Here come the Men in Black
Donutal isnt a game that I would normally play and I’ll tell you why. So Donutal for those that don’t know is a Papers, Please style of game, which means players will have to investigate and spot differences in order to find success. Players will take on the role of Earth’s first extraterrestrial consular, a job that is in control of determining if an alien is safe or not to allow on our planet. It sounds a lot like a Men in Black employee but instead of fighting aliens with the Noisy Cricket, you will instead stamp interstellar passports; oh, and it’s a visual novel.
Arc System Works is known for their work with the anime fighting games. Dragon Ball FighterZ, Granblue and now even the Marvel Tokon game. So, color me surprised when I found out that they were the developer behind Donutal. Some one reading this is giving me a raised eyebrow, because I did research them for this review and found they actually do quite a few non-fighting games like; Another Code. So, in fact, Donutal fits in line with their lesser-known pedigree, it’s a game about exploration, talking to people and piecing together the clues.
Players will call a space station their home; the ISP and each day you’re given a list of aliens who are requesting access to Earth who are deemed suspicious for one reason or another.
MSRP: $9.99
Platforms: PC
Price I’d Pay: $9.99
Over the course of the game players will interview various types of aliens some with really wild and unique designs. Each of them has innate abilities for example Martians are biologically incapable of coming up with lies, another race can tell if someone is hiding something. Each of these are puzzle in and of themselves but Donutal adds an extra wrinkle by allowing players to interview two aliens at a time. So, mixing and matching the various abilities is a great way to quickly discern the truth of a situation.
But players won’t have to solely depend on their deductive skills as they will have some fancy tech at their disposal. The scanner is one of the most invaluable as it allows players to scan not only the aliens and their appendages but also their belongings. You’d be surprised (or maybe not) to see how many aliens are smuggling stuff in their luggage. The friction in the gameplay is the timer, much like the newly released Blood of Dawnwalker as players scan and ask questions the timer will move forward. Once out of time players will have to make their final decision on whether or not to allow the alien visitor passage to the planet.
Narratively speaking and without spoiling anything, I really enjoyed the writing here. It was clever in a lot of ways and newer fans of the sci-fi genre I think will gel with it better than us old school ones. Again, I enjoyed it quite a bit but there were some of the beats that I had a bit more cynicism because of my familiarity with the tropes of the genre. The story is full of twists and turns, what fans should expect from the visual novel genre but what really helped carry it for me as a non-fan of these was the artwork. I really loved the great designs that were on display for the various beings.
Coming in to Donutal I had only played one VN game, and I really need to finish it. (‘it’ being Doki Doki Literature Club! If you were curious) So I knew what to expect but as I said the art style really drew me in but the gameplay loop managed to grab me. I loved the fact that every encounter was a puzzle to figure out and while I failed more times than I’d like to admit, even in those times I still had a good time; and I can’t think of higher praise for any game.
Review copy of game provided by publisher.