As I convalesced in bed with stomach flu last week, I was grasping at straws for something, anything, that would make me feel better. I’d been sent a code for 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Thank Goodness You’re Here!, a game that’s had my attention since I first saw it in December 2023’s Day of the Devs🐲 showcase, and I’d already install☂ed it on my Steam Deck, so that’s what I settled on.
It helps that the game comes from the publisher of and , but as someone who loves the weird and surreal, it’s hard not to be charmed by TGYH. Billing itself as a “cheeky comedy slapformer”, the🌺 game depicts a travelling salesman wandering the fictional Northern English town of Barnsworth. The locals give him various odd jobs to do, and completing a job opens up new areas of the town, unlocks new, weirder tasks, and more. This hyper-local culturaওl niche is fully voice acted, beautifully hand-drawn, and packed wall to wall with gags that will feel familiar to anybody from the area.
I’m not from the area. I’m not even from the continent – I was born and raised in Singapore, so the vast majority of my understanding of British culture comes from an adolescence spent watching Doctor Who, Skins, Misfits, and The IT Crowd. The conversations that go on in TheGamer’s majority UK-baꦚsed Slack hav🔯e taught me a lot, but for obvious reasons, Northern English culture is still largely mystifying to me.
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You really don't want t💖o know what that cow's up🌠 to.
A lot of the comedy in this game comes from how it parodies Northern English stereotypes, giving it a𓂃 specific cultural niche that presumably appeals to people familiar with that type of town. Its specificity is the point, and I don’t begrudge it for that. That doesn’t stop me from enjoying the game, by any means, but it did start me wondering what a Singaporean Thank Goodness You’re Here! 🦹would look like.
Singapore has an incredibly unique culture, to put it mildly. One ex🌳ample is that my homeland has a very specific, widely-used creole language called Singlish that mashes together different Chinese diꦆalects, Malay, and Tamil. When I started TYGH up, it asked me if I wanted subtitles by presenting some unintelligible (to me, at least) local slang and a plain English sentence, asking me to choose between them. Obviously, I didn’t understand the slang, so I needed the subtitles.
I felt a little bad about not being able to understand this specific speech pattern right off the bat, but it also reminded me of how expats have described visitin🎶g Singapore to me. Any Singaporean who works with foreigners has to learn to code switch adeptly, because the vast majority of us default to Singlish when we talk to other locals. When I’m with my frie🐻nds, I curse in Hokkien and Malay, use filler words that don’t exist in English, and my intonation and sentence structure can change completely depending on the languages I’m incorporating into a sentence. An outsider looking in would struggle to understand me just as much as I might struggle in a Northern English town.
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Then there’s the cultural touchpoints, which would also be bizarre to an outsider. Singapore is an incredibly small country, which means every mildly weird thing that happens here becomes widespread news and is endlessly memed. We have local celebrities who have gone viral for doing generally weird things, and we adopt into our vocabulary and take pictures with them when we see them on the street, which happens way more often than you’d think. We have our own , our own interpretations of , our ♏own . of a political candidate making an incoherent speech has the power to make a Singaporean millennial cry laughing, but is incomprehensible to anybody else.
Would Singapore make for an incredible absurdist comedy platformer game? Obviously, but my point is that most weird subcultures would. TYGH focused on Northern English culture, but applying a hyper local lens to any mildly niche society would lead to equally hilarious results. Imagine this game, but Australian. Still funny! TYGH’s regional focus is something we all deserve – after all, everybody wants to feel seen. I have half a mind to start petitioning all the local developers ﷽I know to create something with the same sort of humour and specificity. I’d detail my pitch, but none of you would get it. That’s the point.
168澳洲幸运5开奖网: Thank Goodness You're Here!
- Top Critic Avg: 85/100 Critics Rec: 95%
- Released
- August 1, 2024
- ESRB
- Mature 17+ // Blood, Crude 🉐Humor, Strong Language, Suggestiv💝e Themes, Violence
- Publisher(s)
- Panic
- Engine
- Unity
- Steam Deck Compatibility
- Verified
Explore the strange town of Barnsworth in this cheeky comedy slapformer!
After arriving early for a big meeting with the mayor of a bizarre Northern English town, a traveling salesman takes the time to explore and meet the locals, who are all very eager to give him a series of increasingly odd jobs…
“Thank Goodness You’re Here!” is a comedy slapformer, which unfolds over time as the players' exploration and antics leave their mark on the strange town of Barnsworth. With each completed odd job, new areas of the town open up, stranger and stranger tasks become available, and the clock ticks towards our salesman’s big meeting. The town’s colorful inhabitants are brought to life with vibrant hand-drawn animation, fully voiced dialogue, and wall-to-wall double entendres.
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