Code provided thanks to Sas and Sons Game Studio.
Dungeons and Donuts – Difficult First Impressions
I always find Early Access games slightly difficult to review because there is an important line between “this isn’t finished yet” and “this doesn’t feel ready to be played yet.” Unfortunately, my experience with Dungeons and Donuts fell much closer to the latter.
I’ll start by saying that I don’t particularly enjoy writing very negative impressions. I’m quite happy to point out problems in a game, but I always want to give developers the benefit of the doubt, particularly with an Early Access title. There is supposed to be room for things to improve. However, after around two hours with Dungeons and Donuts, I found myself struggling to find reasons to continue playing. The game repeatedly frustrated me, and rather than leaving me thinking “I can’t wait to see where this goes,” I was left thinking “I’m not sure why I’m still doing this.” That doesn’t mean the game cannot improve. Looking at what the developers have planned, there is clearly a much bigger RPG hiding underneath what is currently available. But based on the version I played, I don’t think Dungeons and Donuts is there yet.
A Very Rough Introduction
The premise is fairly straightforward. You’re an adventurer setting out into dungeons, collecting loot and completing quests before returning to your town to sell your spoils, upgrade your equipment and prepare for another expedition. It’s a familiar fantasy RPG loop, and there’s absolutely nothing wrong with that. The problem is that Dungeons and Donuts doesn’t do a particularly good job of introducing that loop.
You begin in the main hub with very little explanation. You’re essentially dropped into the world and left to work things out from there. There is an instruction sheet of sorts that explains some of the basics, but it didn’t really feel like enough to properly introduce the game’s systems. I eventually worked out that I needed to visit the quest board, accept a mission, head through a portal, defeat the required enemies and return to cash in the reward. Simple enough. But getting to that point felt unnecessarily confusing. The first dungeon didn’t exactly make the strongest first impression either. I quickly encountered a huge enemy that was considerably more powerful than anything else around me, while other enemies were being repeatedly summoned into the area. There wasn’t much sense that I was learning a carefully designed combat system. It felt more like I had been dropped into an area containing a collection of enemies and told to get on with it.
Combat Needs Work
There is the foundation of a combat system here, and I actually quite liked the idea of controlling ranged attacks using the mouse. Rather than simply clicking on an enemy and watching your character automatically do everything, you have some direct control over where you’re aiming. For the first few minutes, that was quite fun. When several enemies started appearing at once, though, repeatedly clicking and aiming became considerably less enjoyable. I briefly tried combat with a short sword but this seemed much less appealing than the ranged bow and arrow. There are also skills and progression upgrades to make your character stronger. But overall, I didn’t find the combat particularly satisfying during my time with the game.
The Dungeon Loop
The basic gameplay loop should be one of Dungeons and Donuts’ strengths. Take a quest. Enter a dungeon. Kill things. Collect loot. Return home. Sell your loot. Upgrade your character. Do it again. That’s a perfectly reasonable structure for an RPG, and the full game plans to expand it considerably with farming, cooking, property management, factions, adventurer ranks and much more.
The problem is that the current version didn’t make me particularly excited to repeat the loop. The quests I encountered largely revolved around defeating the same enemies, and after doing that a few times, I found the process becoming rather tedious. There wasn’t enough variety in those early experiences to make me want to push through the repetition. And that’s one of many issues I had with Dungeons and Donuts: I wasn’t having enough fun to overlook its rough edges.
The Town Feels Unfinished
The main town is another area where the Early Access nature of the game is very apparent. There are NPCs around the place, but several of them were standing in fairly static T poses. There are also areas that appear to be blocked off by invisible boundaries, making the town feel more like a partially constructed environment than a finished hub.
The developers have much bigger plans for this area, including buying and renting properties, hiring NPCs, attracting people to the city and developing different districts. That actually sounds considerably more interesting than what I experienced. But right now, I felt like I was looking at the scaffolding rather than the finished building.
There Is Clearly a Bigger Game Planned
And this is where I think it’s important to be fair to Dungeons and Donuts. Looking at the planned features, this isn’t intended to be a tiny dungeon crawler. The developers are planning additional cities, more than 15 additional dungeons, an endless dungeon, changing dungeon layouts, bosses, story arcs, hundreds of additional pieces of equipment and a fully developed melee combat system.
There’s also an ambitious farming and cooking system planned around crops, ingredients, potions, meals and desserts. Property management and faction systems are also intended to give the town a much bigger purpose. So I don’t think the problem is a lack of ambition. If anything, Dungeons and Donuts appears to have a lot of ambition. The problem is that the version I played didn’t feel like those systems had been brought together into a cohesive experience yet. It felt like the ingredients were there, but someone had forgotten to bake the cake.
The Visuals
Visually, Dungeons and Donuts goes for a low-poly fantasy aesthetic. There are some nice ideas in the environments, and the fantasy setting is serviceable, but I didn’t find the presentation particularly memorable during my time with it. Again, that’s partly because everything around the visuals felt unfinished. When NPCs are standing around in static poses, sections of the town are inaccessible, and the overall presentation feels rough, it’s difficult to appreciate the artistic direction properly.
Final Thoughts
I really don’t want this to come across as me saying “this game is terrible and will always be terrible.” That’s not what I’m saying. I’m saying that the version of Dungeons and Donuts I played didn’t feel ready for me to recommend. There is a potentially interesting game here. The idea of combining dungeon crawling with town development, farming, cooking, property management, factions and loot progression could eventually make for a rather substantial game. But right now, I didn’t see enough of that potential in the actual gameplay. The introduction is unclear, combat needs considerably more polish, the dungeon encounters weren’t enjoyable for me, the quest loop became repetitive very quickly, and the town currently feels unfinished. Most importantly, after roughly two hours (though it felt much longer), I didn’t want to play anymore, and frankly I felt depressed playing the game. That’s the biggest problem an Early Access game can have.
I completely understand that Early Access is a work in progress. I also appreciate that the developers have openly outlined what they want to add before the 1.0 release. There is time for Dungeons and Donuts to improve, maybe. But if you’re considering picking it up right now, I’d personally be inclined to wait and see how development progresses rather than jumping in immediately. There is nothing wrong with giving developers time to cook. And Dungeons and Donuts, more than most Early Access games I’ve played recently, feels like it needs that cooking time.
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