Reader, thank goodness you are here. I really could use some help making sense of a game I just played.
When I booted up Thank Goodness You’re Here for the first time, I was confronted with a bewildering question:””A’ tha from Tarn?” As an American with no practice in any British slang, let alone the specific Yorkshire dialect present in this game, of course I said “Dead Reyt!” Moments later, I restarted the game and chose the “Sorry, what?” response because I couldn’t even read the menu screen, full of “faff,” “gu’in,” and other foreign phrases. Thus began my journey into Barnsworth, a town that was unapologetically outlandish to me but one that I thoroughly grew to appreciate after my 4 hours therein.
Thank Goodness You’re Here was developed by Coal Supper, the brainchild of two proud northern Englishmen, and published by Panic. It is fitting for Panic to pick this one up, given their pedigree with games like Untitled Goose Game and Nour, which seem to combine comedy and absurdity in equal measure. Thank Goodness You’re Here is no exception to that style, with some of the most offbeat, off-colour, and off-the-wall moments I have experienced in gaming. This game is masterfully designed for provocative enjoyment, and despite many of the jokes sailing well over my head in just how campy they were, I was utterly fascinated by this world.
You begin the game as a tiny little yellow chap who is told by his boss to go sell something to the mayor of Barnsworth. Naturally, you smack a bunch of objects around the office, giving you the opportunity to jump out the office window and be on your way. You will do a lot of smacking in this so-called “slapformer,” since it functions as the primary player input other than traversal. Soon after you arrive at the mayor’s office, you are told to patiently wait for the meeting, but instead you decide to pass the time by heading out into the town where the game starts in earnest. The town is littered with small businesses and needy people. You come across a boy with his arm stuck down a street drain; he accidentally lodged it there, reaching for the two pence he dropped. The boy exclaims, “Thank goodness you’re here.” You will hear this phrase very often as you hop from one favor to another throughout your playthrough, and this seemingly endless cycle of favors for the townsfolk becomes the narrative backbone of the game. After all, while you wait for your meeting, you can spare a few moments to find some tools for the grouchy repairmen, fetch some soup for an intentionally bed-ridden boy, deal with a sarcastic grocery clerk’s rat infestation, and chop up some tatties, right?
The comedic writing is the best I have seen in video games in a long while. It is hard to pin down exactly why I found all these British gags so funny, but I think it has to do with the comedic timing, the irreverence of the humor, and the general willingness to laugh at itself. For instance, the aforementioned boy who lost his two pence eventually recovers it (with considerable effort from the townsfolk and player), only to make a wish and throw it back down the same sewer grate, believing it to be a wishing well. The whole town let out a deep sigh, while I chuckled at how absurd that scenario was. I don’t wait to spoil any more punchlines because they are so clever, but to better understand if this particular humor is to your taste, here are just a few other wild moments you will encounter. You will meet two sisters, whose sarcastic banter gets progressively more dark, exaggerated, and amusing. You will help catch a not-so-subtle bootlegger pandering obviously defunct items and you will fall down a chimney, repeatedly harassing an old fellow as he tidies up his living room.
The game doesn’t restrain itself from the use of lewd innuendos, either. The game lets your mind fill in the gaps with lines such as “Ronnie’s wife could learn a thing or two” inserted at precise moments full of double entendres. There is considerably gross body humor too, which does become explicit at least once from what I remember. All of this to say, the humor may not land well with every player, and I found myself rolling my eyes at these more bawdy moments instead of outright laughing like I was at most of the other jokes throughout. At one point, my wife walked in on me playing a scene with a sign that read, “No smacky the bum bum.” I giggled like an immature little boy, but then felt immediately embarrassed by the whole thing. The game is often smart but borders on juvenile at times, I would say.
To touch a bit more the gameplay, there are a few things that stood out, both positive and negative, in the design. I enjoyed the smacking button, and even though it may sound oversimplified for it to be the only form of interaction, it was well considered. Everything in the environment, whether inanimate objects or other NPCs, responded to the smack by making noises, producing dialogue, showing visual battering, or animating in some quirky way. Why say, “hello, how are you?” when you get the same response from someone by smacking them in the gut? The game also adds variety to the smacking & traversal experience by changing the player’s perspective. One moment you are zoomed in, visiting various pop-up shops with the ability to move vertically and horizontally; the next you are zoomed out, jumping between buildings with only lateral movement at your disposal. You will move through the same parts of town over and over, but the pathways in those scenes change if, for instance, the driver’s ed student got their car stuck in the alley you have been used to navigating. Repeat visits to the same places allowed for an amusing evolution of the characters you find in those environments, but this also led to some frustrations as I played.
The downside to looping through the environments was that I started to tire of walking in the same areas. I mean walking quite literally, as there is no sprint button, which would have made this a more enjoyable rinse-and-repeat design. As I mentioned earlier, there are parts of the environment that change each time you visit them, which was very exciting. However, this worked against the game in that I wanted to explore, albeit laboriously, every nook and cranny of each locale to see what was new. This meant longer treks around the map, seeing many of the things that had not changed since my last visit. Given the zoomed-in nature of the camera, it took a while to pan over everything there was to see. I also found it bothersome that if I decided to put the game down and come back to it, there was no indication of what I was supposed to be doing at the point I left off. I suppose this wouldn’t matter as much if you played the game in a single sitting, but still, some better wayfinding options would really benefit the experience.
The audio-visual design was truly top-notch across the board. The soundtrack was whimsical and silly, with the use of brass to make an almost old-timey kazoo-like sound that fit the style of the game perfectly. There was also vocal work in the form of humming, singing, and auditory reactions like “oooh,” “ow,” and “wow,” which were a delightful surprise. I also appreciated how the background music stopped to let the sound effects pop when the player character invariably crashed into the next scene in some absurd way with a big thud or clang. Visually, the game reminded me of Where’s Waldo mixed with some grody cartoons. There was always something to look at that made me smile, was pleasantly cluttered with features, and was animated in such a colorful way.
Well, reader, again, I am so happy you joined me in this endeavour to understand Thank Goodness You’re Here. I have found the experience preposterously funny, with writing, art, and sound design that perfectly delivered the indelible mood of Yorkshire. It wasn’t without it’s qualms, with some tedium in re-treading familiar locations, obfuscating the players’ way at times, and some overly juvenile jokes. Yet, the many laughs along the way more than made up for the shortcomings. If even an American like me can enjoy this unabashedly British creation, then perhaps even the most dozy-mucky pup out there will find something to enjoy here. Cheers!
Release Date: August 1st, 2024
Platforms: Nintendo Switch, PS4, PS5, PC & Mac
Price: £15.99
Version Tested: PC
Many thanks to the publisher for the review copy
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