So I Tried... DORONKO WANKO

Each edition of So I Tried… I will try a game that I have never played before. Will I find something new to love? Will I find something new to despise? I'll take a full half hour, no matter how bad it gets or how badly I do, to see if this is the game for me. This time, I played DORONKO WANKO.

Well, technically, we played DORONKO WANKO. Recently, I and a few others in the GrinCast streamed our quest to dirty a very nice house.

What I Thought It Was

Looking at the description, I assumed DORONKO WANKO was some sort of timed destruction game, like those mini-games in the middle of fighting games where you have to destroy a car, only with you playing as a cute dog, there being a focus on dirtiness, and the overall scale being expanded to fit an entire house. Honestly, it didn’t seem like my kind of game; I worried that I’d feel way too guilty to mess up the house to actually do a good job of it.

What It Actually Is

I was partly right! DORONKO WANKO does indeed involve making the house as dirty as possible, involving a lot of chaotic destruction along the way. However, I was mostly wrong. For one thing, most of that destruction is fairly lighthearted! As much as you start by tracking mud in, it’s a nice charmingly warm brown colour that looks almost more like fudge, and you can also quickly switch to other colours, like red or green from soda or even a dark red from wine. Plus, there’s no time limit whatsoever, so you can jump around to your heart’s content. Additionally, while throwing mud around the house and getting it as dirty as possible is the ostensible goal, DORONKO WANKO plays out like a sandbox exploration game, with many different interesting things to interact with around the massive house alongside several small puzzles and 10 special secret pictures to find.

Will I Keep Playing?

Yes, absolutely! I found the game incredibly charming, even down to how infectiously happy the cute dog you play as is. I’ve had a lot of fun messing around, and I hope I can do even more in the future. I still feel somewhat bad about dirtying up this nice house, but there’s also something so special about exploring the place and seeing just how many of the decorations show how much the family already loves their new pupper. It’s just nice to see such a happy dog with a loving family and I adore that I get the chance to see them again and again.