At some point, the Panic team, which specializes in programming and working with MacOS and iOS, decided to try their hand at publishing video games, starting with Firewatch, a serious story about an observer on a fire tower and his girlfriend, who can only be heard on the radio, and then moving on to publishing completely different games – fun activities with silly names. First came Untitled Goose Game, where we mock people as a goose. Then came Nour: Play with Your Food, a little-noticed collection of interactive sketches about food. And now, Thank Goodness You’re Here! – a comedy that’s unlike anything else out there. Here’s our review.
In the role of a businessman we arrive in the city of Barnsworth – it doesn’t actually exist, but the developers were inspired by the real city of Barnsley. The protagonist wants to meet the mayor, but the mayor is in no hurry to receive visitors – the secretary asks the protagonist to wait. He does not want to sit near the office, so he goes to explore Barnsworth. Here begins a series of events that cannot be predicted and that would hardly happen without the participation of our hero.
“Thank God you’re here!” – That’s how almost every other Barnsworth resident starts a conversation with us. Someone’s hand got stuck in a sewer grate trying to pick up a dropped coin. Someone’s pipe is clogged. Someone dropped something in the well, and someone’s cow refuses to get up off the ground until it eats potatoes. Our nameless yellow-faced hero is always in the right place at the right time, ready to help anyone without saying a word.
However, the solutions to the problems are almost never easy. The tone of the game is set at the very beginning when the main character’s boss sends him on a mission, and he goes out not through the door but through the window of the tenth floor and falls onto a moving bus. Get ready for crazy adventures, including flying on improvised balloons, visiting the rat district, and even swimming in a beer barrel. Believe me, these are far from the most delirious situations the protagonist will get into.
A lot of jokes are based on the fact that the character is short, and his size changes depending on the circumstances. When he is just walking around the city, he is not much different from the rest of the inhabitants. But sometimes, he gets really small and can get out of a meat grinder unharmed, walk through a drainpipe, or even walk on someone’s torso. This is what makes the scenario here so unpredictable – when you open another door, you can’t even guess what’s behind it.
Although Thank Goodness You’re Here! is divided into half a dozen chapters, all of the action takes place in several small areas of the city. First, we visit the central square, then the alley with the shops and the farm; we walk along the shore of the lake, where the fishermen are always trying to catch something. The interesting thing is that there are no signposts or even a quest diary in the game, but it is always more or less clear where to go. It’s all about the changing locations – when you visit them again, previously available passages may be blocked, but new doors or even alleyways open up.
At first, the need to return to familiar places is disappointing – it quickly seems that the developers couldn’t come up with enough locations. But the longer you play, the more you like this structure, as you not only unlock new rooms and nooks but also follow the development of the characters.
Some of the jokes will be lost on players who live outside of England. Some of the jokes will only be relevant to people living in the county of Yorkshire – for example, the rhyming names of shops. But the Coal Supper duo did not make a niche game “for themselves” – most of the situations the protagonist and other people find themselves in will cause laughter regardless of where the player lives.
The jokes turned out to be kind and funny – without a few pants down, but in general the humor is often subtle. And if some of the jokes are repeated, then each time get development and do not tire monotonous.
The game is only two hours long, but it’s a very intense two hours. The only questions you might have are about the gameplay – the character can only move around, jump and kick. At the same time, the ability to kick everything is one of the best parts of Thank Goodness You’re Here. When you first kick a mailbox that makes all the letters fall out and a garbage bag that makes a rat come out, you’ll start kicking every object and every person. Most of the time you’ll just break something, but sometimes the person you kicked will say something – either a funny line or an argument about the weather in England. You want to kick someone all the time, even when you know there’s no reason to do it.
