The original Donkey Kong features three characters: Donkey Kong, a large, antagonistic gorilla; Mario, the overall-wearing protagonist; and Pauline, Mario's girlfriend. Donkey Kong follows Mario as he ascends a construction site to rescue Pauline from Donkey Kong, his escaped pet ape. In the sequel, Donkey Kong Jr., Mario imprisons Donkey Kong in a cage. The game introduces Donkey Kong's son, the diaper-wearing Donkey Kong Jr. Mario, Pauline, Donkey Kong, and Jr. return in the 1994 Game Boy Donkey Kong, in which Mario again must rescue Pauline from the Kongs. The Game Boy game was the first Donkey Kong game to depict Donkey Kong wearing a red necktie bearing his initials, "DK".

Beginning with Donkey Kong Country, Donkey Kong's role shifted from antagonist to protagonist. Rare's Kevin Bayliss redesigned him; alongside the red tie from the Game Boy game, he was given what GamesRadar+ described as "menacing, sunken eyes and [a] beak-like muzzle", and Bayliss designed him as blocky and muscular to make animating him easier. The Donkey Kong in Rare's games is a separate character from the one in the arcade games, who appears as the elderly Cranky Kong. Cranky Kong provides scathing, fourth wall-breaking humor in which he unfavorably compares current games to older ones like the original Donkey Kong. Nintendo's stance on whether Cranky is Donkey Kong's father, making the modern Donkey Kong a grown-up Donkey Kong Jr., or grandfather has been inconsistent.

Rare's games moved the franchise's primary setting from a city to Donkey Kong Island, an idyllic isle. Because Donkey Kong did not have much of an established universe, Rare was free to expand it with new characters. Donkey Kong Country introduced Diddy Kong, Donkey Kong's sidekick and nephew. Diddy's design was based on a spider monkey; he was created as a redesign of Donkey Kong Jr. but retooled into a separate character at Nintendo's request. As a result, Donkey Kong Jr. has made few appearances since Country. Other supporting Kong characters that Rare introduced include Funky Kong, a surfer; Candy Kong, Donkey Kong's girlfriend; Dixie Kong, Diddy's girlfriend; Kiddy Kong, a large toddler; Chunky Kong, Kiddy's brother; Tiny Kong, Dixie's sister; and Lanky Kong, a buffoonish orangutan.

Country introduced King K. Rool, an anthropomorphic crocodile who serves as the series' main antagonist. K. Rool leads the Kremlings, an army of crocodiles who seek to steal Donkey Kong's hoard of bananas. Their name is a play on the Moscow Kremlin and their theme music incorporates Soviet influences. Polygon summarized K. Rool as an archetypal game villain who "often wears disguises and invents strange gadgets for his elaborately evil schemes", such as dressing as a pirate captain in Donkey Kong Country 2. Other villains introduced in the Retro Studios Country games include the Tiki Tak Tribe, a race of floating masks who hypnotize animals into stealing the banana hoard, and the Snowmads, Viking invaders who summon a dragon to take over Donkey Kong Island.

Although the Mario and Donkey Kong franchises largely remain separate, they take place in the same fictional universe. Donkey Kong and other Donkey Kong characters frequently appear as playable characters in Mario spin-offs such a…

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Donkey Kong and Donkey Kong Jr. are early examples of the platform game genre. In both games, the player must guide the playable character (Mario in the first game, Donkey Kong Jr. in the second) to scale four levels while avoiding obstacles. The player jumps to dodge incoming obstacles (such as barrels) or cross gaps and climbs ladders or vines to reach the top of the level. In the first game, Mario can destroy obstacles by obtaining a hammer power-up, while in the second, Donkey Kong Jr. can do so by knocking pieces of fruit down from vines. Points are awarded for dodging or destroying obstacles, collecting items, and completing stages quickly. The player begins each game with three lives, which they lose if they touch an obstacle or fall.

Donkey Kong 3 departs from this gameplay: it is a shooter game in which the player controls Stanley, an exterminator who must prevent Donkey Kong from stirring up insects in his greenhouse. The player fires bug spray at Donkey Kong and enemy insects that attempt to steal Stanley's flowers. They complete levels by spraying Donkey Kong enough to force him to the top of the screen or by killing all the insects.

The 1994 Game Boy game begins with the four stages from the original Donkey Kong, but after completing the fourth, the player is presented with over 100 additional stages that introduce puzzle-platform gameplay in which Mario must scout each level within a time limit to locate a key. Mario can pick up and throw objects and enemies, similar to Super Mario Bros. 2, and perform acrobatics to reach otherwise inaccessible areas of the levels. This gameplay would serve as the basis for Mario vs. Donkey Kong, which introduces stages in which Mario must guide six Mini-Mario toys to a toy box while protecting them from hazards. Mario vs. Donkey Kong's sequels make guiding the Mini-Mario toys the focus, with each stage requiring the player to do so with touchscreen controls. This gameplay has been frequently compared to the strategy video game Lemmings (1991).
The Donkey Kong Country series features platforming gameplay in which players complete side-scrolling levels to progress, reminiscent of Nintendo's Super Mario series. The player progresses through a world map that provides access to the themed worlds and their levels. They traverse the environment, jump between platforms, and avoid enemy and inanimate obstacles. Each world ends with a boss fight with a large enemy. The Country series is known for its high difficulty level and emphasis on momentum, requiring players to react to oncoming obstacles quickly to maintain flow.

Players control one of the various playable Kongs, depending on the game: Donkey Kong, Diddy Kong, Dixie Kong, Kiddy K…

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The music for Donkey Kong and Donkey Kong Jr. was composed by Yukio Kaneoka, one of Nintendo's earliest audio engineers. Kaneoka wanted to take players on an adventure with a "pretty melody", which he compared to those in Disney films. He faced resistance from the designers, who wanted comical music to reflect the games' tone. Hirokazu Tanaka, a sound engineer who later garnered recognition for his work on Nintendo's Metroid and Pokémon franchises, also contributed, while Miyamoto wrote Donkey Kong's opening and closing music.

The Donkey Kong Country series features atmospheric music that mixes natural environmental sounds with melodic and percussive accompaniments. It was primarily composed by David Wise, who worked at Rare from 1985 to 2009. Wise drew inspiration from Koji Kondo's Super Mario and Legend of Zelda music, Tim and Geoff Follin's Plok! (1993) soundtrack, and 1980s synthesizer-heavy rock music, dance music and film soundtracks. He aimed to imitate the sound of the Korg Wavestation synthesizer. After Wise moved with a portion of the Diddy's Kong Quest team to work on Project Dream, Eveline Fischer—who composed a portion of the first Country—handled the majority of Dixie Kong's Double Trouble. Fischer attempted to give levels a sense of purpose and drew inspiration from film composers such as Alan Silvestri and Klaus Doldinger. Wise composed a replacement soundtrack for the 2005 GBA port of Dixie Kong's Double Trouble after Rare had problems converting Fischer's score.

Graeme Norgate and Grant Kirkhope adapted Wise's Country soundtracks for the first two Donkey Kong Land games, while Fischer adapted the Dixie Kong's Double Trouble soundtrack for Donkey Kong Land III. Fischer was set to compose music for Donkey Kong 64, but shifted to working on sound effects. She was replaced by Kirkhope, who composed alongside the Banjo-Kazooie games and Perfect Dark (2000). Nintendo Life described Kirkhope's Donkey Kong 64 score as closer in spirit to his work on Banjo-Kazooie than to Wise's Country music. Donkey Kong 64's introduction features the "DK Rap", a comedy rap song which introduces the Kong characters. It was written by Donkey Kong 64's director, George Andreas, scored and recorded by Kirkhope, and performed by Andreas and Chris Sutherland, with other Rare staff joining on the chorus.

Wise was unavailable during the development of Donkey Kong Country Returns, so Kenji Yamamoto took over. At the request of Miyamoto and Iwata, the Returns soundtrack mostly comprises rearrangements of tracks from the original Donkey Kong Country, plus some new material by Yamamoto. He focused on what Tanabe felt made Donkey Kong Country's music iconic, …

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