Welcome to Barnsworth. The sun is shining – which is a warning sign in itself, given that we’re in a fictional northern English town – and according to the man selling leaflets outside his local pub, asbestos is about to make a big comeback. Unfortunately, we’ve got bigger problems: the fish and seafood shop is closed, Big Ron’s Big Pies is no longer making pies and, OK, yeah, someone who is passionate about the reintroduction of asbestos isn’t exactly great either. In Thank Goodness You’re Here, a wonderfully silly slapstick comedy platformer from Coal Supper, the title speaks for itself.
Tasked with solving all these problems is a small, lemon-colored traveling salesman who has come to meet the mayor of Barnsworth. When the mayor is 15 minutes late, we are encouraged (see: ignored by the receptionist playing solitaire) to take a walk and see the hand-drawn sights of Barnsworth. And oh, the sights there are.
Not from here
As I leave the town hall, several pressing problems immediately strike me. Local eccentric Charlie, for example, has his arm stuck in a sewer. Sleazy handyman Herbert, played wonderfully by Matt Berry from What We Do In The Shadows, is looking for someone to help mow the lawn. Mother Megg’s Buttery Goods is closed because the teenage clerk lost the keys – “my mother put me back on the mercury,” he says apologetically.
Solving all of this is like pulling on a loose thread in a sweater, only to see the whole thing fall apart spectacularly. Although Thank Goodness You’re Here technically a platform game played largely by punching anything in sight or falling through holes no one else can fit through. I scurry into Barnsworth’s pub – which proudly displays a license to serve underage drinks – where a drunken citizen has Mother Megg’s keys but won’t leave without starting his day with a pint. Unfortunately, the taps are jammed, so to get things rolling, I jump from the pub’s drain into the beer cellar and punch each keg until it trembles with carbonation. Mission accomplished: I’m sucked up through the beer pipes and poured into a pint glass as our satisfied patron heads off to open Mother Megg’s Buttery Goods. Now that it’s open, I scurry in and grab a particularly sloppy-looking stick of butter for Charles, who frees himself by taking a decent chunk of pavement with him.
Thank Goodness You’re Here – which spans two or three thrilling hours – is all about keeping up with the developing chain reaction. Barnsworth is a deeply broken town, and everyone there has a favour to ask, which in turn usually means getting into debt to two or three more people along the way. Thankfully, the residents are as funny as they are needy. I can count the number of games that made me laugh out loud on one hand, but Thank Goodness You’re Here is packed with one killer gag after another. Every street is covered in graffiti – “Graham shags moss” and “Lester packs lunches” are personal favourites – and there are a few brilliant running gags, like the man who gets more and more broken the more you cover his living room in soot, or the rats slowly taking over a corner shop. Brilliant lyrics make every scribbled message or offhand remark a blast, while the cast’s larger-than-life performances make the whole thing sizzle.
As the game progresses, it gets more absurd and surreal, but Thank Goodness You’re Here never loses its northern charm. As someone who lives just two hours north of Barnsley, the South Yorkshire town that Barnsworth hails from, I love the sense of familiarity that Coal Supper has carefully created. It feels like someone has cut out a slice of north-east England, brushed off the cake crumbs (mostly) and examined the contents through a kaleidoscope. It might seem silly to try to take a real message from a game where the biggest problem is a fish and chip shop’s broken fryer, but I admire how quickly our odd yellow hero is adopted by the community of Barnsworth, and the almost homely way in which everyone goes out of their way to help each other through the day.
I rolled the credits the day before writing this, but I still giggle when I think of Matt Berry’s deathmatch with a mole, the cartoonish facial animations of some of the characters, and the poor soot-smeared man whose living room I kept trashing. Whether you’re from Up Norf or not, Thank Goodness You’re Here is a wickedly funny misadventure that’s well worth the few hours of your life it takes – but don’t believe everything you hear about asbestos.
Thank Goodness You’re Here is out now on PC, Nintendo Switch, PS4 and PS5. Check out the rest of our Indie in the spotlight series to catch up on other gems you may have missed.
