Thank Goodness You’re Here! Review (PS5) – Video games aren’t exactly known for being funny. Sure they’re known for being funny by mistake, with bugs and glitches that cause hilarious hoodwinks. But they aren’t really known for being funny on purpose.
A few games stand out with certain characters that have a few good jokes here and there, but that comedy is just one element of the story. When a game tries to make being funny part of its whole being, then we get into warmer water that most games don’t survive from. Very few games can be all about jokes and still be fun to play.
Untitled Goose Game published by Panic stood out as much as it did because it was both hilarious and a good game. So it’s no surprise that Thank Goodness You’re Here!, another game published by Panic, is able to achieve the same heights as the goose game before it.
Thank Goodness You’re Here! is an absolutely hilarious little puzzle game that’ll have you replaying it just to try and find even more jokes.
Thank Goodness You’re Here! Review (PS5) – Short, Sweet, And Hilarious
Welcome To Barnsworth
Some housekeeping about me, I’m not English, and more specifically I’m not Northern English. Which is just to say that I’m sure there’s levels of jokes in Thank Goodness You’re Here!, but even if I missed a few there were enough I did get to keep me laughing for my entire playthrough.
It’s a simple enough premise – in what my guess is what’s meant to be the most Northern English town you’ve ever seen, you’re sent to Barnsworth by your boss to speak to the Lord Mayor of the town.
When you get there by jumping onto the bus, the mayor is occupied, so you can wait in reception for a trophy or you can walk outside to the rest of the town and the game, where everyone you come across will be pleased to see you.
You go around helping people, who have caught themselves in silly problems and you help them through even sillier solutions. Sometimes it all becomes a bit absurd, but at every moment, it is funny.
That’s what’s so charming and lovable about Thank Goodness You’re Here!. It’s not only funny, it has the decency to be charming by preying on a presumably good-natured player who appreciates the feeling of having helped someone. It’s even funnier when you really don’t help them at all. You can only interact with the world by walking around, jumping, jumping on things, and punching everything.
Limiting your interactions like that means you don’t always find the straightforward solution to everyone’s problems, but they all appreciate it nonetheless.
And I have to mention that the art style and the animations go a long way in making it just as charming as it is, even during the more absurdist and arguably disturbing parts that really help to give Thank Goodness You’re Here! some kick.
A Perfect Blend Made Quick
One thing I left out as a reason that Untitled Goose Game really is funny, is because it’s short. Thank Goodness You’re Here! follows the same pattern by also being short, though I’d argue developer Coal Supper was more successful here at pacing everything out.
Across seven chapters or so you solve a series of puzzles that each build up to one big solution which progresses you on to the next chapter. Within those chapters you can go exploring for hidden things to do and of course smaller jokes that really fill-in the scenery, but it’s mostly a very linear process through it all.
And I appreciated that immensely. Just to keep things within games published by Panic, I found Goose Game to lack the kind of direction I appreciated here.
It’s a point of comparison that works well because while Goose Game’s lack of direction often just led me to pointless mulling about, Thank Goodness You’re Here’s more focused direction pulled my hour-and-a-bit long experience with it towards a really amazing time.
The laughs, like the puzzles, stack on top of themselves, and just as soon as I was done having a good time solving and laughing along with one puzzle, I had a new one in my lap, and then it was all over before the joke mill ran dry.
Finally on top of all that, I appreciated how your limited interactions served as a constant reminder as to how you might want to solve a puzzle. You can only do so much, so might as well pay attention to the things the game is clearly telling you that you can do.
Funneling you towards the solution rather than letting you punch a bin that you think holds the answer when it hasn’t changed in shape or sound since you started punching it.
Short, Sweet And Hilarious (At Least To Me)
In a lot of ways, I can’t recommend Thank Goodness You’re Here! enough. In a lot of others, I understand that there are people with different comedic preferences.
The jokes you’ll find in Thank Goodness You’re Here! are so specific to the kind of British humour people in the UK grew up with, the jokes that begin with silly premises with sillier punchlines.
You may have caught that I didn’t go into detail on any of the jokes here. I don’t want to spoil them past the screenshots you see here, because they’re much better when you experience them properly.
That said, I can at least recommend that you perhaps check out just one or two trailers before making the decision to jump in. If Thank Goodness You’re Here! already seems like up your comedic alley, then it is absolutely worth the price of admission and more.
If not, then I can’t say I totally understand you, because truly this is some funny s***, but to each their own, especially because the more absurdist parts will likely not go over well with you at all.
My lack of understanding aside, that discrepancy is what keeps Thank Goodness You’re Here! from being the must-play game that Untitled Goose Game was when it first launched.
Still, it’s a hilarious puzzle game that ought to be examined for how to weave gameplay and comedy together, and how to pace it all out so that you’re not immediately deleting it from your console the moment it’s done.
Thank Goodness You’re Here! is now available on PS5 and PS4.
Review code generously provided by the publisher.