The Indie Informer

Everything you need to know about about Thank Goodness You’re Here! happens in the first fifteen minutes or so. The unexpectedly live-action, ’70s-looking opening footage is a clear tip-of-the-hat to Monty Python. The song playing over it strikes to the tune of George Formby. The legendary comedy troop and infamous innuendo songwriter from decades past are influences woven into the fabric of British comedic history — they’re both also absurdly witty and irreverent.

So, if you can pick up on both these cues, you already know to expect exactly what the game delivers: A surreal, hilarious, and tongue-in-cheek adventure that’s quintessentially British. The slapping action and joyful artwork work is just a bonus.

It’s okay if the deep cuts fly over your head, however, because Thank Goodness You’re Here’s humor is not hard to pick up on. The team — geniously — even bakes a closed caption option right into the intro. Not that I knew that’s what it was at the time. The developers perfectly obscure it by posing a question in the game’s northern English dialect. If you don’t know what it’s asking, the game defaults to captions, and finding that out was in itself a delight.

Finishing out the first fifteen minutes of must-have knowledge is my first introduction to the game’s mechanics. And really, there isn’t one. After being bombarded by a cacophony of animated and outrageously satirical commercials for the fictional city of Barnsworth, I find myself with my first task: Leave my bosses office to begin my journey.

Doors, of course, are out of the question and there is nothing like a tutorial in sight. That’s okay. The game boasts only two actions — a slap and a jump. Roaming around the room stuffed with visual gags — my personal favorite being the plummeting Steam Sales graph on the far left wall — I work out how to escape the glass-encased office. Its unconventionality gets a shocked, perfectly timed comment from my employer.

Then, it got even better. I had the rare pleasure of laughing at a Latin joke. Above a door in the starting area in Barnsworth is this phrase: “Fortis In Brachio, Crassus In Capite.” If you don’t keep up with long-dead ancient languages, that translates roughly to “Strong In Arm, Thick In Head.” This game was literally made for me.

The gameplay mixes together generous helpings of happenstance and radical acceptance. I’ll never get an explanation as to why I’m putting cigarettes in the mouths of dead fish — and I really don’t need to know, I just need to go with it. The developers display impressive skill in making every objective intuitive without any explicit communication. That’s hard to do, and that it all seems like an accident only makes the game feel more like a fever dream.

The small catch to this is working out where to go or remembering my current quest isn’t always right in front of me. I have to trust the developers will lead me in the right direction, but those snatches of moments where I feel unsure of myself can be off-putting.

I have yet to cross the finish line on Thank Goodness You’re Here! but it’s only a question of when, not if, I get there. This is one of the year’s best indie games.