Developer: Coal Supper
Publisher: Panic Inc.
Platform: Switch, PC, PS4, PS5
Tested on: Switch
Thank Goodness You’re Here! – Review
And now for something completely different. Normally, you’d be reading a review of Noreya: The Gold Project here. We’ll get to that one soon, but a little game called Thank Goodness You’re Here! managed to sneak to the front of the queue. And thank goodness it did, because it is absolutely delightful. Normally, publishers are kind enough to provide us with review codes for the titles that we take a look at. That wasn’t the case with Thank Goodness You’re Here!, yet we loved the game so much that we couldn’t help but tell you all about it. If that isn’t enough of an endorsement, well, then read on to find out why this delightful slice of comedy pie should be on your radar.
Story
Our story opens with commercials promoting local businesses from the fictional town of Barnsworth, Yorkshire. As it turns out, your boss is showing these commercials to you, as you’re about to be sent to this town for a meeting with the mayor. You are a little yellow fellow whose name is only mentioned once, near the end of the game. Upon arriving at the mayor’s office, his secretary informs you that he’s going to be busy for a couple of hours before he can see you. So what are you to do? Well, you could just wait, or you could go out and explore your surroundings. The latter is by far the better option, especially since the inhabitants of Barnsworth are facing all kinds of problems. Thank goodness you’re there to help them out!
Over the course of the next three hours or so, an absurd and utterly hilarious adventure unfolds. We won’t spoil this one, because not only is this a game best enjoyed blind, but also because many of the scenes won’t even make sense out of context (and quite a few won’t even make sense IN context). Rest assured that if you enjoy absurd British comedy in the vein of Monty Python, The Mighty Boosh, or Toast of London, this will be right up your alley. One quick warning though: the game is rated M, and with good reason. It’s all played for laughs, and the absolute crudest that the game gets is that you get a glimpse of Brigadier Bean Tin’s “little brigadier” so to speak. Still, if the idea of a stranger on the other side of a fence pushing sausages through it makes you uncomfortable, this isn’t going to be a game you want to let your kids play.
Graphics
The first thing you’ll notice about Thank Goodness You’re Here!’s visuals is the lovely cartoon style, reminiscent of recent cartoon shows like Regular Show or Gravity Falls. However, the game doesn’t necessarily stick to the conventions of those cartoons, playing with perspective and depth in unique and unforeseen ways. The majority of the game is shown from a top-down quasi-isometric view, not unlike how Untitled Goose Game was presented. However, at certain moments, the camera angle often changes, showing the world from a different perspective. More often than not, the size of our protagonist inexplicably changes as well during these scenes. We should mention that the game has no visual interface whatsoever, and every frame looks like it could have been taken straight from a cartoon show as a result.
Sound
One of the main draws of Thank Goodness You’re Here! is the fantastic voice acting. The biggest name in the cast is undoubtedly What We Do in the Shadows’ Matt Berry, who voices the town groundskeeper. He receives top billing in the credits, but we’d be doing the rest of the voice cast a disservice by not praising their performances, as these are on par with Berry’s. As for the game’s soundtrack, this sounds like it was plucked straight out of a 1970s-era British sitcom, except for an absolutely delightful song performed by the cast near the game’s end. The soundscape is rounded out by crisp sound effects, many of which play a part in the game’s gross-out humor whenever things get, ahem, squishy.
Gameplay
For as overwhelming of an experience Thank Goodness You’re Here! is, the gameplay is surprisingly simple. In essence, it’s a point-and-click adventure, albeit one without pesky things like inventory management. You simply walk around Barnsworth, and your actions are limited to jumping and slapping things. Yes, you read that right: you interact with both objects and people by slapping them. Using this amazing ability, you solve simple puzzles and complete fetch quests. Ultimately, this is a title that is all about the comedy and it feels more like an interactive cartoon rather than an actual game. As far as we could tell, there wasn’t even a way to actually screw things up and get a game over. The game is also very reliant on running gags, in that you’ll be revisiting certain places over and over, with every instance building on a joke from a previous visit.
Admittedly, our time in Barnsworth wasn’t entirely smooth sailing. There were instances where the subtitles didn’t line up with what was being said, for example. It also wasn’t always clear what to do or where to go next, although this typically meant just poking around until we triggered another scene. Thank Goodness You’re Here! provides a very linear experience too, with no branching storylines or multiple endings. In theory, that limits the replay value, but the game is so densely packed with background gags that it’s pretty much impossible that you’ll see everything in a single playthrough. The price tag may seem a little steep knowing that the game’s runtime is short, but in this case, it’s definitely a matter of quality over quantity. In fact, we couldn’t put the game down and played through it in a single sitting.
Conclusion
Whether or not you’re going to like Thank Goodness You’re Here! depends on one thing and one thing only: is this your kind of humor? If you’re already giggling at the idea of peans (not quite peas, not quite beans) or a supermarket being called Price Shaggers, then you’re absolutely going to adore what’s on show here. Oh, and we’d recommend paying attention to the credits -you’ll find a surprise bonus there! Now if you’ll excuse us, we need to get back to our regular review schedule. Up next: Noreya!
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[…] made a promise, didn’t we? Thank Goodness You’re Here! may have squeezed itself into our gaming schedule unexpectedly, but after we saw the credits roll […]