Summary
- Thank Goodness You're Here is set in the fictitious Yorkshire town of Barnsworth, which is absolutely, definitely not Barnsley.
- It's not just set dressing though, the little squabbles and interpolitics of its community make this an authentic small town in a way no other game has captured before.
I grew up in a small northern village surrounded by fields, woodlands, and more fields. It was like Hot Fuzz without the cult of murder-y pensioners, in that ‘📖everyone knows everyone’ way. We went to church with the lollipop lady who helped u🅠s cross the road to school, the local corner shop we called Bobby’s was run by a classmate’s dad, and doing the YMCA dance on the main road somehow found its way back to my parents through the post office. Nothing if not efficient.
A 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:proper northern village, for the record. None of that midlandꦺs crap.
I’ve never played a game that captured that feeling of a small town living in its own bubble with the community feeding off of its own gossip. Small towns are usually the eerie backdrop for a horror story, using the endless fields as a way to seal the village off from the outside world so that you are truly trapped. The locals are often enigmatic and unsettling, rather than mundane and ordinary. Thank goodness for 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Thank Goodness You’re Here.
Min🏅or spoilers for Thank Goodness You’re Here.
My colleagues have been singing this game’s praises ever since they 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:previewed it at Gamescom last year, and the idea of an adult cartoon set in a Yorkshire town where you slap everyone to talk to them had me immediately hooked. Gaming often swings too far into cozy or violent, so this strange middle ground is a breath of fresh Yorkie air. But what really surprised me after staying up till midnight eagerly enthralling myself in this town’s problems was that it feels so real (something the devs tell us was 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:a complete accident).
Even with a strange baked bean-obsessed colonial war general living in a bin and a man who goes shopping with his enormous snake arms that stretch the length of Barnsworth, the conversations, bickering, and tiny rivalries all feel like something you’d hear sitting outside the newsagents. There’s a scene later on where the💜 entire town puts aside their differences and has a drink at the pub. The snide remarks and backstabbing jabs become sarcastic in-jokes, because as much as eac🅷h clique might clash, grudges are hard to keep when you have to see these people every day.
The big versus little pies even felt like the stereotypical small town argument over local shops and mega chains—if you shop at Tesco and not Bobby’s, you’re a traitor! It’s so cl🍌ear that this game was crafted by people who have lived this experience, the care and attention to detail꧂ making it one big nostalgic return home. But an understated gem of Thank Goodness You’re Here is how well it captures the stir-crazy monotony without it devolving into a violent spectacle.
Over the course of the game, you sift through all these petty conflicts while helping people with the most mundane chores. Someone asks for you to get them milk for t🍎heir tea, and someone else jokes that you need to nip down to the shop and get some spirit level bubbles—the game makes these a lot less dull by having you enter the mind of a hallucinating cow and catching said bubbles with a net that takes you into the atmosphere—but the rhy🥀thm of chore after chore and back-to-back bickering wears down our little lemon-headed friend.
By the end, he bursts, and the credits roll. No more helping, he’s at his limit. This town squabbles over the most minute problems as being in a small town makes the minute feel larger than life, because it is your entire life. You’re always surrounded by these people and so the quarrels spiral into 𝐆verbal brawls. It would’ve been all too easy for Thank Goodness You’re Here to use the small town as little more than idyllic set dressing, but so much of the comedy is weaved through the politics and ordinary everyday life of those who live in these quaint villages.
It’s essentially a very English Smiling Friends in how well it captures👍 the way we t🌟alk and behave to such a realistic degree despite the over-the-top, ludicrously silly nightmare fuel. At one point, we murder romantic flowers and chop up sentient potatoes, but it feels grounded and true to life in all the places it matters. Thank Goodness You’re Here isn’t just a trip to 🥃Yorkshire, it’s a snippet of what life is like in these small northern towns.
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+ // 𝔉Blood, Crude Humor, Strong Language, Suggestive 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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