Thank Goodness You’re Here! – PS5 Review

From developer Coal Supper (aka James Carbutt and Will Todd) and publisher Panic, comes game of the moment, Thank Goodness You’re Here! deliberately released on 1^st August 2024, to coincide with Yorkshire Day. Superficially similar to Panic’s 2019 hit Untitled Goose Game in terms of the being a miscreant to an otherwise unsuspecting populace, Thank Goodness You’re Here! is very much its own game. For those the wrong side of the Pennines, just don’t let the Yorkshire based setting put you off.

Set in the fictional Yorkshire town of Barnsworth, the scene is set with archive footage of Barnsley in the late 1960s, all flat caps and whippets. Penned a slapformer by the devs, it’s a fair description. You play as a mute travelling salesman whose primary method of interaction with the environment and the denizens of Barnsworth. The controls in the pause menu show ‘gi em a smack’ as mapped to .

Thank Goodness You’re Here! is genuinely funny with many laugh-out loud moments, not just from the plentiful sight gags, but also from the frequently funny dialogue. There’s a genuine fondness and mocking humour for all manner of acutely observed gags. There’s never a mean moment here, except perhaps between the cashier of the local supermarket and her unfortunate sister.

At the outset you’ll be asked to choose between Yorkshire patois or standard English, we’d recommend you choose the former, though if you’re American we’d suggest you go with normal English lest you struggle. Matt Berry even lends his voice to the cast, though we’ve yet to work out quite which character he played even as we reach the end of our mandatory second playthrough. To mop up the remaining trophies of course.

Unlike Untitled Goose Game, Thank Goodness You’re Here!  isn’t a game we’d necessarily feel comfortable letting our kid play, as this is more likely to get it’s dick out than actually be an avian dick. We’re not joking. On our second playthrough, we picked up a trophy we’d missed the first time and are still a bit disturbed by the final outcome. It’s schoolyard humour admittedly, but still a bit… ick.

Your initial aim is to sit in the foyer of Barnsworth Town Hall and wait for your appointment with the mayor, and should you wish to do so, you can sit there for fifteen minutes until you’re called in and meet the mayor. In a move worthy of Yoko Taro, the credits then roll. We’d recommend you don’t wait as you’ll miss out on the delights otherwise on offer, but it’s funny all the same.

At its core, Thank Goodness You’re Here! is a series of fetch quests that in any other context would be boring and derivative, but the framing by Coal Supper mitigates any feeling of repetition. It helps that your path through the town, while linear is gently altered the further you progress, with previously available routes closed off by the likes of an inept learner driver who’s stuck themselves between two narrow walls. The circuitous route you take is also used to great comic effect with two long payoff gags.

The quests start off fairly normally to begin with, your first task being to help a fellow get his arm out of a drain grating, the solution being fairly obvious. As you progress the levels of sheer lunacy and surreal moments are ramped up, with your character being put in ever more bizarre situations, the first involving bubbles and talking bottles. We were minded somewhat of Renton’s toilet odyssey in Trainspotting, just without the turds and Brian Eno music. The situations begin merely daft though by the game’s fourth act you’ll be forgiven for thinking you’ve ended up in the twin town of Royston Vasey. One set piece involving a bag of chips and a recalcitrant dairy cow in particular, had us wondering what the hell was going on.

Talking of the music, bawdy classic The Marrow Song (as sung by Kenneth Williams among many others and as sampled by The Orb in Toxygene) shows up and a 1934 rendition of unofficial Yorkshire anthem On Ilkla Moor Baht ‘At features frequently throughout. The latter in an unfortunate fella’s living room that you pass through regularly. Admittedly the version of the song is by a bloke from Surrey, but don’t let that put you off. Probably out of copyright given its age, which might explain its inclusion. Either way, neither are earworms we’d have expected to be experiencing in this day and age.

The otherwise incidental music bubbles away in the background to great effect, it brings to mind any number of sitcoms or dramas set in Yorkshire, like the rather obvious Last of the Summer Wine or less so Jonny Briggs. It’s not quite the Grimethorpe Colliery Band levels of cliché, more gentle burblings.

There’s so many little set pieces and daft scenarios throughout, though many are begun by the quest giver exhorting Thank Goodness You’re Here! You’re not likely to forget the title at any rate. We’ll spare you the details of any particulars, as half the fun is by way of discovery, but we laughed frequently.

In conclusion, Thank Goodness You’re Here! is that rare beast, a genuinely funny game. It doesn’t try too hard like any number of overly zany efforts and is all the better for it. The sheer sense of place and affectionate depiction of Barnsworth’s townsfolk is very well done. If there’s one criticism we have, it could be said that the game is a bit on the short side, but during our second playthrough we’re still noticing gags we didn’t clock the first time round, not to mention the payoff when going for the remaining trophies. There’s plenty of scenarios that you almost expect to have further payoffs, but sometimes they’re just there for the sheer hell of it. Then there’s the musical finale. It’s quite something.