Developer Coal Supper’s relentlessly absurd comedy may necessarily keep players on a tight rein, but it’s a perfectly constructed masterclass in hilarity.
Thank God You’re Here opens with a pea commercial (“Not peas, not beans, but something in between that tastes good”) and ends with a song. But developer Coal Supper’s absurdist comedy adventure is so relentlessly and delightfully unpredictable from start to finish—so uncannily filled with impeccable jokes and surreal detours—that it’s hard to know where to begin.
So let’s proceed with caution and start at the beginning. You are the hero of this piece – an unnamed man of indeterminate age and wilful height – and the adventure begins when you are sent on a business trip to the fictional northern English town of Barnsworth for reasons unknown. At which point, thank goodness you arrive, and immediately let you know what kind of game this is by insisting that you jump out of your boss’ office window ten stories up, rather than through the door. As the bawdy ditty “The Marrow Song” plays, and a perfect montage of mid-20th-century archive footage – all coal mines, red-brick houses, and sullen-looking ladies scouring busy market stalls – we’re off.
I don’t want to get ahead of myself, thank goodness you’re here, I think, outstanding – a bold, well-choreographed comedy that defies expectations at every turn. Its unique style of surrealism, of being funny at all costs, won’t be everyone’s cup of tea, but the way it gleefully manipulates the form to enhance its impeccable comedic beats is a real joy to watch – even if it takes a while to show that approach through the chaos.
This is a Very A silly game that doesn’t let up from the moment you walk out of Barnsworth Town Hall – until the first time a citizen in need says “Thank God you’re here!”. Barnsworth itself is a wonderful creation, and there’s not an inch of its vivid, grimy cartoonish landscapes that don’t have room for a visual joke or two, from its cigarette-strewn market square to its seeping riverbank. As a world, it’s irresistible, pulling your attention in every direction at once with its overwhelming action and detail; spiders hop merrily on lampposts, ants crawl across walls, unkempt pigeons flutter and clamour, children gleefully hit each other with sticks, and a man defends asbestos in a nearby street. Founded by Barnsley locals, Coal Supper is an affectionate take on the post-industrial north, playfully reimagining quintessential small-town spaces in a picture-book-like format – imagine Royston Vasey’s Where’s Waldo if Waldo had an erection and was prone to the odd swear word.
There’s a fairy-tale simplicity to Thank Goodness You’re Here’s interactions, too. You’re required to go on a strange journey to meet Barnsworth’s community of weirdos – more a series of loosely connected set pieces than a formal series of treasure hunts – and you may become increasingly eccentric over time, but your gadgetry remains the same. You can walk, jump (with some occasional light platforming in the transition spaces between larger areas), and most importantly, give things a whack. Want to chat up a local? Just spank them. Want to open a door? Just hit the doorknob. Want to touch a smoking haddock? You get the idea. It’s an odd and fairly limited selection at first – it takes a while to get used to the fact that you’re engaging in conversation in the exact same way you’d knock over a trash can – but Coal Supper makes it work.
Nearly everything in Barnsworth reacts to your carefree violence, and often in unexpected ways, giving you the same joy of discovery you get when prying open the cover of a particularly confusing pop-up book. Trash bags pop, snails explode, hips quiver, owls pop out of tree trunks to offer wisdom (“Never give an owl a towel”), and there’s a real joy in wandering around the town’s corners to see what kind of chaos it’ll create next. It’s a clever way of encouraging exploration in a relatively confined space, balancing Coal Dinner’s need to keep a tight rein on the plot in order to deliver well-crafted set pieces and ensure that its well-crafted jokes have the most impact.
Structurally, Thank God You’re Here is absolutely fascinating, essentially employing a geographical loop that takes the player through the same loop of locations in Barnsworth over and over again – parks, pubs, high streets, rooftops, vegetable plots, and so on. The first time you return to the starting point, you’ll feel a little disappointed, as if giving away the game’s rather limited scope – but it won’t take long to see that there’s something clever going on here. Thank God You’re Here’s freewheeling whimsy may feel natural, but there’s real skill behind its jokes, and its structural repetition is what makes it a comedy. Each loop builds on the last reconfigured scene, setting up more laughs, delivering more payoffs, and often cleverly subverting expectations just when you think you’ve begun to figure out the rhythm.
One minute you’re gnawing on a slab of beef, fashioning a sentient patty from the memories of haunted meat, the next you’re dodging a tortured greengrocer while his long-headed life flashes before his eyes. You’ll run up the rafters of your local supermarket, only to discover another, smaller rodent supermarket hanging from the ceiling; you’ll go shopping with an extended hand while its owner remains in bed; you’ll feed chips to a cow, help a “shy” boy fulfill his wish, and so on. Thank God You’re Here is relentless in its innovations – constantly switching perspectives and play styles to maximize its gags, abandoning quest lines only to suddenly pick them up again much later for even bigger laughs – and the end result plays like a pie-obsessed fever dream mixed with an obscene beat-verse. Honestly, the film would be exhausting if given room to maneuver, but its jokes and set pieces are so well-honed, and it hits so hard over its several-hour running time that it’s hard not to be engulfed in its mayhem and sucked in by its goofy charm.
I should probably stress that Thank God You’re Here is often very juvenile, reflecting an era of British comedy characterised by seaside postcards and Les Dawson skits (although without the more problematic parts of that era). “Every morning I like to start the day with a pint of beer and then take a big piss,” says the local shoemaker at one point, “and then I get up.” If that doesn’t make you laugh, then this game might not be for you – but whatever your personal taste, it’s undoubtedly been crafted with love, care and impressive skill. For a start, its animations are gorgeous, and its voice actors (including Matt Berry and former Eurogamer writer Jon Bryce) are wonderfully silly.
What’s more, the film’s jokes, silly as they may be, are delivered with real substance. For example, a short scene early in the film turns a simple task—mowing the lawn—into something magical, with you and your lawnmower in the distance and two flowers in the foreground expressing their undying love. Each time you crank the control stick, you get closer, delaying the inevitable laugh to the point of being hilarious. It’s hard not to admire the audacity of “Thank God You’re Here” as it digs deeper and deeper into the same well of invention over and over again.
If there’s a price to Thank God You’re Here’s capriciousness, it’s that it absolutely must be dealt with on its own terms. With its flagrant disregard for logic and its deliberately unpredictable detours, it’s necessarily tightly controlled, and its interactions mostly superficial. Your only real option is to give in to its whims, to let yourself be swept along by its waves of absurdity – but its silliness is so charming, its absurdity so unexpectedly inspiring, somehow summoning a big-hearted sense of community from its absolute chaos, that giving in is barely a chore. Comedy is relatively rare in video games, and it’s even rarer that it’s done so perfectly, so irresistibly. Coal Supper, thank god you’re here!
Panic provided a copy of Thank God You’re Here! for review.