Thank Goodness You’re Here! is British comedy at its best (pure chaos with a touch of Monty Python-style absurdity). Imagine an unremarkable, no-name junior salesman stuck in a massive, soulless corporation, only to be sent off on what should be a simple work trip to a quirky little town. However, of course, nothing goes as planned. Right from the get-go, this ridiculously absurd game from the tiny indie studio Coal Supper makes it crystal clear that it will crank up the slapstick and surrealism to outrageous levels.
A perfect example of this madness happens right at the start. When leaving the opening scene (a gloomy, gray office on the 10th floor), you cannot just take the stairs or the elevator like a normal person. Nope. The game “forces” you to jump out the window, sending you plummeting toward what seems like certain doom. However, in a perfect bit of comedy, your fall is miraculously broken by the bus you should catch. It is a chaotic, ridiculous, yet brilliant introduction to the insanity ahead.
You are supposed to meet the mayor of Barnsworth, a fictional northern English town that’s a hilariously miserable reimagining of early 1980s Barnsley. However—surprise, surprise—he is way too busy for you. So, you are tossed out onto the streets with no real direction, and before you know it, things go from weird to completely surreal.
The town is packed with bizarre and wacky characters, all drawn in an overly bright, cartoonish style that looks almost childlike—until you realize just how insane everything actually is. Every local you run into greets you with an over-the-top “Thank goodness you are here!” before immediately dragging you into whatever ridiculous problem they are dealing with.
One minute, you are helping a chubby guy who has somehow gotten his arm stuck in a drain. The next, you are running around trying to track down seagulls for a forgetful admiral who has lost his flock or fixing a broken fryer for a stressed-out chip shop owner.
Moreover, it does not stop there. No matter where you go—down grimy back alleys, across shaky rooftops, or through bustling marketplaces—you will keep running into more weirdos with even weirder requests. What started as a simple visit quickly spirals into a full-blown, chaotic mess where the town’s bizarre logic and ever-shifting landscape trap you in an endless cycle of running ridiculous errands for unhinged people.
If you have ever wanted to play a game that feels like a wild mash-up of a Kurt Vonnegut novel and an episode of The Amanda Show, congratulations—you are in the right place.
Given the game’s bizarre humor and over-the-top antics, it is no surprise that the creators tip their hats to comedy icons like Tim and Eric and Aqua Teen Hunger Force. However, if you dig deeper, you will see that its mix of slapstick, absurdity, and eye-popping visuals has roots that go way back, drawing inspiration from the Marx brothers, the psychedelic madness of Fantastic Planet, and the cheeky, subversive underground comics like Zap Comix and Raw.
However, no worries if you have never heard of any of these. You do not need a crash course in British comedy history to enjoy the game’s wild energy, sharp wit, and dark, charming humor. Whether you catch the references or not, this is the kind of experience that sucks you in with its sheer weirdness and keeps you hooked.
However, this game leans “heavily” on northern working-class stereotypes for its comedy, so having a basic idea of them helps. Look at the local shops; pretty much everyone has some cheesy, rhyme-based name that feels straight out of a small-town high street where everyone knows everyone. In this world, puns are not just encouraged but practically required to run a business.
And then there is the food (if you can even call it that). The town’s culinary scene is a heart attack waiting to happen, with greasy, deep-fried nightmares lurking around every corner. However, that is not even the wildest part. The local pie makers are so obsessed with their craft that they have practically lost their minds, and their rivalry is so intense that you would think they were battling for control of an empire rather than just bragging rights over who makes the best pastry.
Plenty of ridiculousness is waiting for you around every corner, so do not worry if you miss a few moments here and there. There is always something completely bonkers going on, whether tracking down lost keys and hammers, helping an absurdly shy kid build up the nerve to ask for milk, or just kicking back and enjoying Matt Berry’s legendary voice acting.
There are also side quests. They play out a bit like the wacky errands in Monkey Island or the unpredictable logic puzzles in Untitled Goose Game, where one ridiculous task inevitably sets off a chain reaction of even more absurdity. You will find yourself running around, scrambling to complete bizarre errands that, while making no logical sense, feel weirdly fitting in this chaotic universe.
However, when you think you have figured out the game’s logic, it completely throws you off balance. One moment, you are investigating the surface of a giant steak (yes, really), and the next, you are hunting down a spirit-level bubble for never fully explained reasons. It is the game that keeps you on your toes, constantly making you wonder, “Wait, did that just happen?”
This game is not just here to make you laugh at its ridiculousness—it also takes some well-aimed shots at the video game industry. If you keep your eyes peeled, you will catch some sneaky little jabs hidden in the background. One piece of graffiti shows a guy casually peeing on the word “ludonarrative,” a not-so-subtle dig at the overuse of academic game jargon. Meanwhile, the internet’s obsession with creepy, in-between spaces gets roasted with a sign in a filthy, rat-infested sewer that reads, “Liminal spaces may be less engaging than they appear.”
However, the biggest joke might be the game’s entire structure. It almost feels like a parody of the dull, generic side quests that plague so many open-world games, except here, the fetch quests are so ridiculous and the tasks so hilariously pointless that you cannot help but be entertained. The creators cranked the most boring game tropes to the point where they became fun.
This game is overflowing with ideas, sneaky little jokes, clever wordplay, and setups that take their sweet time to pay off. There is so much packed into its three-hour runtime that one playthrough is not enough—you will probably need to go through it a couple more times to catch everything. That makes it more fun. Playing something completely ridiculous and fully committed to pure nonsense is rare.
However, this subtle sense of unease lurks in the background underneath all the absurdity—just like the best British comedy. Sure, it is all laughs on the surface, but something about it feels just a little… off.
If you look past the jokes and the ridiculous one-liners, you will notice that many of the townspeople are actually miserable. They are all stuck in their purgatories—pie makers trapped in an endless rivalry, the town drunk forever lost in the bottom of a bottle, and that poor kid too nervous to even ask for some milk. There is a quiet, almost tragic undertone to their struggles, even though the game plays it all for laughs.
The game is winking at you and saying, “Yeah, this is funny, but isn’t it also kinda sad?”
When people argue about the funniest games ever made, you know The Secret of Monkey Island, Portal 2, and maybe even Dark Souls will get a mention. However, there is no doubt that a new contender is stepping into the ring now.
With this game, Coal Supper has delivered what might be the first truly great abstract Yorkshire-based cartoon puzzler of the 21st century—because, let us be real, the world was long overdue for one. Honestly, thank goodness this game existed.
References
- Double, O. (2014). Getting the Joke: The Inner Workings of Stand-Up Comedy (2nd ed.). Bloomsbury.
- Hocking, C. (2007). Ludonarrative Dissonance in Bioshock: The Problem of What the Game Is About. ClickNothing.
- Juul, J. (2005). Half-Real: Video Games Between Real Rules and Fictional Worlds. MIT Press.
- Palmer, J. (1987). The Logic of the Absurd: On Film and Television Comedy. BFI Publishing.
- • Salen, K., & Zimmerman, E. (2004). Rules of Play: Game Design Fundamentals. MIT Press.
- • Sicart, M. (2011). Against Procedurality. Game Studies, 11(3).
