Thank Goodness You’re Here (Switch) Review

Have you ever played a game and thought to yourself the entire time, “What am I actually playing?” Then, upon finishing the game, you find yourself walking around like the sad Pablo Escobar meme, pensive—and it’s actually a good thing?

Thank Goodness You’re Here is that kind of game—a game that makes you question what you’re playing at every turn. This is a short one, but for the entire runtime, you’re sucked into the fictional 1980s town of Barnsworth, playing as a character without a name or purpose, lending a hand because somehow your character is the solution to all the townspeople’s problems.

This game is tough to review because it’s even hard to explain what it’s about. The developers, Coal Supper, call it a “slapformer,” but there’s a lot more to it than just slapping people and platforming. The unnamed protagonist arrives in 1980s Barnsworth to sell something to the Mayor, and while waiting for the meeting, they end up solving all the town’s problems in the most absurd ways. You can only interact with anything in the game by slapping, something most of the locals don’t have a problem with you doing.

Barnsworth is a small village, and you’ll visit the same places over the course of the day. The more you interact with and touch, the more opens up, and the more odd jobs you pick up. There’s no UI, no way to track what you’re doing or where to go—you just find your way like in a point-and-click adventure game of old. Can’t figure out what to do? Just go around and smack everything, because almost everything in the game reacts to slaps: people, objects, animals, and more.

If that sounds a bit silly, it’s because it is. The entire game doesn’t take itself seriously at all; it’s downright ludicrous, and you’ll go from one absurd moment to the next. Without spoiling too much, you’ll feed a cow some chippies to get its milk, swim through beer to fix a pub’s kegs, dodge produce from a green grocer with a giant head, “smacky bum bum” a food van employee, visit Price Shaggers and help out the employees. You’ll even help bring back an old Admiral’s birds while he’s sitting on a loo with no pants, letting it all hang out. While he lives in a dumpster. It’s not some massive dumpster either, our protagonist will shrink and grow in size to suit the situation, there’s no rules here. There’s just silliness around every corner. The game goes very low with humour, but I’m all for it.

The game’s length is perfect as well; if it were any longer, it would have even more repetition than it already has. However, the existing repetition works well. You’ll visit the same locations many times, but things change, and the stories of the townspeople progress—sometimes for the good, sometimes for the bad. I don’t think there’s much reason to play it a second time in terms of gameplay, but there will be jokes and events in the town that you’ll no doubt miss the first time.

The game’s amazing art style is also something of a feast; it looks and plays like a cartoon running in real-time. There’s a little slowdown here and there, but for the most part, it’s a perfectly animated experience. The game’s music and cast also do a tremendous job of selling the small UK town vibe. It’s a work of art. Be sure to turn on the subtitles, the North English accents are a doozy.

Thank Goodness You’re Here is an experience. It’s still a video game, sure, but over the two to three-hour runtime, you’ll constantly question what exactly you’re playing, and by the end, you’ll still have no idea what you just went through—but in a good way! It’s one of the weirdest games I’ve ever played but also one of the most fun.

Rating: 4.5/5