Usually, when I play a game for review, I keep notes. I’ll pause and jot down observations, thoughts, particularly poignant moments. I’ll write down character names and plot details that I deem are important to remember. I might even sketch out a few sentences that I think might make it into the review.
It never even occurred to me to open my Notes app and write anything down while playing Thank Goodness You’re Here, the riotously ridiculous second game from Coal Supper (their first title, The Good Time Garden, is free on Steam, and a good indicator of what to expect).
I’d started the game while my partner Lisa was in the room, and it became clear, right away, that this was a game we were going to play together even though there is no multiplayer. “I wonder if the stoat is back at the butter shop”, she’d query. “I hope the worm pops up again next time we go underground,” I might reply. “Oh, the food van is open again! Time for slappy bum bum!” And so on. Playing Thank Goodness You’re Here became a thing we’d both look forward to, even though the game was wrapped up in just three short play sessions.
There is a certain magic to good absurdist comedy that starts to slip away the moment you try to explain it. This makes Thank Goodness You’re Here difficult to review, because the whole thing is just very good absurdist comedy.
And here I am, trying to sell you on it by mentioning stoats and worms and something called “slappy bum bum”. You’ll just have to take my word for it when I say that the context for “slappy bum bum” is very funny!
You’ll have to trust us on slappy bum bum
In Thank Goodness You’re Here, you play as a little guy – just a weird little unnamed dude who never speaks – who has arrived in Barnsworth, a fictionalised North English town, in the 80s. While waiting for a meeting with the mayor, you wander out of town hall and find yourself caught up in the plights of the townspeople, many of whom need your help with some manner of odd job.
You can move, jump and punch, and somehow you need to use those skills to sort through everyone’s nonsense. As you play through the game more of the map unlocks, and you start to map out the different routes between areas – but really, for most of the game you’re just pushing forward down whatever path is open to you.
Barnsworth is a very reactive setting, and punching most standalone objects in the world will have some kind of effect: post boxes burst open, flowers explode, mugs shatter. Smacking the folks you encounter – and there’s a lot of them, a mix of plot-critical characters and other residents who are just there for comic relief – will either produce more dialogue or an assortment of pained noises.
You run around, following the loose tendrils of plot and purpose the game offers, enjoying the sights and the sounds and the silliness. The whole game is 2-3 ridiculous hours of smacking everything, and I absolutely love it.
There aren’t really puzzles, per se – usually progression is just a matter of figuring out the way forward, remembering which pathways around the town lead where. I could call the game repetitive, but honestly Thank Goodness You’re Here thrives on repetition, on escalating the same jokes and situations over and over.
On each loop through the city, you can see how all the game’s micro-narratives are progressing. Are the two sisters in the supermarket still fighting? Will the owl pop out of this tree and offer more trite wisdom? What’s going on with the two neighbours who were quarreling over a bin? This is the sort of game where I interacted with absolutely everything, and usually felt rewarded for doing so.
Will Thank Goodness You’re Here stick?
The repetition in this game reminds me of when the first season of I Think You Should Leave hit Netflix, and not just because the names have a similar cadence. Within a few months of Tim Robinson’s sketch show landing, the critical pieces written about the show had moved from “quaintly ridiculous, comical but lowbrow” to “I have now watched the show 40 times and I spend every waking moment thinking about how bones are a skeleton’s money”.
Coal Supper has, wisely, realised that you can achieve something similar on a smaller scale in a game by revisiting the same scenarios and characters over and over, but going a bit weirder with them each time.
It’s too early to say if Thank Goodness You’re Here is going to have the same stickiness as ITYSL, but I can tell you that within a few days of finishing it I was already itching to play it through again, because it is – to my sense of humour – very funny. Yes, some of the humour is very juvenile, in the “hey, that tree looks like a penis” vein – actually, there’s a lot of dick jokes in the game, some of them more clever than others.
Truthfully, none of the humour is particularly high-brow, but the game’s wild art style, tremendous voice performances, and keen sense of timing delivers laughs pretty consistently. Every character is ridiculous, but fully realised in their own way. The way Thank Goodness You’re Here plays with the size of your weird little guy, and the rules of its own rubbery universe, is perfect. Smacking villagers to interact with them never stops being funny.
Thank Goodness You’re Here is just so totally committed to being exactly the game that it wants to be. The visual style of artist James Carbutt translates extremely well to a game about North English nonsense, and the game ultimately comes across as far more loving and reverential about its quaint North English town than you might expect.
I, too, would like to run around a town where the locals fight over different pie brands, commiserate with each other over the sides of their heads, and occasionally get snatched away by passing birds, among other things. It’s a work of precise and hilarious artistic expression, but it’s also really enjoyable to play.
Read: ACMI set to open Untitled Goose Game exhibition
For my money, this is one of the funniest games I’ve ever played. It’s also one of those rare games that makes me think “oh, wow, games can do this, huh?” Its closest point of comparison is Untitled Goose Game, another lovely, short, funny game set in a quaint English village.
The two games even share a publisher. But in Thank Goodness You’re Here, you are a part of the chaos rather than a harbinger of it, riding a wave of lunacy and playing your part in unfolding the madness. The two feel spiritually of a piece with each other – just don’t let young kids near this one.
Oh, and Matt Berry’s in it, too, as a lascivious gardener. Everyone loves Matt Berry, right?
Five stars: ★★★★★
Thank Goodness You’re Here
Platform(s): PC, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Nintendo Switch, Mac
Developer: Coal Supper
Publisher: Panic Inc.
Release Date: 2nd August 2024
GamesHub reviews were previously rated on a five-point scale. As of 29 July 2024, they are now rated on a 10-point scale.
