I’ve written off most of the humor in games. Maybe tons of it is funny to the millions of players outside of myself, but most of it misses the mark for me. Instead, I often find humor in the random conversations me and my friends have when we play games together, or the shenanigans we sometimes get up to. Recently though, there’s been an uptick in games taking a more tactful approach to comedy; rather than a shotgun spread of zingers and Whedonisms—which have their place but have unfortunately oversaturated the market—there are some games now dialing into particular niches and styles of humor that go underappreciated or unrepresented in games, like Tactical Breach Wizards or even AAA heavy-hitters like the Like A Dragon series. Thank Goodness You’re Here, which is currently going for $16 on Steam, is one of those games, and thank goodness for it, because it’s utterly ridiculous in the best way possible.
Thank Goodness You’re Here could be loosely defined as a platformer, but feels more like an adventure game whose central mechanic is slapping. Dubbed a “slapformer” by the developers, it places you in the shoes of the littlest guy imaginable, a salesman who’s sent to what appears to be a mild-mannered Northern English town called Barnsworth where all hell proceeds to break loose. The town greets your diminutive protagonist with open arms, proceeding to continually ask the world of you in order to solve its increasingly bizarre and surreal problems, which range from the mundane fixing of a deep fryer to the more unexpected corralling of a flock of gulls that serve a man with no underpants, and eventually taking you to a nightmare meat dimension. Yeah, you heard me right, and no, I can’t properly explain it all.
Thank Goodness You’re Here knows exactly what it is, and never falters in that regard. It opens by testing your understanding of a phrase in the local dialect, which decides whether its subtitles and menu will be translated or not. When you pause, the game drops the game’s comic art style (like a funny newspaper comic, not cel-shaded) for a still of 1980s archival footage showing a small town’s brick-laden houses and street. It’s a game ostensibly about meat pies and all the absurdity and lewdness beneath the surface of the English idea of polite society, all the while bouncing you between delightful little comedy sketches all the way to its grand finale.
Here are just some highlights from my sleep-deprived hours-long run of the entirety of Thank Goodness You’re Here:
- In the game, you constantly cycle through the same few locations in Barnsworth, steadily unlocking more and more of the town on every successive loop. Since there’s only a single path forward, you have to complete the cycle in order to get back to any one place. One of those locations is the home of a character named Roy, and you enter his home via his fireplace, which you are brusquely shoved down by a crude Oliver Twist-like chimney sweep. Every time you spill into his living room, you bring a fresh wave of soot and ash that covers it. At first, he takes it in stride, but with every next encounter, he grows increasingly frustrated and even traumatized at having to clean up yet another mess. Your visits start whimsical enough, but eventually the dude just quietly cries to himself, helpless to the cycle of violence you continuously perpetuate.
- Some of the transitions between two zones involve you jumping into a pipe and maneuvering it all snake-like, either underground or at times in the walls of apartment buildings. One of these skits involves a hilarious meeting between a pair of parents and their daughter’s new boyfriend, and it predictably goes sideways, but for the most inane reasons. My favorite, though, is the continual disruption of a decorative plate featuring Lady Di on someone’s cabinet as you root around in the pipework underneath it.
- There’s a man with a food truck who you can disturb by leaping into his vehicle and then proceeding to spank him. He’ll repeatedly put up a sign lamenting the beating his “bum bum” receives, but he also keeps curiously opening up his shop.
- I will never look at a cow the same way after the bit of Thank Goodness You’re Here that takes place on a farm. Never.
I’ve got to admit, I got a lot out of slapping everything and everyone in Thank Goodness You’re Here. It is just a silly way to interact with the wacky world of Barnsworth, but feels appropriate given the townspeople’s lunacy. After all, this is a place where bottles of “White Shite” sit all over the place, and where there’s a lady who dry humps vegetation. Maybe they need some sense smacked into the whole lot of them.
Best of all, though, is that Thank Goodness You’re Here is remarkably quick-witted and over before it could possibly overstay its welcome. Great comedies know when to wrap things up, and Thank Goodness You’re Here can be completed in a single sitting. It took me about two to three hours, but if you just put your foot on the gas, you could maybe even wrap it up quicker. Take in the sights though, smell the flowers, and maybe even smack a few. There are numerous little gags tucked away behind simply interacting with elements in the world, like trash cans or piles of dirt, or revisiting locales you’ve already exhausted of meaningful objectives.
Look, it’s really simple, Thank Goodness You’re Here is the most particular game of the year, and it’s also the most hilarious. It respects your time and rewards that investment with some of the sharpest and most succinct comedy writing you’ll find in a game. It is so remarkably silly and crude without being disgusting or crass, which is a tough balancing act in games. I cannot possibly endorse it more, especially considering that it’s already affordable without a sale, and is now discounted even further.
