LA, what struck me the most was that there is a different donut shop on every corner, and they're all independently owned. This was really weird to me coming from New York, where there's a Dunkin Donuts on every corner. New York City has been going through this process of gentrification for a while now, but I didn't really connect that back to donuts until I learned that Dunkin Donuts is now about to move to Los Angeles.

12:10 I was next door to the first Dunkin Donuts in Los Angeles working next door to it. And I'll tell you, I went there every fucking day once it opened. Ah, trash. I know. I'm sorry, but... You're the worst. You Ben Affleck motherfucker. I know, but he's not wrong. The donut culture of Los Angeles is insane. Yeah, and you know what? If you're in LA listening to this, the best donut shop is Fantastic Donuts at Vermont and 11th. And you can tell, Lily, you heard about it from us. I fucking love that shop. California Donuts is in K-Town. They get a lot of clout because of social. Fantastic Donuts wipes the fucking floor with them. Every time, I'll die on that fucking hill.

12:51 You can see that, again, the culture of the donut in Los Angeles becomes so, like, competitive. I'm like, I'll kill for them. And it's funny, too, because just in LA specifically, one of the most iconic donut shops aside from California, which I've mentioned is just all over social, is Randy's. Oh, Randy's. You see that in Iron Man 2. Is it in the second one? I think it's in the second one. When he's having an emotional crisis. Yeah, he's, like, sitting in the donut. Yeah, Randy's Donuts is kind of all over LA. I actually talked to my dad about this last weekend when I saw him, and he was like, Randy's is a great shop in terrible neighborhoods. Always. They're not in gentrified areas.

13:33 Probably soon to be gentrified areas. But if that's any indication, Randy's is a shop. There is one store where you could drive through the Big Donut. I don't remember which one that one was. I think that the one that's an Iron Man is the one that's... Yeah, yeah. And it's, again, not a great neighbor. I think it's near Inglewood, like on the border of like Segundo, Inglewood area. God, we haven't talked like LA holes in so long. We're sounding like that Californian sketch right now. Just go down to 405 and get off at Randy's. You'll see the Big Donut. Yeah. Wait, wait, you know Randy's because Iron Man sat in the Big Donut. It's this massive, what is it? Probably 30-foot tall donut that says Randy's.

14:14 Yeah, and it's been in so many other things other than Iron Man. That's a pretty iconic shop. Oh, yeah. The first iteration of Donut County saw the light of day at IndieCade, which is an international indie game festival, in October of 2012, just a few months after the game jam. At 2013's GDC, Esposito brought the game to an experimental gameplay workshop, and it was received really well, getting cheers and applause from the crowd. In 2014, the game was an official selection of the Fantastic Arcade Indie Game Festival in Austin, Texas. And then 2015 was a huge year for the project. During GDC that year, Esposito gave a developer update on the game, which really started getting some interest in the property.

14:59 It also won Best Story and World Design at IndieKade 2015. Really? Yeah, and then at the Independent Games Festival, it was a finalist for Excellence in Visual Art and became an overall honorable mention for the entire show. This little game about donuts and what, fucking raccoons? Yeah. Okay, all right. And gentrification and capitalism. Like, I'm not imagining this game is going to have much of a story, but apparently it's going to have one of the best stories. I mean, it's fine. It's fine. It's no last of us. Like, give me a break here. Well, for an indie game. Two years later, in August of 2017, publisher Annapurna Interactive released an announcement trailer for the final game called Donut County.

15:48 This came a few months after the release of What Remains of Edith Finch, showing that Esposito has a really great relationship with the mighty Fringe publisher. The video was published with the caption, Is a hole a thing or is a thing holed? Get the whole story in Donut County coming 2018. Okay. The video links to the Donut County website, which has the call to action, meet the locals, steal their trash, and throw them in a hole. This is so feral off the fucking bat. Yeah, I was going to say, this already feels like fucking Goose Game. Just in like the charm of it. Yeah. I fully see you. Terrorizing a town. The sweet woodland creature terrorizing a neighborhood.

16:31 The announcement trailer itself has a beautiful created by Ben Asposito title card and goes to footage of a raccoon posing the philosophical question, what is a hole? We see the raccoon is in a place called the Donut Lab and then is perhaps inevitably swallowed up by that hole. We see some chaos and the voiceover declares that you, the player, controls the hole. The more you eat, the bigger you get, just like in real life. You are the hole, whatever a hole is. The game garnered some modest traction commercially and some respect critically. Across the board, most reviewers gave the game a 7 or 8 out of 10, mostly calling out how charming and cute the game is.

17:13 It's a satisfying cozy game, but it's also just a very quick run, like it's fast. It was really generally enjoyed by reviewers and players alike. So much so that this raccoon-based cozy game attracted copycats. Oh, okay. Meanwhile, in France, mobile game developer Voodoo was founded in 2013, months after the first iteration of Donut County was publicly viewed. They pushed out a few games, and in early 2018, they secured a $200 million investment through a VC at Goldman Sachs. I fully play a Voodoo game on my phone almost daily. I'm going to tell you some stories then.

17:54 Let's see if you will by the end of this episode. Just a few months before Donut County launched, Voodoo launched a game called hole.io, a free-to-play game described as a game where players will absorb everything into your black hole. You play as a hole and get things to fall down the hole. On June 25, 2018, two months before Donut County's official launch, Ben Esposito addressed the knockoff on Twitter. He starts his statement with, Didn't think it was possible, but there's a clone of my upcoming game Donut County on the App Store called hole.io. It's published by Voodoo, who published cheap free-to-play versions of indie games.

18:35 Esposito does admit there are differences, saying that Donut County is a story-based puzzle game, and hole.io combines the premise for Donut County with the IO King of the Hill formula. He admits the pain, saying, It stings a little after five-plus years of convincing people a game about a hole in the ground is a good idea. But I can't do anything about them stealing my thunder, really. I'm going to focus my energy into finishing Donut County. He concludes with, Ultimately, I think there's enough room for both games on the App Store. I spent the last five years creating Donut County's unique charm, sense of humor, and painstakingly handmade levels. You really can't rip that stuff off, in my opinion.

19:16 It's a labor of love that I'm excited for you all to play very soon. While hole.io did manage to make it to the top of the games app category for both Google Play and the Apple Store, it didn't take the wind out of Donut County. As Mark Twain once said, Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery that mediocrity can pay to greatness. It launched on Switch and Xbox One on December 18, 2018, and then came out for Android on December 1, 2020. I love this as a Switch game, and I think I got it for under $4. It's an incredibly affordable, joyous ride. Yeah, this also makes it the first main series game that's like a pure mobile game, too. Yeah. Donut County would go on to win Apple's iPhone Game of the Year for 2018, and then South by Southwest Gaming Award for Mobile Game of the Year in 2019.

20:05 hole.io does not have any notable accolades other than being noted as a shitty ripoff of Donut County. Fuck you, hole.io. All my homies hate hole.io. And here's why this game came out on top, even with sloppy French knockoffs. This is the best iOS mobile game of 2018. The same year PUBG Mobile and Among Us were released. We do know the history of Among Us from our Patreon episode that, like, it took a while to get traction with that game. Oh, yeah, but just for context, come on. But still, this is Donut County. The art of Donut County is incredibly similar to Goose Game, with bright, vibrant, friendly colors and warm backdrops that always feel a little familiar.

20:51 This world is more shape-based than realistic, which makes it really charming. The inhabitants of this world are mostly animals. It's very Bojack Horseman, which is also LA. Hell, yeah. These animals are big and they function in society. They all live in tandem with humans, and outside of the animal inhabitants, there are also occasionally regular animals that we see, so don't think too much about it. Just like Bojack Horseman. Exactly. Our opening screen shows a donut shop with a big donut sign that is literally a 20-foot donut over a small donut shop, obviously inspired by Randy's donuts. Iconic imagery. The shop underneath the donut itself is shaped like a coffee mug.

21:31 The donut says the title of the game, Donut County. Inside the mug, there's a window counter with a small raccoon running the shop. Perched inside of the big donut, just like Iron Man, is a girl. Her name is Mira. She's cool as shit. We love her. She's the baddest bitch. Hi, Mira. The shop is right off of a winding freeway. The freeway is punctuated with palm trees, and the skyline of the city is off in the distance. It's LA as fuck. The gameplay begins at Mira's house, a small bungalow-inspired single-story home surrounded by a chain-link fence. Mira's busy doing hot girl shit, just rotting in bed while on her phone and her laptop simultaneously while she and her dog eat snacks.

22:15 Her hot girl shit is interrupted by the raccoon we saw in the donut shop, BK. He texts her saying, Mira, when are you coming into work? She says, be quiet. I've died. I'm dead. Please have some respect. Calling out dead today. I know, right? He says, LOL, why are you dead? She tells him that the honking man woke her up at the honk of dawn. She pets her dog while she texts BK. BK says, that's honking unbelievable, but don't worry, I'll revenge you. They chat a bit, and BK tells her to come to the shop because he's bored. She agrees, and she's like, I'll be there in five minutes. Through the window, we get the title card for Donut County near a goose who is parked on the street on his Vespa scooter.

23:00 A goose, I love it. As soon as we're like, this looks like goose game, there's a fucking goose. The goose on the Vespa sits and has donut boxes on the back seat behind him. A small hole appears under him. The hole rolls around and eats the words from the title card. The D, the O, the N, you get the whole deal. With each letter that falls into the hole, the hole grows a little bit bigger. The letters fall down in the hole one by one. The C, the U, the N. The whole letter set goes down. Quickly enough, the hole is big enough that the goose falls down, Vespa, Scooter and all. The scene cuts back to the donut shop we saw earlier. BK is in the back room of the donut shop playing a game mindlessly on his phone.

23:44 We get it, we've all been there. He gets a text from Mira saying, dude, the honking stopped. Did you actually do something to the honking man? BK texts back and says, yeah, don't worry about him. I just delivered him a donut. Smiley face. Mira goes, um, okay. And BK tells her, hey, guess what? I'm level nine now. At level 10, I get the quadcopter. A quadcopter is like basically a drone. Right. Mira says, oh, that's sick. BK says, we're going to buzz around like kings. Mira's like, hell yeah, I'll see you soon. The holes only get deployed when someone orders a donut delivery from BK's donut shop. That's how he gets their coordinates and deploys the donut.

24:25 So instead of getting a nice sweet treat delivered to their door, BK is actually delivering deployed holes. What the fuck? We get a black title card now. Six weeks later. In a new scene, the world is in darkness. Oh no. What the fuck has happened? It's a deep cavernous world, and in the center, there's a small fire with a handful of townsfolk surrounding it for light and warmth and the last bit of community left in the world. There's structures, power lines, and broken shit everywhere. We can see the pipes and the sewers above the townsfolk. We see the coffee shop and the Donut County Donut sign.

25:06 They are in deep wherever they are. And we see now, through a title card, that they are 999 feet below. Oh goodness, the power go to the raccoon's head. BK looks down at a crashed drone, the quadcopter, which has clearly just been destroyed. BK looks up at Mira, confused and sad. BK asks how Mira could smash his quadcopter. Mira says, who cares about your stupid quadcopter? How could you destroy the town? The scene cuts back from framing Mira and BK to the townsfolk around the fireplace. BK addresses the crowd saying, I never destroyed anything, I'm kind.

25:50 Mira, his best friend, says, oh my god, you used that app to open up holes all over town and now we're all stuck underground. He was the only one using it, come on now. But that's the whole ass premise. The app that BK is playing with earlier is basically the gameplay in Donut County. So he is playing the game IRL. And it's happening IRL, in Los Angeles. On BK's app, he's able to deploy a hole and the hole sucks everything up, including the honking man. And that's what he's been doing to the whole town the last six weeks. Oops. BK tells everyone, everything here looks fine to me, except my quadcopter. I'm the victim.

26:32 Annoyed and violent, Mira looks out and says, will someone please back me up here? She gestures to the circle of displaced town folk at the fireplace. A dog named Potter backs her up saying, BK, it's obvious you did it. I got swallowed up by a hole right after I ordered a donut from your shop. BK looks directly into Potter's eyes and says, what does that have to do with Mira smashing my quadcopter? He just has this one track fucking mind. He's a raccoon! Mira, who is desperate to get the town together and on track, asks Potter, what happened to your son? Potter says her son, Pup, must still be up there somewhere.

27:15 Back on the surface, a hole pops up at Potter's rock. It's a very desert inspired area where the hole eats up cacti and clay pots. We see Potter, the last time she was on the surface, working outside on a spinning a clay pot, while her son, Pup, looks on from inside their home. As more of the yard gets swallowed up by the hole, Pup makes it to a hot air balloon to hide from the hole. In the upper left corner of the screen, there's a tiny circle where we see that BK is playing around on his tablet, navigating the holes. The hole BK is driving swallows up the pottery kiln, and the heat aids the hot air balloon in taking off, securing Pup's safety from the hole.

27:58 The hole continues to eat up Potter's rock until it swallows up the mountain range and the home itself. The screen shows Potter falling down the hole, eventually landing 999 feet below. As she does, we see BK's XP bar fill up as he levels up from level 9 to level 10. He just won't fucking quit. He wants the quadcopter. And for BK, this is a game, and the more stuff he gets into the hole, the more XP he gets, and the closer he gets to earning his quadcopter. In the current and in the below, Potter says sadly, she just wanted to surprise Pup with a donut. She starts to cry as she realizes now he's just out there, floating and alone.

28:41 BK says, no, he's not. If you got swallowed first, how do you know he got in the balloon? This story is full of holes. Mira cuts him off and says, your brain is full of holes. And so is this entire town, thanks to you. BK says proudly, I'm just doing my job. He then realizes what he just said is probably a legal confession and backs it up by saying, wait, no, not true, I'm innocent. A beaver at the fireplace named Helen says, wait, Pup isn't a hot air balloon? I saw a hot air balloon float by my ranger station. Helen is in full park ranger gear, hat included. Potter's eyes light up, and she asks which way the balloon was going.

29:25 Helen says, I don't know, I got distracted. I had just ordered a donut. I get hungry when I'm anxious. Myriah asks why she was anxious, and Helen tells her, it was because of the snakes. Helen looks into the raging fire, and the scene shifts to the day she ordered a donut to the ranger station. Helen is way up in a ranger station, like very fire watch about it. And below, here on the dry ground, there are a whole mess of snakes. Unfortunately for Helen, instead of the donut showing up, the whole shows up. Why did it have to be snakes? It goes through this dry patch of land and starts eating up snakes and rocks and cacti all around.

30:05 She sits up at the ranger station and watches as the snakes seemingly disappear into the nothingness. Fueled by snakes, the whole grows bigger, and bigger, and big enough to swallow up the entire ranger station. Oh no! Helen included. Back in the below, BK says, Well, it sounds like you should be thanking me for solving your snake problem. Helen catches this and is like, So it was you that opened up the holes? BK says, What? No. But whoever did do it did you as solid. He's probably a really cool and nice guy. Also, all these people survived this thousand foot fall. 999.

30:46 Okay. Mira asks if anyone else here saw a pup. A pair of mice, Salt and Pepper Pipe Up. They're brothers. Salt says he had seen pup through Peter's telescope, and he was down at Mint River because they were currently fighting. Salt had been admiring this bird and moved his trailer down to watch it closer, but he got hungry and decided to order a donut. Then the hole came. At the riverbed, Salt is sticking his head out of the top of a trailer, watching a bird through a telescope, exactly as he described. The river is small and there's only a few fish here. Once the hole arrives, there's marginally less of everything here.

31:27 The bird Salt is watching is this gorgeous big blue bird who's protecting three smaller blue birds. And I kind of get it, that bird is cool as shit. Unfortunately, Salt doesn't get to watch for long and doesn't get his donut. Oh. You know, because of the hole. The three small birds are perched on a ledge and are spared, but the big blue bird falls victim to the hole. Down below and deep past the fireplace, we actually can see the beautiful blue bird in the distance. BK goes, wow. So are you saying you're in love with a bird? Salt says, yeah. BK asks, is that legal? Mira says, it's not about the bird.

32:07 Oh, my gosh. And don't be against interracial relationships. In this Bojack ass world, it's okay to do shit like this, you know? So each one of these different stories that's going on, is that the gameplay? Yeah. It's just not fun for me to be like, you have to swallow up the chair before you swallow up the fucking thing. It's a story-based podcast, Tom. I get it. Exactly. I just wanted to make sure that's when the gameplay was actually occurring. Yeah, these are all the levels, and then these interstitials where they're at the fireplace talking, that's not gameplay. That's just kind of clicking through dialogue. Okay. So Mira's like, it's not about the bird. Pepper corrects Mira and says, you know what? It is about the bird. BK reiterates this and is like, yeah, it's about the bird, Mira.

32:50 Mira tells BK he is hopeless. In the middle of this fight, a tent right behind the fireplace starts to shake. The group is startled and turns to see that Coyote is sticking his head out of the tent. Oh, hi, Coyote. He is named Coyote and he is a coyote. Coyote says, hopeless. We're all hopeless now. Coco, a crocodile in the circle, is surprised to see him at all. He says, Coyote, I thought you moved to the desert. Coyote says he did. It's just that BK over here must be targeting people who are down on their luck, gentrification. Uh-oh. Mira, ever the detective, confirms that Coyote was the original owner of the Donut County shop.

33:34 Coyote says, yep, that was me, but it went out of business when the raccoons moved into town. He ended up having to sell the shop to the raccoons and moved out to the desert. Mira's like, damn, that sucks, I'm so sorry, Coyote. And that's gentrification, kids. Entirely. Coyote is down and says, can't be helped. A coyote's life is like a sad country tune. I made a modest living selling vegetables. Suppose it was my way of giving back to folks. The scene shifts to a desert campground with a little off-road station for selling corn. You know, you see them on like long trips sometimes in like farming areas. Yeah, those little corn stalls. Corn stalls.

34:14 The Hole manages to swallow up a fireplace and corn and shoot cooked popcorn off through the Hole, which is a really fun effect. I like that a lot. It's fun until you remember that the Hole is displacing this entire community. I mean, there's that. Including Coyote, who gets eaten up by the Hole. Coyote tumbles down to the below as the XP bar gets to about the one third mark towards level 10, towards the quadcopter. Yes. Coyote concludes to the group, well, that's my sad story. Furious at all the displacement and horrors, Mira looks at BK and says, BK, don't you have something to say to Coyote? BK says, yeah.

34:55 Vegetables stink. Damn right. Salt, the bird fucker, pipes up and says, yeah. Mira laughs and then corrects herself and tells BK to fucking apologize. They don't say fucking. I say fucking, but you know. This is very family friendly for what it's worth. I'm sorry for all the time that I say fucking cunt in this, but you know what? No, I'm not. Yeah, it's some flavor text for you. BK manages to say to Coyote, I'm sorry that you think vegetables taste good. Mira is gonna kick his fucking teeth in. Coyote sadly says, maybe they do stink.

35:36 I suppose my sweet tooth was feeling lonesome, and that's why I ordered a donut from y'all. He looks so fucking sad. BK looks at Mira and says, see, why should I apologize for delivering this pathetic vegetable eating Coyote a donut? Mira reminds BK that he ruined his business twice now. And stop saying you delivered donuts. What do you think donuts are? You know, because at no point has anyone actually gotten a fucking donut in this game? No, not once. Like, we keep talking about donuts, but we're really just talking about the hole in the center of a donut. Yeah, like we're fucking Benoit Blanc in The First Knives Out. We have a hole with a donut hole that has another hole inside the donut hole.

36:19 He's the greatest detective known to man. I love The Knives Out movies. They're fucking wild. BK tries to divert the conversation by pondering, well, what constitutes a donut? If a donut is still a donut without the hole? Coco reminds him that a donut without a hole is still a donut. Mira agrees and is like, yeah, man, jelly donuts, fritters, we get it, donut holes. Yeah. BK goes, wait, donut holes don't have holes? Coco tells him, no, they don't have holes. They are the holes. BK goes, wow, that's pretty deep. This fucking stoner raccoon. Right. Mira gets everyone back on track and moves on to a pair of elderly rabbits who had actually just moved to town to retire.

37:01 They've been married for 40 years. One of them had just gotten a new phone, so they ordered donuts to celebrate. Oh, Jesus. Which is like the most tender fucking thing on earth. The scene shifts to Hopper Springs, their carrot-shaped home. It's clearly a family home with many bunnies all around, and the elderly couple cuddling and watching their family grow. You know, until their home and everything they know and love, including each other, gets eaten by a fucking hole. And all the bunnies. Yeah. The rabbits hold each other as they descend into the depths of the below. Like the old couple in fucking Titanic. Like the old couple in fucking The Notebook.

37:41 Like they are... Yeah, they're just holding each other like, this is it, babe, I love you, it's been real. With each round of hole madness, as the town folks are drowned in the depths of the hole, the game brings up an inventory of everything that came down the hole. This is called the Trashopedia. It shows off every item that came down individually to show off all the trash that got swallowed up. After checking out the Trashopedia, a logo comes up saying, have a garbage day. I love that. I wish the garbage man left a little sign for us every time they came and collected our trash. I wouldn't want like an inventory though. It would be like, you had like 18 KitKat wrappers, and I'd be like, I know.

38:22 Yeah, I don't want that much information on my trash at all. That would be a bummer. Mira says, it's really sweet that they're so in love. Probably because she's just so fucking full of rage because her best friend BK is being a butt hole. The rabbits say, day and night belong to love. BK says, that is extremely gross. Mira says, BK is gross and loves trash. BK argues that everyone here loves trash. Otherwise, why would you make so much of it? Mira says, is everyone's home just trash to you? And he's like, yeah, I'm a raccoon. Yeah. One man's trash is literally a raccoon's treasure.

39:02 Exactly. Pepper, who's Salt's brother the mouse, says, hey, don't call my trailer trash. Mira says, hey, what happened to your trailer? And Pepper says that after he and Salt split up after that fight, Salt moved out to stock a bird, so he took his trailer out to Joshua Tree for some peace and quiet. Fucking Joshua Tree. It's what a lot of LA holes do to reset, in all fairness. They go out there, do some mushrooms, then come back. Yeah. But plot twist, you can do mushrooms fucking anywhere, guys. You don't have to drive out to the Palm Springs Joshua Tree area. Back in Joshua Tree, the hole arrives and starts eating up the desert around Pepper's trailer, including trees, cacti, a picnic table, all sorts of camping shit.

39:46 Unfortunately, Pepper also left his grill out, and the hole manages to start a fire and catch a bunch of actual Joshua Trees and the trailer on fire. Which is so much worse than just falling down a hole. It's like fire damage is crazy. Yeah, this is to represent the constant wildfires that Los Angeles County seems to have. Yeah, with seemingly no start of just like, oops, everything is on fire. Yeah, again. The hole continues to grow after swallowing the flaming trailer with Pepper still inside, and starts swallowing the rocks and the landscape and a nearby pickup truck. The trajectory and the speed of falling down the hole managed to extinguish the flames, but Pepper continues to fall to unknowingly reunite with his brother Salt.

40:31 With this act of destruction and displacement, BK's XP bar is about halfway to the quadcopter. BK accuses Pepper of allowing Joshua trees, which are hundreds of years old, to burn. But Pepper is like, you know what? I was fucking busy, okay? I was writing an apology letter to Salt. Pepper missed Salt and was sorry for smashing Salt's lava lamp. And then he probably shouldn't have eaten all the lava inside. Oh my god. Salt forgives him, saying he gets it. Lava is the best part. That's just wax, you guys. It's the best part. They're mice. They eat weird shit too. That's true. As they find forgiveness in the darkness, BK takes the credit and says, he brought feuding brothers back together.

41:17 He also credits himself with helping a civil servant with her serpent problem and gave a child the gift of flight. BK crowns himself a hero. BK then brings his attention to Morsel. Now, Morsel is kind of just a green jelly bean where everyone else has been like mirrors a person, everyone else is an animal. Okay. He's kind of just a weird thing. It's definitively unclear what he's supposed to be. Like plankton and fucking Spongebob Squarepants. Well, plankton's like a real thing. A real plankton, but like that size. But no, he's big. Oh, he's big. He's big, but he's a weird shape. He's just a big green amorphous blob. Yeah, and he's also got like a cool rockabilly haircut with like a cool guy black button up and his legs in a cast.

42:00 Okay, so he's like a living amoeba. Yeah, but he's like a punk rock amoeba. Okay, like amoeba records. There you go. Okay. BK doesn't know morsel very well, and he's like, hey, morsel, what do you even like do for a living? Morsel says he sells explosives. Oh. Fundamentally unclear what this thing is supposed to be. He works with fucking Cobra in Dave the Diver. Exactly. He's his plug. Yeah. BK says, oh, sweet, but you know, that could be unsafe. Concerned citizens could want your explosive stand blown up for safety. Morsel says, oh, no, no, no, I run my business completely above board. I have the most permits in Donut County.

42:41 Playing with fireworks is safer than driving a car, which I don't think it is. That cannot be true. It doesn't feel true. The scene moves to morsel's beachside fireworks stand. It's a gorgeous day, and morsel has his fireworks set up in a parking lot right on the beach. And I don't think that's legal in California. Not at all. No, only on like native land. Oh, so on sovereign land where it's like a different situation, they can do it. But yeah, I mean, like we mentioned, we live in Las Vegas. There are certain times of the year you can sell fireworks. I think it's like a certain period of dates. Yeah, and in Las Vegas, you can't have fireworks, but just outside of Las Vegas, you can have fireworks. So people drive over to like a couple towns down like Perump, where they can shoot off fireworks and like drink wine, which also sounds like a terrible idea.

43:27 But growing up in California, if you had fireworks, it was like a sparkler you could buy at a grocery store or like something a little illegal. Yeah. But with this one, they're like, fuck it. Morsell and his entire fireworks stand fall into the hole by the beach, and the earth rumbles as the entire scene falls in. In the below, BK says, boom, I'm cleaning up the neighborhood. Who else has a gripe with me? Fully admitting to what he's doing now. Yeah, kind of giving up the ghost on, I'm innocent, I'm a victim. Yeah. Coco the crocodile says, well, I have a gripe with Mira. BK is like, hell yeah, you're in for it now, Mira.

44:08 Order a donut. Coco has Mira tell the group, he's like, you fucking say it, that she knew that the raccoons were making the holes. She said she knew the whole time. The whole time they were making the holes. Collectively, the displaced community gasps. She was complicit the whole time. The whole time. The scene moves to Gecko Park, where Coco is. Sorry, Gecko Park, that's really good. What's the joke there? There's Echo Park. Oh, wait, I didn't get that. Oh, fuck, I played this game twice. I ran through it once for the mechanics, and then I ran through it again for the text and the story.

44:49 Fuck me. Okay, so Echo Park is in Los Angeles. It's a beautiful park. It's actually very lovely to walk around. There's always fun little food stands and shit. Damn it. Oh, I'm so mad. Fuck me. Yeah, that's a very Bojack Horseman joke, too. It is a very Bojack Horseman joke. Yeah, Gecko Park is perfect. You don't watch Bojack Horseman at night? We're going to have to. Okay. Sorry, we're in Gecko Park, which I now understand is much funnier than I ever gave a credit for. And Coco is laying out, napping in the sun in his garden. He wakes up to a text from Mira saying, just out of fucking nowhere, how many snakes would it take to defeat you?

45:31 I think that's a great first date question. They're just homies. She's just like, I wonder how many would take to kill Coco. You want to keep a dude busy? Ask him that question. That's the Roman Empire. Coco, text back, clarifying if they're big snakes and if they're venomous. Exactly. This is why it's going to keep them busy. Mira says normal size, but you have to fight in a tiny room. Coco takes this in, thinks about his answer. What would you answer to that? I don't know. I'm fucking terrified of snakes. Also, poisonous snakes. Venomous. Venomous snakes. Yeah, exactly.

46:12 Am I going to bite them and die, or will they bite me and die? Why would they die if you bite them? That means I'm venomous. Well, Coco says 1,000 snakes. A thousand. A thousand. Oh, can you imagine having to kill a thousand snakes with your bare hands? In a tiny room? No, I couldn't. You're like, maybe one if I have a shovel and a gun. Yeah. So my friend Michelle, I love her dearly. She went to college in upstate New York, and one time she was driving from her, like, someone's house back, and she's driving kind of through the woods in upstate New York, right?

46:53 It's like actually wooded. It's not like Manhattan. And she's driving by herself, looks down her passenger seat. There's a garden snake. Stop. Sitting on her passenger seat. I wasn't even planning on telling the story. Oh, my God, no. She sent me pictures because she obviously freaked out, pulled over, got out of the car, and was taking pictures through the windows and shit. And just was like, I didn't know what to do, so I called my dad. Yeah, what the fuck do you even do? And she's like, it was so small. There was no way it was a harmful snake, but I don't know how long it had been with me. And are you allowed to just kind of let them free into the wild, or is that dangerous? Just fuck him. I was like, fuck the ethics.

47:33 Yeah. You take your shoe off, and you like swat it out or something, you know? Like, you don't put your hands on it. Would you cry immediately? Because I think I would just cry immediately. I think I'd call an Uber and abandon the car. Fuck this Volkswagen. I'm out. Yeah. Holy shit. So ask Coco's like, I could kill a thousand snakes. There's a beat, and then he's like, hey, Mira, have you looked into the disappearances yet? Which is such a fucking like hard right turn from like, I could kill a thousand snakes. Do you know how our friends are missing? Mira says no, and then Coco worriedly texts that, hey, you know, Salt hasn't answered his phone in a few days.

48:15 He brings up that ever since the raccoons moved into town, folks have been disappearing, and she works at their donut shop. Mira truly is complicit, and she's like, I don't know, the raccoons treat me really well, and BK is my friend. And Coco's like, yeah, well, I just ordered a donut. Worried, Mira asks Coco, why? Coco says, he want to know how they taste. I want to see what all the hype is about. We've been over this. Mira is like, oh my God, I have to go. I'll talk to you soon. Coco rests his eyes and falls back asleep in his garden as the whole is delivered and inevitably eats him up and everything he holds dear in this world. You dumbass. Reunited in the below, Mira apologizes sincerely to Coco.

48:58 She's like, it is my fault that Coco was put in the hole. She regrets taking the job with the raccoons. BK is like, excuse me, I thought we were friends. Yeah. Mira goes, I thought we were, but you ruined the town. BK is like, what? I tried to help. I got a catapult upgrade for the holes, even though I didn't want to waste my points and you fucking made me do it. You do not want to waste your fucking points. Mira is like, you told me the catapult upgrade would help launch everyone out of the hole, yet here we are. In the hole! A round farmer looking animal named Jellybean is holding a chicken and tries to get BK to kiss the chicken.

49:39 BK refuses and Jellybean says it's the least he could do after the hole stole all the eggs. Jellybean talks about how he was going through a tough time and had to sell his prized rooster. The scene moves to Jellybean's egg farm, which is obviously getting eaten up by the hole. Before the barn gets eaten up, the scene cuts to BK, who's sitting on the shitter playing on his tablet. Jesus Christ. He gets an angry text from Mira saying, why did you sell a donut to Coco? BK goes, oh, lol, he fucking ordered one. What's your problem? Yeah. Mira says, this is too much. It's gone too far. You have to get the catapult hole upgrade and fix all this shit. BK is like, I don't want to spend the points on the catapult.

50:23 I'm saving it for the quadcopter. Mira screams to do it and that he promised. BK says, oh my god, fine, I'll fix everything. You owe me a damn quadcopter. Bitch, I'm going to get my drone. BK closes the text app and then goes to the whole app store where he buys the catapult upgrade, wasting 99 in-game dollars when he should be saving for the quadcopter. This upgrade introduces the game mechanic where certain things can fall down the hole and then can be shot back up through the hole. Oh, nice. The scene shifts back to the hole, which is still the egg farm. Now the hole can pull levers and shoot shit into the sky to unlock parts of the level.

51:04 The puzzles will get more challenging and engaging as the hole grabs chickens and catapults them back up around the barn to get the hole to grow. It's genuinely really fun as shit and was cool that this deep into the game, we got a different mechanic for the hole and the puzzle solving. The fact that the hole has so many diverse uses. Right, it's not just drop shit in there, it's we have to get to this size so we can drop this, and now we can shoot shit back up. That's pretty cool. Yeah, and you know, it's really cool, and eventually it helps the hole get big enough to suck up cars and the barn itself with jelly bean in it. In the below, Mira yells that BK wasn't even trying to help. BK says he was, it's just hard to use the catapult.

51:46 Eventually, BK says he used the hole to save Bearclaw, and we move over to Bearclaw, who sits across the fire from BK. Bearclaw is a bear in a full beekeeper suit. So like the hat, the fucking full white suit, a whole deal. A bear that loves honey. Groundbreaking, right? Bearclaw goes, you saved me? You humiliated me. BK says, yeah, Bearclaw, you were getting hunted by bees. I'm a hero. In retrospect, Bearclaw is like, yeah, but it's suspicious that you said you deliver donuts out to the middle of the forest. But look, it's a hard job. Sometimes you get hunted by bees. The scene shifts to the middle of the woods, where Bearclaw is tending to a bunch of bees at a bee farm.

52:31 Bearclaw is hanging on to a tree branch and swaying up in the sky as bees circle them. They are sweating profusely, and are clearly terrified because, you know, the bees are hunting them. The whole puts off saving Bearclaw for last, though, which is kind of funny, and goes through eating up the entire beehive first, eating up bees, honeycombs, like beehives, and then a frog that was also there and was completely innocent in this situation. And this is one of the animals that's, like, not anthropomorphic. This is just a normal ass frog that goes, like, rivet and shit. A little bullfrog just got eaten up. Aw, poor guy. Mortified, and eventually, bearclaw falls down the hole into the below.

53:13 The XP bar is showing really, really close to level 10, though, so there's that. Ooh, almost gonna get that quadcopter. Are you rooting for the quadcopter? Kinda now. You know it gets smashed. Which means he's gonna get it. Across the way, outside of the fireplace, a sad cat dressed as a chef interjects, as cats often do. They say, what about me? No one ever asks about me, which is also very much cat behavior. I was gonna say, that is such a cat thing. The chef accuses BK of ruining their restaurant. They had been dealing with what they call a very tiny bug problem and ordered a donut to cheer themselves up.

53:57 The restaurant was called Cat Soup, and the building itself is shaped like a soup pot with a ladle in it. Oh, okay, so not like ketchup. Yeah, just cat soup. And you know, it's not undergoing a small bug problem. These fucking roaches are as big as the cat's head. They're undergoing a huge bug problem, and it's disgusting and terrifying. And even though it's done in this very cute art style, I was still, like, peeved out by it. Now, how many of them are there? So many. Oh, okay, because I was gonna say, if there was like six, that is a small, big bug problem. No, this is a big bug problem. Big, big bug problem. The whole starts outside Cat Soup and works its way inside to eat the entire kitchen of the restaurant, then to the customer's seating area to eat that whole area as well, and then all the cars in the parking lot and the palm trees outside, the neighboring businesses and the actual business itself, and then the neighboring skyscraper.

54:55 The skyscraper. Like, I could understand taking out the neighboring businesses. You're like, that's... I get that. That's just eliminating the competition. No, this is taking off like two square blocks in LA. Oh, no. With the chef falling down the hole, we see that the XP bar is now completely full. Hell, yeah. We are now at level 10. Fuck, yeah, we are. And as level 10 is unlocked, BK's whole deployment app gets a notification that they've unlocked the quadcopter and a report to Raccoon HQ for training. In the below, Morsel says he got food poisoning in cat soup. More than once. Coco says he used to work there, and it's pretty disgusting.

55:37 Probably because of all the roaches. Probably, yeah. BK sees this as a win, and that he helped everyone in town with this one. It's hard to argue that logic, where you're like, oh, you took down a restaurant that was making people sick, honestly? Maybe you shouldn't have taken out all the competition. This could have solved Sweeney Todd, the demon barber of Fleet Street, in Act 1. Right. Salt has his back on this one with BK, and he's like, yeah, Mira, maybe this one was a good thing. Mira shuts everyone up and is like, okay, we all know Cat Soup was a hole before it even got holed. Which is so cute and clever on her part. But let's get back to the real problem here. BK is like, yeah, the problem is my smashed quadcopter.

56:21 Salt, who is for some reason now on Team BK, is like, yeah, Mira, why'd you smash it? She says, I didn't want to smash it, but I had to. He's a fucking monster. The scene cuts back to the same shot of the Donut County donut shop we've seen before. But instead of this being a scene cut just for our view, it's the POV of the quadcopter. Like, so that when you see drone footage and it's that beautiful, like, sweeping shot, that's what we're looking at. The quadcopter comes down through the landscape of Los Angeles and descends on BK and Mira standing outside of the donut shop. BK says, check this out! And the quadcopter comes down to eye level with Mira.

57:02 He points out how the propeller spins super fast. Mira's kind of unimpressed, but is like, hey, that's cool, man. Can I see it? Finally got your fucking copter. BK says, sure, and lands the quadcopter. Mira picks it up, and BK tells her to be careful. And she throws it to the ground as hard as she can, smashing it into a million little pieces. Bitch, you know how many fucking buildings we had to destroy to get that thing? All of Gecko Park. BK screams, freaking out, and he tells Mira she's acting psycho. Mira is like, yo, what the fuck? How can you care about this stupid toy when you got it by destroying our friend's homes?

57:44 BK justifies it by saying, they ordered donuts, I give the people what they want. You didn't give a single fucking person a donut. Not once. Mira says, you know what, this is pointless. What's the password to your fucking hole app? She now has BK's tablet. BK says the password is bonkykong, and Mira logs in. She asks BK if he knows what's at the bottom of the holes. BK doesn't know and is like, well, Mira, what are you doing? Mira says she's teaching BK a lesson. Mira deploys a hole and starts making everything around BK disappear into it. He stands on top of a car watching his surroundings fall deep into the below.

58:26 The hole gets big enough that it can eat up the car BK is sitting on, and he finally falls down the holes he's created the whole time. The hole does get so big, it also swallows up the donut shop and Mira along with it. If you're willing to fuck around with a weapon, you gotta be ready to have it used against you as well. Especially if you're in a video game. And that brings us down to the below. Mira tells the group she had to do it. There was no other way to get through to BK. That she tried to teach BK what it felt like to lose something beloved. BK says he guesses he understands even though all anyone lost is their weird trash houses. But he is the one that took them away by doing his job, which in this case was evil.

59:11 It's also giving like Fern Gully or Avatar kind of shit, you know? I'm just doing my job. They're like, yeah, but you're just placing others, you motherfucker. Mira is like, you know what? That's probably close enough to an apology as we'll get, so we'll take it. Mira earnestly asks BK if he will help get everyone out of the hole now. He groans, but he agrees to it. Potter reminds them that her son Pup is just out there in the wild in a hot air balloon, and they have to find him. She figures, wait, if we can find him, then we can use his hot air balloon to get everyone out of the hole. Mira is like, oh, my God, finally someone has a good idea. Thank you. Okay, we just have to find Pup.

59:52 Coco says that, hey, you know, Possum might be able to find Pup. And Mira goes, absolutely not. Possum is too fucking weird. You hate Possum. I also hate Possum. I'm here with Mira on this. Mira is the baddest bitch. I fucking love Mira. We are one on this one. We need help. How about Possum? Fuck Possum. Nope, I'm going to stay down in this hole. Coco's like, yeah, I know you think he's weird, but come on. BK tells them that if they know where he is, he can get them, you know, with the hole. Coco tells BK to deliver a donut, quote unquote, to the abandoned house because that's where Possum has been staying.

1:00:36 Mirror's like, Jesus, of course he lives in a fucking abandoned house. It's a weird ass Possum. The hole arrives at an abandoned house with boarded up windows that is completely dark, except for some candles and some like weird shit throughout. Like there's like masks and weird shit all over. It's a weird fucking place. Like a whole ass like eyes wide shut situation. There's not an orgy going on. It's just creepy shit. I mean, there might be actually. I don't fucking know. Yeah, I mean, it's animals. It's LA. The hole grows and swallows up everything, including the house itself. In the below, Possum lands and is like, Holy shit, I knew the earth was hollow. Oh my God. Mira cuts the chase because she does not want to like waste time with this weirdo.

1:01:18 He's so fucking dumb. She's like, Hey, Possum, can you locate Pup? Pup says he heard the raccoon cops talking about a dog in a hot air balloon, which is a fantastic lead. Possum needs a raccoon police scanner to triangulate the location. And Potter is like, Oh, thank God. We are so close to finding my son. This is fucking great. BK is like, Oh, you know, the raccoon police chief is at Raccoon Lagoon today, which is the happiest raccoon place on raccoon earth. It's the home of the fun flume, which is fun for raccoons. He's kind of a raccoon lagoon adult. Yeah. Meera is like, All right, you have no choice. The flume is doomed.

1:02:00 BK begrudgingly agrees to destroy Raccoon Lagoon with a hole so they can get the raccoon police scanner so they can save pup. Raccoon Lagoon has a large castle inspired by Bavarian King Ludwig II's castle, which I've been to, and has also inspired other fairy tale castles. You know which ones. So you're very not heavy handedly saying, this is Disneyland. I mean, yeah, I'm just not trying to get on a radar or on a list. They got some fucking lawyers. Yeah, that's true. And Ben Esposito made the illusion, not me. On the terrace of the castle is the raccoon police chief who's enjoying his day and eating donuts.

1:02:41 This motherfucker is a cop, and he's the first motherfucker in the entire game who's actually eating a goddamn donut. With the hole deployed, BK starts on destroying the Fun Flume, which is kind of like Tyana's Bayou Adventure. Okay. Or former Splash Mountain. That's so outdated. Oh my God. Or the Jurassic Park right at Universal. Jurassic World. Got you there. Damn, is it Jurassic World now? It is Jurassic World now. My bad. All right, fine. We're even. Once the Fun Flume is holed up, the Hole moves on to destroy the Ferris Wheel by shooting water up and into it. The catapult's so fucking fun.

1:03:22 The water makes the Ferris Wheel fly off its hinges and launch directly into the Raccoon Lagoon Castle. With all of the park in pieces, the Hole makes fast work of Raccoon Lagoon. You just like saying Raccoon Lagoon. Oh my God, it's so fun. Down in the below, the Raccoon Police Chief is laying on his back and not moving after this great fall. Finally, somebody's fucking hurt from this fall. Mira looks over and is like, is he still alive? And everyone ignores this and they move on. And I'm gonna tell you right now, we never see the Police Chief again. There is not mention of him.

1:04:03 He doesn't say anything. We're just like, we move on from this point. Man down, man down. Man down. Possum gets the Police Scanner. BK is like, look, I can get into a lot of trouble for this because we just kidnapped the raccoon Police Chief. May or may not have killed him. May have probably killed him. And the trash king could take away my tablet if he finds out. Not the trash king. Mira rolls her eyes and is like, oh no, are you gonna get grounded? What's he gonna do? Drop you and your friends into a fucking cave? BK is like, okay, shut up. I get it. Possum reports that the scanner is showing that there's trouble at Raccoon HQ, that they're on day three of protestors, and all the protestors have custom shirts now.

1:04:46 Oh no. Donut County Donut Shop is missing, and there's an active investigation for a raccoon named BK. BK is like, all right, turn it off. This was fun. We're done now. Oh, really now? Then Possum gets a message on the scanner that the team is requesting backup on the 405. Due to a low flying hot air balloon causing a traffic jam. Potter goes, oh my god, that's him. That must be my pup. Okay, first off, the 405 is always a traffic jam. Yeah, it has nothing to do with the balloon. The 405 just fucking sucks. Mira tells BK to step on it, and to stop freaking out, she'll visit him in raccoon jail. But first, we have a delivery to make.

1:05:28 BK does not like this because she just reminded him he could totally go to jail for this. But he's down. The scene shifts to the 405, which is literally just the 405. The worst freeway in America. It's genuinely the... I would drive miles out of my way to not be on the 405, and it would still save time. Entirely. It's awful. The coolest thing is that you can get to the Getty, and that's it. So we're at the 405, and the cars are at a fucking standstill with a hot air balloon flying low and blocking some lanes. The top down shot of the 405 shows that there's two palm trees on fire around the freeway.

1:06:09 This actually happened to Ben Esposito. So he said... I was going to say, this is not out of place. No, this is completely normal. That's why you didn't even react. You're like, of course they were on fire. He said that once he was stuck in shitty traffic on the 405, and completely unrelated to the traffic jam, there were two palm trees just straight up on fire. And if you've ever seen a palm tree on fire... It's horrifying. It's one horrifying and two beautiful. It's kind of a candle because it's usually just the top part of the palm tree that's on fire, not typically the entire length of the tree. For some fucking reason, I don't even know how that shit starts. I guess the stalks are really dry up there, but like rats live in palm trees sometimes, like they're fucking terrifying.

1:06:51 But yeah, they look like giant candles. So Ben Esposito was like, there is no better flavor text than that. So unrelated to the holes, there are two palm trees actively on fire in the sequence. The hole appears and starts picking up small items, then small scooters, then small cars, then big cars. Honestly, the hole is some of the most effective traffic busting I've ever seen. Using the catapult, the hole swallows up some raccoon cops and shoots them up at the hot air balloon with pup in it. The raccoon cops fly up and hang on to the hot air balloon, which weigh down the balloon and it safely brings it down the hole without popping the balloon or fucking up like the basket part.

1:07:36 Okay, so they're hanging on to the basket? Yeah, it's really clever that they did this without fucking up the balloon. I was going to say, because I thought what was going to happen was they would jump up, grab on the balloon, and then pop it. Oh, no. Once the balloon is down the hole, the hole has gotten so big, it can swallow three lanes of traffic all at once. Oh, that'd be so nice. So it does. From the below, we see Pup in the hot air balloon gently float down to the fireplace. Potter is ecstatic to see her son is safe. And before they can even hug, BK pops up and yells at Pup to get out of the hot air balloon. I have to use it to save everyone.

1:08:17 Mira checks on him and is like, you are not doing this alone. You're just gonna go punk out and you're gonna run away, and I'm going with you. Possum, being the one who is actually making any fucking progress happen in this entire thing, is like, I'm going to. And he's like the one person nobody trusted. Yeah, and Mira and BK are like, absolutely not. You're not coming with us. Mira is like, he's fucking weird. I'm not letting him in the goddamn balloon. And BK is just like, I don't want anyone in the goddamn balloon. I don't want any of you with me. Possum's like, I have hacking skills. If we get up there, I can hack into the mainframe with my dark web skills. And they're like, yeah, that's why you're not coming, dude. Because you fuck with the dark web.

1:08:58 You're not invited. Anybody who says the mainframe, I don't want to fuck with. Oh, I know, right? That's not a real thing. Shut the fuck up. Coco asks what the plan is. And BK is like, I'm going to go talk to the leader of the raccoons. Trash king. BK is like, we're going to do a big boss fight, and I'm going to kick his butt. He actually says, like, I'm going to do a boss fight. Nice. OK, that's great. Mira is horrified. And as she says it, BK always screws up the boss fight. And she's like, you need to follow my lead. Coco says, hey, maybe you should try talking to him first, you know, rather than jumping into a boss fight. And Mira goes, I guess I'll try. Whatever. We're probably going to get into a boss fight.

1:09:40 Mira and BK take the hot air balloon up and out of the below, and we see the full scope of Donut County and what's left of the skyline. The entire county is filled with large, large holes. The valley is vast with few buildings left after the holes have ravaged the land. Mira looks down and says, wow, this is eerie. It's like they all got replaced by raccoons. BK says he feels bad, but he can't undo what he did. Mira, his best friend, says, yeah, you feel guilty, but I don't blame you for everything the raccoons do. BK asks Mira if she still wants to be friends. Mira says she does, but also if you want to be friends, don't make your guilt my problem.

1:10:25 Damn straight. Also, wash my car. Also, give my dog a bath. And do my laundry for a month. Mira's just like the baddest bitch. I fucking love her. BK thinks about it and says, deal. And as friends, they take off to Raccoon HQ. Now, is this a real dog or like an anthropomorphic dog? Okay, yeah, so the beginning Mira has a real dog. She's like scratching him. She's feeding him snacks. Yeah. It's not her Mr. Peanut Butter. Right, but also like Pup and Potter are dogs. Yeah, exactly. That's why I had to like clarify. Yeah, don't think about it too hard. Raccoon HQ is at Griffith Observatory or for our GTA 5 girlies, Galileo Observatory.

1:11:08 Oh, yeah. Mira says, it kind of looks like a big trash can, which it actually doesn't. I guess so, yeah, a little bit, yeah. BK goes, oh my God, I know, right? As they approach the observatory, Mira says, oh my God, it smells so bad up here. BK takes a big hardy inhale and says, home sweet home. Mira tells BK to call the trash can, but BK says, oh my God, that would be really weird. I'm just going to text him. Honestly, who calls? He's a millennial, not Gen Z. He's like, do not call me, please text me. BK texts him going, hey, TK. Like hey, with like a bunch of y's, so you know he's about to do some dumb shit.

1:11:51 If I get a text that says, hey, I know someone's going to ask me to do some dumbass shit, so he knows, and Trash King looks at this, responds with, who is this? Now hold on a second. You just said something, and I'm hoping this comes around and I might be jumping the gun. Trash King, he shortened to TK. What is BK short for? Oh, I don't know. Oh, you don't know? Bonut King. But it is implying that he is the king of something. Ben King? I don't know. Butthole King. Bestie King. BK goes, hey, I'm BK. I'm a raccoon. I work for you. I was wondering like, is it possible to undo some of the holes and give people their trash back?

1:12:34 Maybe. Trash King leaves him on red. Oh. And BK texts him, like, triple texts him going, okay, never mind. No problem. BK looks up at Mirror and goes, it didn't work. I think Trash King is mad at me. Mirror says, hey, BK, you know what would be fun? BK, being her bestie, says, opening up a hole and wrecking this place. Mirror goes, lol, yup, let's do it. I like that she's encouraging you now. Yeah. BK laughs and says, okay, one hole coming right up. So from floating above in the hot air balloon, BK deploys a hole, but isn't able to get it big enough to really cause some serious damage, which kind of sucks.

1:13:16 BK goes, damn. Well, we tried. Oh, well. And as they're like, fuck, that was our last plan. From the back of this very small hot air balloon basket, Possum shows up. He's been here the whole time. Possum says, I can help. And Mirror goes, ah! Possum, oh my god, you're here. We told you to stay with everyone. He's so weird. He uses his tail to loop underneath the fucking basket and then just climbed up like a little fucking weirdo. You know they do that too. You've been to my apartment that was overrun by the possum. I feel Mirror on this shit.

1:13:57 The possum should not be there, and they're always there. Possum is like, okay, word. You did tell me to stay behind, but I read between the lines. I can help you hack into the Raccoon HQ security system, and you can sneak a hole inside that way. Into the computer? Through the security system. Okay, fine. Possum is able to hack into the system easily and deploy a hole inside of Raccoon HQ. So fuck you, Mirror, we got this. The hole wrecks a house through Raccoon HQ, starting with an employee bathroom, then the security room, and then into the biology lab. Oh no. Inside the biology lab, Trash King is on a video call watching some new recruits on board in the biology lab.

1:14:43 He tells the recruits that Donut County used to be home to many rude, screaming beasts. No one knows why LA is still filled with all these rude, screaming beasts. True. The animals were just outside. He tells them it's our job to figure out the purpose of these nude creatures. I'd also like to note that Trash King is only wearing a crown and nothing else. If he's wearing anything, he's not nude. But would you consider a crown an accessory or clothing? Eh, yes. Okay. Depends on how you wear it. Hey, it's a fucking raccoon. Don't think too hard about it. Yeah, he's the Trash King. In the lab, there are two raccoons looking at a snake and vigorously taking notes. There's other cages with other animals we've seen before.

1:15:25 Bunnies, chickens, stuff like that. But not for long, because here comes the hole, bitch. From his screen, Trash King watches on as a mysterious hole destroys the biology lab. As it gets worse, Trash King tells the recruits not to panic. It's just a rogue hole. This is literally very normal. The lights in the room start to flash red, and Trash King tells the recruits that he turned on the emergency lights because it's fun. He thinks for a moment, then tells the recruits to fill out their security waivers in the next five seconds. Oh, God. In the hall outside of the biology lab, the bunnies from the lab are now running feral.

1:16:07 BK gets a rogue hole into the anthropology lab, a big white room with several raccoons studying a trash can that's on fire. Above the lab, the recruits have moved on to this room and are observing from above. Trash King is also observing this lab from a video call as well. Trash King addresses the recruits observing the anthropology lab, saying that, before raccoons, the people of Donut County produced a wide variety of trash. We believe each piece of trash has special significance. Our scientists study this trash round the clock so that we can learn to create our own someday. Let's see what they're up to. Like, he's fucking announcing, like, we love trash!

1:16:49 The raccoons studying the trash fire wiggle their fat little tails while they look on, but a rogue hole ruins their research. And their lives! The hole eats them right up. The hole actually ends up triggering the fire alarm, and then everything really goes to shit in the lab. Trash King says, nobody panic. Everything is fine. Don't panic. But to whomever is driving this hole, please go away. At least he knows somebody's controlling it. Yeah. The hole uses water and fireworks to short circuit the lab. Trash King starts getting angry and impatient. Says, well, that concludes the tour. Attention, hole driver, meet me in my office.

1:17:31 Thank you. I love the confidence that he's just like, I'm going to demand this hole driver to show up in my office. Yeah, I'm going to assume that I have this power. I am the trash king. From the security room, we see the anthropology lab explode. BK takes the hole down the main hall, all the way to the trash king's gold-trimmed office. The doors to the office open and there's a grand hallway, showing off trash that BK had sucked up through the game. There are totems from each of the community's homes, like Bearclaw's honeycomb or the toilet from the bathroom just now. The hole makes it to trash king's office, and as it enters, a cage is formed around the hole, trapping it.

1:18:16 Oh no. Which, you don't think too hard about it. I was going to say how, but all right. On a monstrous, two-story-high pile of trash sits the trash king. Trash king looks down at the trapped hole and says, BK, please report to my office now. I am opening up direct access for you alone, BK. We have urgent business. Back outside in the hot air balloon, BK says, whoa, he said my name. Mira is like, this guy stinks. Are you sure you can do this alone? BK agrees that he stinks, but he's got this. BK says he thought about what Mira said, and he agrees that this is his mess to clean up.

1:19:00 Mira says it is, but you can always call me for backup. BK looks at her and says, I appreciate it. Wish me luck. They are best friends. They really are. Mira is so ride or die, and she's like, you're a fucking idiot, but... You're my fucking idiot. Yeah, but you're my fucking idiot. That's the kind of energy of like, you are literally the dumbest motherfucker, and you've ruined all of Los Angeles. But I love you, you dumb dipshit. And I'm gonna stick by you to the end. Yeah. BK takes a rope down from the balloon to the ground and enters Trash King's office. The Trash King offers BK a pickle from a jar. His paw is already in the jar. It is stuck. Oh. BK stays strong and says, no, I'm here to get you to reverse the holes.

1:19:43 BK demands that the Trash King bring everyone back. Trash King says, did you know you're the highest rated hole driver in Donut County? You're famous, BK. BK says, oh my god, me? Trash King offers BK a job. He offers them the opportunity to go full time. Company stop. He promises that the company will take care of everything for him, even wipe his butt. BK says, I hate wiping my own butt. Who doesn't? We have a bidet. I don't fucking know. Yeah, I don't wipe my own butt anymore. Trash King says, if BK joins, he'll let BK play with the real big boy toys.

1:20:25 Trash King then shows BK the King quadcopter. Oh no, not another quadcopter. This is his weakness. This is a quadcopter the size of a real life helicopter. Oh, so he could use it to like fly around better than the fucking hot air balloon. Yeah, it has a cement cannon for tough construction jobs. It's like the pickup truck of quadcopters. BK just looks at it in awe and goes, Oh my God. Just sparkles in his eyes, and just like a halo and angels start singing when he sees it. A full power boner of like, I could have the King quadcopter.

1:21:07 Trash King says, he has one more thing to show him, BK. Follow me. Outside, about a dozen drone-sized quadcopters, regular ones, are descending on Possum and Mira in the hot air balloon. Mira goes, Hey, Possum? Do you have a bazooka? Maybe. Or something that could blow up a bunch of quadcopters? Possum says no, but he can check the dark web when they get back. Mira says, Never mind, maybe they're just here for fun. Lights from the quadcopters flash on the hot air balloon, as Mira quietly says, Hurry up, BK.

1:21:47 Inside Raccoon HQ, Trash King has shown BK where the holes come from. BK is mind blown. Trash King looks at BK and tells him those nerds in the hot air balloon are holding him back. He has to learn to put himself first. His paw is also still stuck in the pickle jar, as we're like seeing Trash King. And raccoons have tiny little claw hands. Oh, yeah. How the fuck is it stuck? Trash King gestures to BK and says, You gotta reach in and get the pickle. BK says, What if my hand gets stuck like yours? Trash King laughs it off and says, It's not stuck. I can get it out whenever I want. It's meant to inspire you.

1:22:27 This is a metaphor. Sign this, and Trash King pushes a contract over to BK. BK reads that it's an offer to be branch manager. BK is amazed because this includes health insurance. He's such a millennial. He's like, Oh my God. Trash King says, Yep, and it includes a brand new quadcopter. BK looks up at him and says, Hand me a pen. The company quadcopter? I'm in. No, we don't want him to fall to the dark side of capitalism and judgefication. Be so good at it. Outside, the king quadcopter has descended on the hot air balloon.

1:23:09 This is the really big one with the fucking cement cannon. Yeah. Possum tells Mira, They have to surrender. That thing can easily pop the balloon. It's over. Mira says, Not if we blow it up first. We're going to use a hole. Oh, shit. Here, we enter the big boss battle, where finally Mira takes control of the hole. Hell, yeah. The king quadcopter uses the cement cannon to create a maze that the hole has to travel through to evade the king quadcopter bomb attacks. Mira navigates with precision and uses the catapult to hurl bombs back up at the king quadcopter. Take that, you fuck. Again, she's the baddest bitch. Mira is able to break down the king quadcopter enough that it retreats and rejoices with Possum.

1:23:55 She's like, haha, we did it without BK. I'm better at this than BK is. Right? She's like, I also can't believe he abandoned us. Possum says he sold us out, but he's not surprised because BK is a true capitalist. That's from the game. Like, it's not even just my injections. It's so good. Mira says, yeah, I'm going to kick his butt. Good. She says she's going to fix his quadcopter and then break it again. And then the ground under them rumbles. Possum says, what was that? And then the king quadcopter flies up again from behind Raccoon HQ, but now it's been upgraded.

1:24:37 Mira clocks this, looks up at the king quadcopter and says it's back. And then she realizes it has a bazooka. How did they fix that thing up so goddamn quick? They have a lot of raccoons there. That's true. Mira goes, not fair. Possum begs, don't blow us up. Mira and Possum face imminent death at the hands of the capitalist raccoons. And other things I've said on this podcast. Trash King laughs and says, you thought you could use my holes against me? I'm the trash king. I rule. I designed this app. Sorry to burst your bubble, but your friend BK took the pickle.

1:25:18 Which is not a reference, they understand. No. Later, nerds. Have fun. Then the doors of Raccoon HQ burst open. BK comes rolling out saying, sorry I'm late. I didn't take the pickle. Still don't know what that means. They're like, what the fuck is the pickle? Is that raccoon slang? Going on with the pickle, guys. BK has Possum's hacking device in his paws, the one that they use to get in the security system. Mira yells out to BK to hold still. I'm gonna catapult you into the King Quadcopter. We'll use the hacking device once we launch you up so we can take control of the King Quadcopter. Also, you should dodge the bazooka.

1:26:02 We should all dodge the bazooka. Yeah, that's just good life advice. Thank you, Mira. BK says, hell yeah. Wait, don't let me get blown up. Mira sucks BK up in the hole and then shoots him up directly into the King Quadcopter. While up there, BK places the device and Possum is able to hack in using the King Quadcopter bombs. Mira sucks BK up in the hole and shoots him directly up into the King Quadcopter. BK places the hacking device in there and Possum is able to hack into the King Quadcopter and release all of the bombs. Mira uses the hole in the ground to destroy the King Quadcopter by sucking up the bombs and shooting them back up, but also not killing BK.

1:26:45 Of course not. The King Quadcopter falls to pieces on the lawn of Raccoon HQ. Then the hole eats up those pieces, and it gets big and strong enough to start eating up Raccoon HQ itself. Hell yeah. Mira drives the hole around the campus, breaking the building apart piece by piece until it's nothing but dust on the side of the Raccoon Hollywood Hills. BK climbs back up the rope and gets into the hot air balloon with his friends. Trash King is left standing where Raccoon HQ once stood. He looks up at the hot air balloon and says, You guys ruined everything. Eh, it's his fault.

1:27:26 He sighs and he says, I guess raccoons just can't cut it in Donut County. From the hot air balloon, Mirror shouts down, More like you can't cut it, dude. BK says, Yeah, dude, your company stinks. You ruined the neighborhood. Trash King looks up at BK and says, It's not about the company. Think about all the innocent raccoons that moved here. Mirror rolls her eyes and says, Oh my God, give me a break. Trash King pleads saying, The truth is, We're running out of trash. We first came to Donut County because the trash was plentiful. Now we have to open up more and more holes for less and less trash.

1:28:08 I was looking out for us, dude. BK says, No, you weren't. You were just looking out for yourself. You didn't run out of trash. You ran out of people to steal from. Trash King says, What am I supposed to do now? I have nothing now. Good. BK tells Trash King to bring everyone back. Mirror says, Yeah, all our stuff, too. Trash King drags his feet and says, Oh, it's so much work, though. Mirror and BK laugh at him because his paw is still stuck in the pickle jar. He's the one that chose the fucking pickle. It's like a metaphor. Yeah, but he still hasn't explained.

1:28:51 He's a raccoon, you know? It's full of holes. Is it stuck because he's literally trying to pull it out lengthwise and it's just getting stuck that way? Oh yeah, it's the monkey, this hand caught in the vase thing or whatever. Trash King does follow through and creates a big catapult for the hole to restore all of Donut County and its residents. The hole in the catapult goes all the way down to where the fireplace was, where the community came together in the below. Mirror and BK organize the community to go up one at a time back through the catapult and up to the surface. They go up. First, Potter and Pup. Then Helen, who asks for them to not send any snakes back up if possible.

1:29:35 Yeah, just leave those down here. Then Salt and Pepper, who forgive Mirror, but not BK. I imagine Salt and Pepper don't want anything to do with the snakes either. Right, as mice? Then Coyote, and as he goes up, BK offers him a job at the new donut shop after promising to go clean. Coyote accepts, so he doesn't have to sell vegetables anymore, on one condition, that he's the boss and he runs the shop. How do you trust any donut shop after this? Girl, right? Wouldn't you be a little off donuts by this point? Then the rabbits in love. Then Morsel, along with his explosives, because you know that's his business. And as he goes up, he kind of lightly threatens Mirror and BK to not snitch on him to the cops, or he'll snitch back on BK and the holes and the destruction.

1:30:22 So let's just be cool, okay, guys? Then Jellybean and his chicken, who, once again, he tries to get fucking BK to kiss for some fucking reason. Okay. Then Bearclaw and their beehive and their frog. And Bearclaw's like, you know, I actually really enjoy this frog now, so I guess thanks for that. Oh, he gets a pet frog out of the whole thing? Yeah, they get to kind of hang out with the frog that they've been trapped down under with. That's beautiful. It's cute. Then Chef Kat, who invites Mira and BK to cat soup while admitting they're not going to get rid of the bugs because that's kind of their, you know, secret ingredient. No, you should definitely still get rid of the bugs.

1:31:03 Then Possum. And Mira apologizes for doubting Possum, who says, it's okay. Don't trust anything from anyone. Full blown conspiracy theorist still. I like that it's not flat earth theory, it's hollow earth theory. Oh yeah, and they're like, I was right. I knew it. And they also go, especially don't trust BK. Yeah. Then Coco. And then Mira and BK. BK steps on the catapult platform with Mira and thanks her for being so cool about everything and showing him how to be good and for her patience. Mira asks BK to press the launch button, and BK agrees.

1:31:43 But then Mira goes, ha ha, too slow and slams the button down as it launches the two friends back up to the surface. I love that they use the catapult to get out. I know, isn't that great? Back on the surface, we see Donut County from the perspective of the quadcopter again. The neighborhood is working on being restored. The end credits float in the air as we see everyone back to where they should be. So as you're flying the quadcopter, you can fly it all through Donut County, and it's created by Ben Esposito, and here's the music people and the art people and stuff. And you can control the quadcopter? Yeah, you can fly it around and see all the scenes and the vignettes of people putting their homes together, like potters back to making a pottery and stuff.

1:32:26 Now compare this to Los Santos. It's real small. It's a real small game, Tom. They made this for the phone. Salt and pepper are surrounded by the birds they want to fuck. Morsel is actually setting up a bootleg tech booth with like shit that got excavated out of Raccoon HQ. Hell yeah, bootlegs. Coyote is setting up the donut shop. An order is restored. And that was Donut County. Wow. I mean, that feels like the LA riots there at the end. What the fuck? Flying over in a helicopter, looking at all this town just rebuilding itself after all the destruction.

1:33:08 Yeah, palm trees are still on fire. In the Netflix show You, there's an episode in season two when they're in LA, and he's like, there's totems of being in LA, and one of them is, you're not a true Angelino until you've seen a palm tree on fire. Which, like, valid. But, ah, I really enjoyed that. I think it'd be really fun if you ever want to run through it, like, when you're waiting for a flight or something. Oh, it sounds super fun. And also just, like, now I can play it and not have to worry about that fucking mobile app game that's always popping up and, like, ooh, does that look fun? No, this sounds way more fun than that fucking mobile app game ever has looked. Yeah, fuckhole.io. Yeah, fuck that game entirely.

1:33:48 And fuck Voodoo, I'm sorry. Yeah, like I said, I have a fucking Voodoo game on my phone that I play. It's that lame-ass one also that you probably see on Instagram all the time where you're, like, fucking carving a wood figure. It's fun, but, like, it's just a time killer. And you know it's backed by Goldman Sachs now. Oh. And Donut County was made in Ben Esposito's, like, bedroom in between projects. Like, he worked on this through the entirety of, like, working on What Remains of Edith Finch and stuff and Tattletail. And I like that Annapurna went on to do Stray after this. They love their charming animal game. Do you think there's a world where the cat from Cat Soup is the cat from Stray? I would love that. Or at least a descendant.

1:34:29 No, yeah, I was going to say no because of the time, but there's something there. That's how they built the hole for all the fucking robots. Ben Esposito has a secret producer credit. But now, I really enjoy these. And similar to Undertale with Toby Fox, Ben Esposito did like 90% of the work himself with a couple different people popping in for help here and there, but it's mostly his brainchild. Oh, wow, very good. Which is also very similar to Tattletale. I think that was split maybe more 70-30 with another person, but he's really brilliant, and I love his sense of humor. He brings such delightful levity to the world, and it just makes it fun. And despite all the fucks again, this is a very G-rated game.

1:35:12 You can play this with a whole family. It's super fun. It's satisfying as shit, too. I think the thing with Voodoo is they want to make satisfying games just to kick off some serotonin. Yeah, just to fill it with ads. Honestly, that's all Voodoo is. It's an ad fucking machine. I mean, again, I think I got this for maybe $3.75 on the Switch. Absolutely worth it. That is the price of a fucking mobile game. Yeah. I would pay $3 for a mobile game that is satisfying, brings me joy, and I also know that my money goes to supporting Esposito. And when you spend money on an indie creator, it's not money spent, it's money invested. True. Because you're lining that person's pockets with the reiteration that what they do matters and what they do should continue.

1:35:57 Wow, that got... You can hear the punk rock politics come through me real deep right there. Vote with your wallet. Absofuckingly, my dad always said that it boils down to vote with your wallet. If you want to see more mom and pop shops, if you want to see more family restaurants, spend your money there instead of going to chains and big conglomerates. They don't need your money, but these people do. And I feel proud to support this game, and I'm very proud to bring this game to other people. And I hope that even though I've completely spoiled the entire plot, you guys check this out because it is genuinely very fun, very satisfying. And you supporting this game supports other creators like this and only reiterates, like, fuck the voodoo's of the world.

1:36:41 Fuck these multi- I mean, I'm sorry, Tom, but fuck these like multi-million dollar VC backed bullshit ass clone producing studios. Let's get some cool indie producers out here. Let's get some unique voices and let's get other games like Donut County made. And another way you can support independent producers, you can go to our website, theothercastlepodcast.com. That's the othercastlepodcast.com. And over there, you can sign up for our Patreon, where for just two dollars a month, you can support us. And let's see who helped make this episode happen. Yes. So people who have been supporting us are... Amber, you are my little lion friend. Also Berserk Panda, Andrew and my chunky boy.

1:37:24 I'm not singing it. So we got AJ, Paul, Omar and Aaron. Cyrus, unuseful, I think you're pretty useful. Molly and Krisha. Molly Mock, Jackie, Jacob and Alan. I think I'm a little loopy. I had a donut right before this because I thought it would be thematic. No, I'm just getting weird. But thank you all. This show is made possible by listeners like you. Yes. Thank you so much. And don't forget to come over and hang out on our Discord, where we'll be talking about this game and every other game that we cover. Yes. Again, I'm going to be dropping that Polygon video on Game Jam. I really love Polygon. If you guys aren't checking out their videos, I think they're wonderful creators. They're through Vox Media. So unfortunately, they've gone through some staff cuts, but I think the quality is still there.

1:38:08 And that's where Brian David Gilbert really popped off. And I love BDG. He's crazy. He is. He's a wild creator. I love him so much. He's doing great on the Dropout Universe right now, though. Oh, I know. I'm actually like, oh, that's so good. He's so good. Anyway, thank you all very much. I hope you get a donut and not a hole. Yes. Thank you Goombas so much for listening. And this is Tom and Andrea reminding you. If you see a palm tree on fire, it's good luck. And don't skip the cutscenes. Bye.