Donut County: Is It Zooey?
Donut County. A fun little game from 2018 where you play as a hole. Yep, just a hole. The whole idea of the game is that you have a somewhat top down view where you move the hole around and just eat stuff off the ground. And the more that you eat, the more that you grow, meaning that you can eat bigger and bigger things. You get the idea. There are a bunch of different levels each featuring different characters, it's super cute, super charming, and you can beat it in about two hours. If you haven't played it and just want something chill to do during a day off, I couldn't recommend it more. But is it zooey? So-called "scientists" have been unable to answer this question for seven or more years, but here at Zooey Dot Pub, we dare to answer all of the questions that make mainstream scientists go "What?" and "Get out of my office I'm calling security." Come with me, reader.
we're going to get into super minor spoilers here, so if you're someone that mega cares about that kind of thing, keep an eye out. That said, we're not going to be going over any of the mysteries in the game. No, instead I just want to talk about a few interesting things I noticed about the side characters that inhabit this world. But let's start with the basics.
Our two main characters are BK, a talking feral raccoon who really loves quad copters, and Mira who's BK's best friend. After the game's intro, you find yourself at the bottom of a hole, with our two main characters as well as a bunch of side characters. Each level, one side character explains how they ended up in the hole. The first two levels don't have too much to mention as far as the zooeyness factor goes, but level three starts to get pretty interesting with the introduction of Salt during the dialogue before the level begins.
It feels worth mentioning at this point that every one of the major characters in the game are furries save for two. BK, who's a feral raccoon, and Mira who's a human. Everyone else is an anthropomorphic animal. Salt, along with his brother Pepper (more on him later) is a mouse. During the dialogue, he explains that when he got eaten up by the hole, he was out in the forest "bird watching". But not just any kind of bird watching. And I quote.
Pepper: "He took a likin' to this bird"
Salt: "Heh. Yep. A bird made for likin'. I was admirin' this bird.. 'til I was hit with a hunger."
Now, I wanted to mention the part about them being anthropomorphic to stress something here. This bird that he's talking about is definitively feral. Just a normal bird. And don't let the talking raccoon fool you, the bird doesn't talk either. They just stand around drinking water and hanging out. And to be clear, this interpretation is in no way me reading into the dialogue either. After the level wraps up and we're back in the hole with our cast, the conversation continues.
BK: "Wow.. So are you saying you're like.. in love with a bird?"
Salt: "Yep."
Okay, so, as clear as it can be. One of the characters in this game is objectively just attracted to animals. They're zoosexual. And not just attracted, but attracted romantically. Now, I would say the existence of one character in love with an animal is already enough to call a game zooey, but let's keep going here. There's more going on in Donut County than meets the eye...
The next characters I want to talk about are Nicky and Roma, a couple that recently moved to the town. They moved out to the country after retiring to, as Nicky says, "Watch the bunnies." Roma chimes in to comment that they're "Bunnies at heart, Nicky and I." It's very interesting then that the mechanic for this level is that you need to get the bunnies together in your hole so that they can fuck. Yep. That's the whole goal of the level. They own a little ranch with a bunch of feral normal animal rabbits, with a window right above their living area. Obviously, there's no claim that that's exactly what they're watching, but given what "birdwatching" previously meant, I think it's fair to call out that the couple "bunny watching" has pent up rabbits in enclosures right next to each other rearing and ready to go.
Yes, breeding like bunnies is a trope, I get that. But is it that big of a stretch to imagine that when Roma says they're "bunnies at heart", what he's saying is that he and his wife used to have an incredibly active sex life, but then as they got older it's harder to maintain. And so when they say "bunny watching", perhaps what they're talking about is that they enjoy seeing the bunnies get off as some form of sexual proxy for them? It might not be as zooey as the last example, but worth mentioning that this is something a game with not that much dialogue decides to directly call out. Also, towards the end of the game you have a point where you have one final conversation with each of the side characters. At that point, they have this interaction.
Nicky: "Who can say.. if things will ever get back normal."
Mira: "Yeah. Things probably wont feel normal for a while."
Roma: "No matter. We can sail, and let the bunnies flow."
Now, don't get me wrong, I don't really understand what the heck that's supposed to mean, but it sure as hell sounds sexual to me.
The next level features Pepper, Salt's brother. Immediately, we see a similar tone. Pepper and Salt had a fight, and so Pepper took his trailer into the woods to watch "bird videos". You might be thinking that those quotation marks are adding a lot of implication, but here's what the line is word for word from the game.
Pepper: "Well, after me and Salt split, I went to Joshua Tree Park for some peace 'n quiet. I brought my laptop also. To watch... bird videos."
I didn't add the ... there, that's in the game. The implication of what those "bird videos" are is incredibly clear. That makes this the third character that either is in love with an animal, or enjoys watching animals get it on. It's also worth mentioning that there is a bird featured prominently in this level. A cool looking raven. Before you begin the level, Pepper is not watching bird videos, he's got his head up the top of the camper staring right at that Raven. Even after the level during the wrap up dialogue, BK calls Pepper out for the "bird videos" being something that he considers weird. It's very clearly just porn. Extremely clearly.
So, with four zoophile characters confirmed, are we done? Nope, this isn't even the last one. Next up, I want to talk about Jellybean. He's a farmer, and has a chicken named Dollop that he carries with him throughout the entire game. Not just in a "I'm holding a chicken" kinda way, but intimately. For most of the game he's sitting, with Dollop nestled into his lap, as he gently pets her side. When BK at one point suggests something that would involve Dollop being left behind, Jellybean tells BK to "Kiss her on the head" because he's offended her. That feels strangely intimate for an apology to a chicken, no? When BK refuses, Jellybean really stresses the point and gets more and more insistent. It's important to him that the slight against Dollop is made right.
At the end scene from before, his dialogue is pretty weird as well. He says,
Jellybean: "I got a joke for you guys. Did you ever hear the one about the raccoon kissing the chicken?"
Mira: "Uhh nope. How does it go?"
BK: "Dude!! I'm not going to kiss your dirty chicken!!"
Jellybean doesn't get to finish his statement as the scene progresses, but it is interesting that as a thanks for his rescue, Jellybean was going to say something about a raccoon and a chicken kissing. Maybe Dollop was looking for a way to show her appreciation? Either way, just another strange thing to call out.
Next, let's talk about Bearclaw. Bearclaw is an interesting one. There's nothing in her level dialogue to talk about when it comes to the zooeyness of the game. She's being attacked by bees before she's pulled into the hole. Except, hold on. She's pulled into the hole not just by the hole itself, but by a frog who leaps out of it, shoots out their tongue, and then hits Bearclaw right between the legs, before pulling them both in.
Bearclaw's real interesting moment comes during the same ending scene. She just so happens to have that same frog that she fell down the hole with now accompanying her. The dialogue goes like this.
BK: "Well, it's been real."
Bearclaw: "Yeah, a real waste of time. Thanks for introducing me to this frog though. It's a cool frog. Pretty cool... I guess it... All worked out."
That certainly reads pretty zooey doesn't it. The frog this whole scene stands right behind her protectively. She's not speaking as though she's gotten a new pet or anything like that. That's the way you'd speak as if someone introduced you to your now boyfriend. The frog is also massive, larger than she is. It really feels like in her level the experience with the frog's tongue awakened something in her, and now she's setting off to explore her new feelings. At the end, she's happy that it worked out, even if it's a lot to take in.
So, out of a cast of about 14 characters, 7 of them are at least somewhat confirmed to be zoophilic. That certainly is pretty damn zooey. But I think there's a bigger picture here that I want to talk about. And it's something that exists in a lot of furry media. Let's talk about animals.
It's weird when there are both anthropomorphic animals, as well as feral animals in the same property, isn't it? Like, what happened in this word that there can be both dog, and dog (furry). This becomes extra weird when there's also human characters too. Although it also opens up a potential solution to this problem. Furries are by definition characters that have a combination of animal and human traits. This implies that in a world where there are both humans and animals, you can create furries by crossing them together. Breeding them together, if you will. This is something called out in a lot of games that have this strange setting quirk, but it feels extra relevant here when the idea of zoosexuality is clearly so common within this world. This game is extremely limited in scope. We don't really get to learn all that much about the world outside the scope of the game, but given everything we do know, it wouldn't be shocking to find out that some of the parents of the characters in the game are animal human relationships, giving birth to these anthropomorphic beings. Donut County shows us a world post not just the zoosexual rights mission succeeds, but one where we've come so far that we're able to give birth to children with our partners, and raise a whole new crop of hybrids. And if that's not zooey, I don't know what is. Donut County is certified 100% zooey.
Also, donut is another name for horse butt.
Article written by Tarro (July 2025)
Find Tarro at https://twitter.com/hereforthezoo
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