As a British person, very few games come along which I feel represent a true vision of what it means to be British. British characters usually have a very generic accent, the whole of the UK may as well be London, and the humor is just lost. Then a game like Thank Goodness You’re Here! comes along.
Thank Goodness You’re Here! is the second game created by Coal Supper, a duo of developers made up of James Carbutt and Will Todd from Barnsley, Yorkshire. Their love for their home county shines through in this brilliant display of all things British, including subtle nods to things anyone who grew up in Britain will know, to the inescapable Yorkshire accents throughout the game.
In Thank Goodness You’re Here!, you play as a small and very yellow businessman sent to the fictional town of Barnsworth (which is definitely not based on Barnsley in any way) to have a meeting with the Mayor. Instead of immediately going into this meeting, however, you venture outside and end up doing some very bizarre odd jobs for the locals. This is presumably because Bobby Odd Jobs has sadly passed away. RIP Bobby.
Somehow, Thank Goodness You’re Here! manages to capture the feeling of growing up in Yorkshire, or any small town in Britain for that matter, perfectly. You just get the feeling that everyone in the town knows everyone else, and that’s so true to my own upbringing that I can’t help but feel a huge wave of nostalgia while playing.
It’s not just the main quests that make Thank Goodness You’re Here! feel so alive. There are small touches that resonate with my inner child, such as the neighbors squabbling over a bin, only for one and then both of them to end up inside it as you revisit the area after progressing a little. In the end, you’ll find them playing cards together while wedged inside a wheelie bin. It’s both an incredibly bizarre and strangely heartwarming moment.
Then there’s the girl who’s taking what is more than likely her first driving lesson and her remarkable ability to get the car stuck in small spaces acts as a way to point you in the right direction. It’s actually an incredibly useful feature because there are no quest hints in Thank Goodness You’re Here!, you’re on your own to figure out where you’re supposed to go.
At one point, you get absorbed by a piece of meat and have to ‘gather’ smaller pieces of meat inside so that the local pie-maker can make a giant pie. It gets a little dark during these moments, with the meat telling you stories of how they were killed, and every single story ends with “and I wept.” This is a clear throwback to Coal Supper’s first game released in 2023, The Good Time Garden, which is just a bizarre mind-trip on every level.
The quests themselves, all of those odd jobs that you’re doing for the locals, never once feel monotonous or arduous. Despite the fact that I spent more time lost than I did on track, there was always something to discover and something to make me smile. I spent more time reading all of the graffiti on the walls or slapping the locals (don’t look at me like that, it’s how you talk to them) than I did actively trying to figure out the next step, and I never once got bored.
Although the vast majority of Thank Goodness You’re Here! is presented in what is now Coal Supper’s trademark style, there are glimpses into the real world upon which the game is based in both the opening credits and the pause menu. During the opening scenes, there are clips of Yorkshire in the 1960s and 1970s, when coal mines were still operational. The pause screen, on the other hand, is the view down a back alley in what could be any town in the north of England. Or the South, for that matter.
I can’t think of any other game that captures this particular slice of life. I even did some research into the subject, and the closest game I found was the 2000 PlayStation 1 release Chicken Run, which is entirely based around a bunch of freedom-hungry talking chickens, so I think we can all agree that it’s missing the realism I’m talking about here.
And that’s the thing, even though Thank Goodness You’re Here! is a bizarre and frequently disgusting (in the best possible way) cartoon, it feels real despite the moments of utter surrealism, thanks to the characters who make it feel so alive. Playing Thank Goodness You’re Here! feels like the homecoming I didn’t know I needed, but it’s also a brilliant display of small town life in Britain for anyone who never had the joy of experiencing it first-hand.
If, on the other hand, you want to completely skip over the entire experience, you could always sit in reception for 15 minutes and do absolutely nothing until the Mayor calls you in for your meeting. You can actually finish Thank Goodness You’re Here! this way, but where’s the fun in that?
Published: Aug 4, 2024 11:25 am