Despite having an unfortunately sizable backlog of games to platinum, I decided after finishing my last game to have a look at what new releases there had been on the Playstation Store. I wanted something a little bit different, a more light experience than the one I had just finished, but I was unsurprised to find the Playstation Store to be full of games that looked cheap and boring. I love to chase trophies don’t get me wrong but I try not to get Platinum’s in games I don’t enjoy anymore. Disheartertend from finding nothing that caught my eye, I then took to opencritic, to see what was new and decently reviewed and saw a game called Thank Goodness You’re Here, sitting at at 86 average. I popped back to the playstation store, and found it, it was a game I had completely scrolled past on my first look. I had seen it and thought it was another game that wasn’t worth a second look. This time though I read the games description and was intrigued. So I took the bait, and jumped in, if everyone else seemed to like it surely I would too? So lets see what is in store for you, in Thank Goodness You’re Here.
Thank Goodness You’re Here, opens with a series of bizarre commercials, that are intended to introduce to the town of Barnsworth, a fictional town in the north of England, where you, a tiny yellow salesman are being sent to meet the Mayor. Your first task from the game is to get out of your boss’s office, and the only way to do this is to jump out of a 10th-storey window.
The game never lets up from this level of surreal, aburdist comedy. The game describes itself as a Comedy Slapformer and it’s an incredibly accurate description. You have only 3 things you can control in game, move around, jump, or slap. Slapping is your characters only way to interact with the world, which is strange but it all wraps back into the absurdist nature of the comedy. Its surprising that this limitation never really gets stale, because there is a sense of the world reacting to your tiny little impactful palms.
By the time I had finished the game, it reminded me of Untitled Goose Game in the way that it takes such a simple premise and controls but creates so much fun with it.
Barnsworth is full of crazy characters, most of whom need assistance and greet you with the titular phrase, “Thank goodness you’re here!” Everyday problems that people have like mowing their lawn, or helping them get free from a road grate that they got their arm stuck in reaching for a shiny coin.The things you are asked to do, and the way you achieve these get more and more bizarre as you play on, but the comedy is always there. From the Milk Shy boy who just wants some milk in his tea, to the two pie makers with their pie-size based rivalry, there are so many small and big moments of humour written into this game.
Comedy is incredibly subjective, and Thank Goodness You’re Here takes a lot of inspiration from a lot of classic British Comedy. There’s echoes of Monty Python here, but also things like the League of Gentlemen, and the Mighty Boosh, and for me personally there wasn’t a single joke that didn’t land, many of which left me laughing out loud. The dialogue and jokes always twist and the punchline is never what you expect it is going to be. This is helped by the voice acting being incredible and includes the talents of Matt Berry.
The gameplay is simple as I mentioned but the town of Barnsworth is not. Thank goodness You’re Here is a very short game, taking me only 4 hours to get the Platinum in, but the areas you explore feel very detailed and full. You find yourselves looping through the main areas but each time you loop around there is always something new to see, some new effect of the mayhem you have caused to notice or some new comments to slap out of people.
The designs of characters and the world are so bizarre too, reminding me of something from cartoon network, like Regular Show or the Misadventures of Flapjack, but its just another thing that all ties the comedy together. Theres so much visual humour here that would not have landed if it wasn’t for the amount of care and detail that is in every single background on this game.
Trophy wise, there are quite a few missable things but the game is so short that it won’t take you long to play through it again to get them all. The main things to remember is just to slap everything, sometimes more than once. There are a few that I didn’t figure out how to get by myself so I will mention some tips for you as well.
The main trophy I missed was the Menage a Trois trophy, which you can get around halfway through the game. There will be a point where you need to jump on a bag of fertilser to help the gardener. Instead of doing this, head left, off-screen and keep going until you end up inside the house with the two people watching out of their window. It’s not clear you can leave the screen at all, so just bear it in mind.
The remaining trophies can be earned by exploring and talking to everyone. When you go back to an area, make sure to go talk to everyone and slap everything you can again. The other trophies I missed on my first run were for not checking everything that had changed, like not going into the pub on the third time back to the town square meant I missed the Think FAST trophy.
I would recommend not following a guide on your first playthrough, its a really short game and its one that is best experienced without worrying about finding everything.
I was incredibly surprised by how much I enjoyed Thank Goodness You’re Here. I know other reviews had been positive but with comedy its so easy to not gel with someone elses opinion on what is funny. This was a great game and such a nice way to spend an afternoon and I would highly recommend it to anyone who thinks this style of humour would work for them.
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