Many video game stories basically boil down to being forced to do chores for strangers: all that world-saving, enemy-farming, please-find-my-pan stuff is pretty weird when you think about it. Thank Goodness You’re Here, out August 1 on PC, Switch, and PlayStation, highlights this absurdity.
You play as a little salesman–small enough to fit down sink drains and chimneys–who comes to the Northern England town of Barnsworth to meet with the mayor. You immediately wander off into town, which is full of strange folks who all need a hand with something. They ask you to find their missing tools, fetch them meat for their pies, water their gardens, deal with their rat problems, help them with their shopping, and more.
This is all done through light puzzles and basic platforming, which is appropriate since you only have two buttons: one to jump, and one to slap. Most things in the world are reactive to your slaps in some way, and it never got old to just stroll the town hitting things and people to see what would happen. Solving puzzles moves the story ahead and opens up new areas, and it was never too tough to figure out where I had to go next or to wander into a task’s solution.
This lets the game’s setting shine. Barnsworth is a ton of fun to explore, and each quest you’re sent on teaches you more about the town and the relationships between its people. You discover crushes and petty conflicts, fears and dreams, and a bunch of delightful weirdos who, in addition to being people, can also be flowers, rats, or worms. The town itself is full of texture and fun details, from commercials for local brands to funny signs and graffiti. Many seemingly offhand jokes recur and develop–an argument over a trash bin that blossoms into a relationship, a student driver moving around town–and situations change as you solve puzzles as well. All this makes Barnsworth feel active and lived-in, while still being grounded in the day-to-day of small town life.
Thank Goodness is a comedy game, and while my only reference for the genres it’s drawing on is watching Monty Python as a kid, I admired how its absurdity never veered too far into nonsense. It’s also able to poke fun at its characters and their provincial ways without devolving into meanness or using them as punchlines. There’s a lot of love for its setting and inspirations, from the clever use of live-action stock footage of England to the ability to set the language to Northern English dialect. (There’s also a musical number, which I think should be a feature of… well, literally everything.)
Thank Goodness You’re Here took me about two hours to complete, though locked Steam achievements and some new tasks I discovered poking back into it this morning suggest there’s more stuff to find off the beaten path. I love the quirky, big-hearted vibe of the game, and I'm excited for my friends better versed in its setting to explain all the very English jokes that went over my head. If you'd like to get a taste of the game before its release later this week, there's a demo available on Steam.
