Thank Goodness You’re Here is one the best comedy games ever
Despite video games chasing the legitimacy of being like blockbuster Hollywood action films or HBO dramas, few of them take a pop at comedy as a genre. Thank Goodness You’re Here is a comedy game, and it’s a fantastic one.
Developer Coal Supper‘s second game is about the town of Farnsworth, a colourful, fictional northern English town. Players arrive seeking a meeting with the mayor, but they’re soon chucked out into the town square, with time to kill. Thankfully, Farnsworth is full to the brim with absurd characters with problems that only you can fix. Thank Goodness You’re Here!
Mechanically, you’re traveling around the town, doing odd jobs. Your character can run, jump, and punch. These mechanics are largely used to set in motion the game’s seemingly endless string of jokes. One quest sees you assisting a never-ending extendable arm as it snakes its way through the town. Once you solve a problem, that will unlock a new part of the town, and a new quest.
Like any great comedy, Thank Goodness You’re Here doesn’t outstay its welcome. We finished it in one three-hour sitting, and the recurring jokes and references are well suited to this condensed runtime. Each time you return to a part of the town you’ve already visited, there will be a new joke, a new side quest, or a new route to another new area.
It’s vital that you interact with every character (usually punching them) each time you visit a scene, as not only will they usually have new dialogue, but later jokes in the game land so much better when you’ve received the earlier setup.
There are also dozens and dozens of jokes that we entirely missed the first time through an area. For example, in one of the shops in the town, you enter the freezer at the back of the store. Displayed on a tiny square in the corner of the screen is a thermostat that says the fridge is a toasty 37C. There’s offensive graffiti everywhere.
Some jokes are less subtle, but just as funny. The local supermarket is called Price Shaggers. It’s a
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