Thank Goodness You're Here! review

Our VerdictA gleefully anarchic treasure trove of jokes and skits, TGYH is the funniest game I’ve played.

Our Verdict

A gleefully anarchic treasure trove of jokes and skits, TGYH is the funniest game I’ve played.

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Review catch-up(Image credit: Coal Supper)There were a few games last year that we didn’t have time to review, so before 2025 gets too crazy we’re playing review catch-up and rectifying some of these omissions. So if you’re reading this and wondering if you’ve slipped through a wormhole back into 2024, don’t worry, you’ve not become unfastened from time. We’re just running late.

Review catch-up

(Image credit: Coal Supper)There were a few games last year that we didn’t have time to review, so before 2025 gets too crazy we’re playing review catch-up and rectifying some of these omissions. So if you’re reading this and wondering if you’ve slipped through a wormhole back into 2024, don’t worry, you’ve not become unfastened from time. We’re just running late.

(Image credit: Coal Supper)

Thank Goodness You’re Here review

There were a few games last year that we didn’t have time to review, so before 2025 gets too crazy we’re playing review catch-up and rectifying some of these omissions. So if you’re reading this and wondering if you’ve slipped through a wormhole back into 2024, don’t worry, you’ve not become unfastened from time. We’re just running late.

Thank Goodness You’re Here! has an unwavering commitment to eliciting the kind of laughter that makes a little bit of pee come out. From the opening montage of surreal, whimsical and ever-so-slightly unnerving adverts to the anarchic musical number it ends on, it offers no time to breathe between all the guffawing you’ll be doing. But it is absolutely worth risking the gag-induced asphyxiation for—it’s a small price to pay.

At the end of last year, we called it theBest Comedy Gamein our 2024 GOTYs, but for some reason we never actually got around to reviewing it, and thus it falls to me to slap a number on this thing and tell you that you owe it to yourself to spend a couple of hours exploring the fictional Yorkshire town of Barnsworth.

(Image credit: Coal Supper)

Thank Goodness You’re Here review

Technically we’re in adventure game territory, but it has little in common with its joke-filled compatriots like Monkey Island and Sam & Max. You’ll find no tricky conundrums or pixel-hunting puzzles here. Instead, playing as a nameless, voiceless, dogsbody of inconsistent size—allowing you to, say, explore a disturbing meat dimension inside a slab of ham—you’ll mostly be finding yourself at the centre of increasingly bizarre skits.

Your task is to help the eccentric residents of Barnsworth with simple problems. Typically, the solution amounts to simply pushing forward, exploring this weird cartoon reality and embracing its lunacy. Sometimes you’ll jump on something, knock another thing over, or give someone a playful slap. There’s no inventory management to take you out of the world. Rather, you’re like a child, randomly touching things with your sticky fingers to see what will happen.

Despite the absence of headscratchers, though, solving problems in Thank Goodness You’re Here! is just as satisfying, if not more so, than it is in a traditional adventure game—such is the power of the jokes and their pay-offs.

(Image credit: Coal Supper)

Thank Goodness You’re Here review

One task sees you helping a new bed-ridden pal do their shopping, which immediately becomes a ridiculous escapade when you realise that their hand will be accompanying you, as their increasingly long arm slithers across Barnsworth. Inside the shop, you’ll need to find the perfect soup for them, but it’s just another excuse for a lark as you cause a terrible mess on the shelves and revel in some very silly product names, like “Tiny Tom’s Tinned Pie” and “Herbert’s Lovely Boy Soup”. Knocking a tin of “Soup To Push” into the trolley, your pal—talking through their hand—will complain that it’s “too meta”.

Barnsworth is a small town, but you’ll do several loops of it, giving the game the opportunity to create some brilliant running gags. God, there are so many great ones, full of escalating madness. But my favourite has to be the use of a chimney as a shortcut, covering a poor old fella’s living room in soot, time and time again. The way the homeowner becomes resigned to their fate, trapped in a filthy cycle, endlessly tidying their home only for a tiny man to ruin it without offering even a single apology, it’s slightly tragic. But mostly very funny.

(Image credit: Coal Supper)

Thank Goodness You’re Here review

The tone is cheeky and often veers into the puerile—plenty of cartoon violence and jokes about bodily functions—and along with the art style this gives Thank Goodness You’re Here! strong Viz vibes. For the uninitiated (and outside of the UK, that’s probably most of you),Vizis a long-running adult comic that serves as a rude alternative to the likes of The Beano and Dandy. The surrealism and occasional dark undertones, meanwhile, call to mind fellow Northern comedy The League of Gentleman.

One crucial difference, though, is that Thank Goodness You’re Here! is never mean-spirited, nor does it set out to shock—though it’s certainly full of surprises. Barnsworth might be filled to the brim with lunatics, but it’s never anything less than warm and welcoming. It’s steeped in colloquialisms and geographically specific oddities, but it’s not a million miles away from Parks and Rec’s Pawnee, Indiana.

It might be harder for players outside of the UK to connect with, but none of its gags are really exclusionary. If you’ve ever laughed at Monty Python, I Think You Should Leave, Aunty Donna—basically any surrealist sketch show—you’re probably going to have a great couple of hours slapping your way through Barnsworth.

(Image credit: Coal Supper)

Thank Goodness You’re Here review

Indeed, a lot of effort went into getting the jokes to work in different languages,from Brazilian Portuguese to Simplified Chinese, since so many of them don’t really make sense in a straight translation. But the concept of a small post-industrial town full of oddballs is pretty universal. Besides, when you’re dealing with a game as strange as Thank Goodness You’re Here!, everything doesn’t have to make complete sense.

The lunacy, though, belies how tightly structured it is, as it funnels you through sketch after sketch, ensuring that no space or character is wasted. It is meticulously designed to evoke an absurd number of laughs per minute. And when it’s over, you’ll be pleasantly exhausted. It is so rare in games for something to give itself entirely to the noble pursuit of leaving us in stitches, and Thank Goodness You’re Here! does so with such skill and glee that it’s impossible to avoid becoming smitten.

The Verdict90Read our review policyThank Goodness You’re Here!A gleefully anarchic treasure trove of jokes and skits, TGYH is the funniest game I’ve played.

The Verdict

90Read our review policyThank Goodness You’re Here!A gleefully anarchic treasure trove of jokes and skits, TGYH is the funniest game I’ve played.

90Read our review policy

Thank Goodness You’re Here!A gleefully anarchic treasure trove of jokes and skits, TGYH is the funniest game I’ve played.

Thank Goodness You’re Here!

A gleefully anarchic treasure trove of jokes and skits, TGYH is the funniest game I’ve played.

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If 2024 proves anything, it’s that mainstream success hasn’t made PC gaming any less weird—and thank God for thatBest Comedy 2024: Thank Goodness You’re Here!

Thank Goodness You’re Here! key art

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LatestWormhole is an impeccable arcade revival of Snake that plays like it fell off the back of Derek Yu’s vanSee more latest►

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Our Verdict#

Our Verdict