I should’ve made Amity write this one for me.
Thank Goodness You’re Here is the video game equivalent of one of those BBC America shows that is simply too British to be allowed off the island. It’s the second game I’ve played this year, after Still Wakes the Deep, where I needed the subtitles to understand what was ostensibly spoken English. The fact I, an American, was able to play this game on American soil means that something somewhere has broken a containment protocol.
TGYH is a short adventure game and the sophomore project from Yorkshire-based developer Coal Supper. Its publisher, Panic, was also responsible for bringing Untitled Goose Game to market, which suggests that somebody at Panic is exclusively focused on supporting indie projects about wrecking small towns. To which I say: live your dreams, Panic.
In TGYH, you’re an inexplicably tiny yellow salesman who’s been sent to the self-consciously quaint English village of Barnsworth to take a meeting with its mayor. Instead of waiting on him, you have the option to go out into the town and get wrapped up in the locals’ problems.
This involves you walking through Barnsworth like a dollar-store Godzilla. The first real puzzle of the game involves breaking a water cooler so you can use it to reach a window. From there, you leave a trail of gratuitous destruction in your wake, solving all of Barnsworth’s issues by causing immense property damage. This is the perfect game if all you’ve ever wanted out of life is to kick people in the shins without consequence.
The process of playing TGYH chiefly involves wandering around Barnsworth looking for things to do. Many of the villagers have a problem to solve or an errand that needs to be run, and they’ll rope you into it on the spot. This ranges from helping somebody get their arm unstuck from a sewer grate to doing the shopping for a bedsick shut-in. This spirals off into insanity at the first opportunity.
The overall experience reminds me of turning on Cartoon Network at about 1 in the morning, when Adult Swim was at its most unhinged. I always knew exactly what I was looking at in TGYH, but was less sure as to why.
If I had to cite one issue I’ve got with it, which is more my problem than an actual point of critique, it’s that TGYH is gross as hell. Barnsworth is covered in garbage, many of the villagers are drawn like they’ve got a massive untreated tumor, and you’re constantly dealing with raw meat, dead fish, clogged pipes, and used oil. There’s a bowl of pea soup near the climax that starts as one of the most unappetizing things in video game history, and then it gets worse. If SCHiM is an under-the-table advertisement for Dutch tourism, TGYH is an implicit warning to never go anywhere in England besides London.
Beyond that, it’s a short, imaginative, colorful game that may rely a little too much on local humor and the occasional gross-out, but is clever and weird enough to keep your attention. TGYH gives you almost nothing in the way of signposts, so while I wouldn’t call it difficult, it does require some thought in order to figure out where to go next.
I am having a hard time recommending this because, as noted, Thank Goodness You’re Here! grosses me out. There’s a gag in the first 20 minutes about eating half-melted butter off the street that nearly made me shut the whole thing down. There are things I can handle, and things I can’t, and TGYH traffics heavily in the latter.
Without moments like that, this would be a simple, fun adventure/comedy. Sure, not all the jokes land, but it’s so dense with humor that it’ll land a hit sooner or later. I did like the running gag about how your salesman is always just as small or large as he has to be for the situation he’s in, ranging from a child’s height to small enough to travel via keg hose.
In a hobby where many games feel like they’re casting too wide a net, TGYH is laser-focused on a very specific audience: 40-something British people with strong stomachs. I have to admire that, even if much of the game makes me vaguely nauseous.
