No matter the medium, comedy is the hardest thing to get right. It’s even more of a challenge to objectively review. What I laugh at (farts, puns, and dirty jokes) won’t be the same as a meme-loving fan of Skibidi Toilet, for example. The struggle to be funny is even more true of video games which, in recent years especially,have had a tough time consistently delivering laughs.
When I think of comedy games, there are afew that instantly jump to mind like Monkey Island, Portal, and The Stanley Parable, but even they aren’t universally agreed upon. Then there are games likeBorderlands, Bulletstorm, andHigh On Life, whichyou can’t bring up without starting heated debates about their humour.Thank Goodness You’re Herewon’t be universal either, but my god is it hilarious.
Thank Goodness You’re Herehas you playing as a silly little businessman with a lemon sherbert headas he’s tasked with travelling to the small English town of Barnsworth (based on Barnsley in Yorkshire) for unexplained business reasons. While waiting to chat with the mayor, our lemonhead everyman bumbles around the town and ‘helps’ its quirky residents, who usually spout the titular phrase, “Thank Goodness You’re Here”.
Bumbling Around Barnsworth
That help comes in the form of solving basic everyday tasks like cleaning the gutters out, helping a footie fan find some milk for a cuppa, and, most English of all, chucking ciggies into the mouths of fish to make our staple delicacy - Fish and Cigs. Your visit to Barnsworth starts off ordinary enough as you shake beer kegs to get the bubbles flowing, but they get pretty strange as you watch a cow engage in a hot tub ménage à trois and dive into a piece of oddly poetic meat. It’s basically Don’t Hug Me I’m Scared The Game and that makes me a very happy chappie.
Even when things get weird, Thank Goodness You’re Here’s gameplay is incredibly simple, with its puzzles mostly just consisting of going to the right place, jumping around a bit, and slapping everything in sight. I’ve seen some comparisons toUntitled Goose Gamethanks to the English setting and shared publisher, but it’s a lot more basic than that and is more akin to going t’jennel simulator (that’s exploring alleyways for those not acquainted with the Yorkshire tongue).
Coal Supper’s last game,The Good Time Garden, has a lot of similarities to Thank Goodness You’re Here. Minus the moist nakedness, obviously.
The only thing you’ll need to know at any given time is where your little yellow man is headed to cause havoc next, which is a relatively easy task considering Barnsworth’s model village vibe is perfectly captured with an intimate and interconnected map that always pushes you in a linear direction around a loop. Although the lack of proper puzzles does lead to some repetition and the small map means there’s plenty of backtracking, it’s all in service of one of the best things about Thank Goodness You’re Here - its jokes.
Happy Slappers
From the moment I booted up Thank Goodness You’re Here and it offered to turn the subtitles on with some unintelligible Yerkshuh slang, I never stopped smiling. The humour ranges from absurdist moments like an owl giving you rhyming advice from a tree to cheekier patter you’d see in Viz like a man’s milk bottle bursting over his trousers while he utters an embarrassed “sorry”.
One joke about Reggie’s wife needing to learn a thing or two has been on a loop in my brain since hearing it. Sorry, everyone I talk to.
Even beyond the funny Yorkshire accents (except for Matt Berry, who’s not even close to getting the northern twang right), Thank Goodness manages to keep you laughing thanks to its excellent visual humour. The Beano-like art style is constantly charming but that grin turns to giggles thanks to graffiti that say things like “Roger is a nonce” and “no dogging”. There are cleverer ones for anyone who doesn’t have a ten-year-old’s sense of humour, but if you love a dirty joke (or you’re just English) then you’ll be well fed here.
Surprisingly, Thank Goodness’ jokes aren’t what I loved most about it. Instead, it’s the lovingly accurate portrayal of small-town English life that stuck with me. I’m from as far South as you can get in the UK but even with a five hour car journey between my hometown and Barnsley, Thank Goodness managed to feel like a trip back to my ends and feels like just as much of a love letter to England as a parody of it.
Honey, I’m Nearly Home
Everywhere you go in Barnsworth, there’s a reference to life in England to get all warm and nostalgic about, from the National Lottery mascot and yellow grit bins for that one day of snow we get a year,to JML’s neverending supply of new productsand our iconic black and yellow bins dotting every street. Even if I’ve long since moved away from where I grew up, Thank Goodness managed to make me feel like I’d never left.
It would have been easy for Coal Supper to stuff Barnsworth with stereotypical references to England by having everyone look like an Eastenders extra, but the amount of care and love that’s been put into making the town feel authentic makes it stand out as the best representation of England I’ve seen in a game. I didn’t expect to resonate so much with a game that lets you slap everyone in the face (or bum), but I’m oddly grateful for my nostalgic trip home.
I’m not sure how Thank Goodness You’re Here is going to play to an American crowd, but I’d like to think it’s at least an accurate glimpse into the wacky world of the UK.
Of course, like every trip home, it doesn’t last forever. In fact Thank Goodness You’re Here is very brief at around three hours. I don’t mind a shorter experience, even if I was desperate for more, but the ending does unfortunately feel a little sudden. There is at least some replay value in trying to catch jokes you might have skipped the first time, but I couldn’t help wanting a little more - more resolution at least, if not just more of a game that was so great while it lasted.
Even with its short length and simple gameplay, Thank Goodness still stands as one of my favourite indie games in recent memory. Thank Goodness You’re Here’s consistently giggle-inducing jokes and wonderful visual humour are great, but its surprisingly authentic and heartfelt interpretation of England is what made me reyt chuffed wi’it.
