Developer :Coal Supper
Publisher : Panic
Filesize - 800MB to 1200MB
Price: £16/$17 (prices varies on region)
Website: https://thankgoodness.game
Thank Goodness You're Here (TGYH for short) is a slapping adventure where you play as an unnamed, silent, tiny "Simpson yellow" protagonist, trying to complete his task for the day which is to have an interview with the Mayor of a town, but by the time you get there, that Lord Mayor is currently busy in a meeting and you have to skip a bit of time by doing other things.
When leaving the Mayor's building, you hold the downwards direction on the stick and eventually witness the fictional messy town of Barnsworth.
The game is story driven as solving puzzles unlocks more stores to enter and even browse through other segments of the town. Most of these puzzles are usually either presented as a mini-game such as mowing the lawn or browsing around a specific area to find an important item.
The release date: August 1st isn't a random day, it shares the same day as Yorkshire Day.
Compare to 1000s of games taking place in America, this one is certainly a rare breed.
Compare to 1000s of games taking place in America, this one is certainly a rare breed.
The difficulty of the review for this game in particular is that it's best played by knowing as little as possible so try to avoid watching Youtube videos if you can, otherwise it will ruin the surprise.
So feel free to stop reading this review to avoid possible spoilers or scroll down to the very bottom.
Minor game spoilers below*
After watching the introduction cutscene, you leave your office but not by using the door like everyone else would, oh no sirey, you knock down a giant water bottle and then drag it to the window so that the protagonist can jump out from that window and somehow land on the bus going to Barnsworth with perfect timing. That's how bonkers this game's story is.
One of my favourite highlights is the stories from other NPCs, especially the minor characters where they're not involved in giving the player an task to complete. For example, a toast fan cooks his slice of bread on a BBQ only to find out later on in the game it got badly burnt. The two citizens complaining about a bin in the neighbourhood, eventually as you progress further into the game, they're both inside the same bin playing a game of cards.
Jokes are a big selling point too, it's not the typical 2020s humour where it focuses on dysfunctional influencers, techbro scams, covid, masks, "woke-mind-virus".
They're mostly classic visual gags with some that will give you a big laugh when witnessing it for the first time, very few of them are visually innuendo heavy that I would be worried if I get flagged for streaming those moments on Twitch for being "too naughty". A funny non-lewd example is the receptionist at the very start of the game sticking some of her physical playing cards in front of a computer screen that is currently playing solitaire.
They're mostly classic visual gags with some that will give you a big laugh when witnessing it for the first time, very few of them are visually innuendo heavy that I would be worried if I get flagged for streaming those moments on Twitch for being "too naughty". A funny non-lewd example is the receptionist at the very start of the game sticking some of her physical playing cards in front of a computer screen that is currently playing solitaire.
When entering a pipe tunnel that is going underground, one of the screens has a building directly above and shows a room that has a plate of the late Princess Diana, it moves very slightly before leaving the screen and after enough visits through this tight tunnel, it will get knocked down to the ground and break.
Visually speaking, it's an impressive game with bright, colourful 2D animation with hardly any skeleton/flash-esque walking cycles with a very few exceptions.
There's a ton of nods to UK culture including "Ding Ding Dong! The Witch Is Dead" message on the wall, it's a music track which became very popular the UK music charts after the death of an unpopular politician Margaret Thatcher.
The game features a wide range of characters with different shape and sizes and even facial designs too such as their eyeballs, heck even some animals can talk too.
A lot of objects can be interacted at least once, mostly breaking things or opening up sealed objects such as postboxes and rubbish bags. There's not many useful intereactive items on the map unless it's part of a task to complete.
Performance is butterly smooth running at 60 fps with exceptions to both the cutscenes and the final mini-game as they were running at half the framerate.
Voice acting is another strong point, you do get to hear other UK accents than your typical
- Posh (Many butlers in video games)
- Scottish (Xenoblade Chronicles 2)
- Southern England (Xenoblade Chronicles 1)
One of my favourites is a repairman named Jasper who sounds a lot like Johnny Vegas but stayed in the north a bit too long. Then, there's Matt Berry. Best known to voice George the Volcano in the Volvic mineral water adverts way back in 2007... and many TV shows including the IT Crowd & Garth Marenghi's Darkplace, he voices the gardener who is a bit dimwitted at times, especially when trying to grow a tomato. My only gripe with the voice acting in general is that the voice direction for both the mole and the worm are very identical whereas nearly all of the humans were pretty much unique, a very minor nitpick.
When booting up the game for the very first time, the game asked me if I understood their dialect or not, I went for the latter and so the English subtitles were straightforward to read it does mean it will be some mismatched words from what you see and what you hear due to dialect differences, that said, I did notice the word "it's" was used incorrectly, but these errors are far too infrequent to ruin the experience.
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| Editted image showing a text difference example when using either ENGLISH or DIALECT. |
Minor game spoilers end here*
It took me roughly 2-3 hours long to beat the game which is isn't long and there isn't any post-game content for extra replayability, no mini-game select, no cutscene viewer other than replaying the entire game to hunt down for missing achievements.
Overall, the quality for TGYH is a fantastic comedy game and very unique, you can see the love Coal Supper has put towards this.
Overall, the quality for TGYH is a fantastic comedy game and very unique, you can see the love Coal Supper has put towards this.
Thank goodness
+ Terrific 2D animation.
+ Authentic English voice acting with Matt Berry as part of the voice cast.
+ A genuinely funny script.
+ Funny mini-games with no game over consequences.
Oh diddly poppycock
- 1 file per account and it autosaves so replaying favourite moments require erasing the current save. An issue for PC Steam but not so much for Switch (& PS5).
- You've seen most of the game after beating it.
- Mole and worm sound too identical.
- Not much interaction variety on objects that are not used to complete a task.
Rating A-
Key provided by Popagenda
#AD is used as poart of the UK's ASA rules.
