Thank Goodness You’re Here! (Coal Supper, multi-format)
BY GUM, what the chuffin’ Nora have I just played? After stainless steel, Wensleydale and, erm, Sean Bean, Yorkshire’s latest gift to the world is Viz brought to life.
Fittingly released on Yorkshire Day, August 1, Thank Goodness You’re Here! goes the full monty with its absurdist, innuendo-filled slice of life in a Northern town. Coal Supper’s self-coined “slapformer” is more virtual comic than game, but its affectionate take on grim-up-North types – all scowling women and soot-caked terraces – is reyt gud.
Opening with an ad for Peans - “Not quite peas, not quite beans, but something delicious in-betweens” - TGYH kicks off with a tiny man sent on a business trip to the fictitious town of Barnsworth. While waiting for the mayor, players explore the neighbourhood, helping out its collection of barmpots and cheeky beggars with their myriad problems.
A game about filling time, its series of fetch quests is reminiscent of 2019′s Untitled Goose Game, but set in the harsh North and leaning into the kind of absurdist comedy that could have dripped from the pen of Bob Mortimer.
A gameplay loop takes players through the same basic locations, each time introducing new characters and spaces to be explored. Your actual interaction with Barnsworth is limited to jumping and slapping stuff, but armed with these simple tools you’ll go shopping with a giant arm, make haunted meat patties, fix the local chippy’s deep fat fryer and feed a cow chips before yanking aggressively on its udders.
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It’s entirely hands-off with any guidance, inviting much poking around Barnsworth’s nooks and crannies
in search of laughs. From the Beano to Viz by way of Royston Vasey and Les Dawson’s dog-faced drollery, TGYH’s end-of-the-pier humour is all finely-hewn Northern monologues and working men’s club gaggery.
With a brilliant cast headed up by the mellifluous (and Emmy-nominated) Matt Berry, never has a game evoked such a sense of place. With old newsreel of pits, cobbled streets and the like, TGYH couldn’t be more Yorkshire if it popped to the loo during its turn to get a round in – even the pause menu’s choices are ‘faff’ for options or ‘keep gu’in’ to carry on.
As fluffy and short-lived as a Yorkshire pud, Thank Goodness You’re Here is best enjoyed under a flat cap with your whippet on a length of grubby string. Its £16 asking price may have the average Yorkshireman choking into his pint of mild, but you’d have to be a reyt mardy bum not to crack a smile over its three hours.
