Thank Goodness You're Here Is Already 2024's Weirdest Game

Summary

• Thank Goodness might seem like a slightly more dirty Beano comic, but it's hiding some truly unsettling moments.
• From diving into the mind of a hunk of meat to helping a cow produce some "normal milk", it's easily the weirdest game of 2024.
• God, I wish I could forget the milk scene.

From the moment Thank Goodness You’re Here was revealed with its strange British medley of flashers, bum slapping, chimney diving, and fish sucking down on ciggies, it’s been clear that its tongue is firmly planted in its lager-swilling cheek. You don’t come to Barnsworth for a sensible gander around town, I can tell you that much.

With that knowledge in mind, I thought I was ready for how strange Thank Goodness was going to get. I assumed I was in for a cheeky little parody of English life mixed in with a little bit of dirty humour. While I was right about those two things, dear god I was wrong about so much else - Thank Goodness You’re Here is one of the most bizarre games I’ve played for a long time, and certainly the weirdest of 2024.

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Things start off normal enough with your little lemonhead businessman killing time in Barnsworth’s town centre and nipping around the shops to help a tuppence-chasing posh boy free his arm from a drain. Not normal normal, but normal for what Thank Goodness You’re Here promised. That task required a quick trip to the pub and some swimming in beer to give the local locksmith his most British of traditions, a morning pint, but it was all still only a little odd and mostly focused on taking the mick out of small-town England.

Ring Around The Murdered Posie

Still, even as I was chuckling at Reggie’s wife learning a thing or two, getting nostalgic about bins of all things, and slapping Matt Berry’s character on the bum, I couldn’t shake the feeling that something more sinister was steeping like a teabag under the surface. After all, my peaceful walk through the gardens was bookended by murdering a flower with a lawnmower while they were professing their love for another daisy.

That sudden spout of darkness combined with the nonsensical advice I received from an owl in a tree (never give an owl a towel, apparently) and an invite to dinner from a mole and his “mole wife” to give me some heavy Don’t Hug Me I’m Scared vibes. As cute and Beano-esque as the graphics are, there is clearly a darker edge to the humour that’s rearing its oddly-shaped head every now and again.

More surreal and uneasy jokes followed. A cult of rats preparing revenge on ‘the Biggies’. Murdering mindless potatoes. Continued bullying of the hapless posho stuck down the drain. Then came my encounter with a meaty bit of body horror. It starts ordinary enough, as Big Ron asks you to get some meat from the local butcher for his iconic Big Pies.

This strange moment in particular is very reminiscent of Coal Supper’s last game, The Good Time Garden.

Not-So-Nice To Meat You

Fetch quests are the bread and butter of Thank Goodness, so I expected to head over, grab some meat, slap it a bit, and then hear some jokes about beating my meat. Standard fare. Instead, I got a psychedelic trip into the mind of the beef that had me pottering around a creepy meaty landscape and talking to some gnarled steak faces that recited dark poetry at my nonplussed protagonist.

After the big ball of beef merged into a terrifying creature that I continued travelling inside, I eventually sourced Big Ron with what he needed and baked a shop-sized pie. I barely had enough time to get over the trauma before moving on to another absurd moment that stands out as the peak of Thank Goodness’ oddities.

Once I’d fixed a fryer so Barnsworth could enjoy its fish and chips again, I stumbled across an upset football fan just trying to make a brew and failing due to being “milk-shy”. I probably should have questioned what that meant, but I happily wandered over to the local cow for some “normal milk”.

It was not normal milk.

God I Wish It Was Normal Milk

I didn’t bat an eyelid at the bovine needing a fish and chip dinner to get it going, but suddenly its eyes widened like it had a disco biscuit and my little yellow businessman became a voyeur to a steamy hot tub menage a trois between the boy, the farmer, and the cow. That encounter ended with the boy being suggestively blasted in the face with white stuff and becoming milk-shy no more.

When Thank Goodness You’re Here isn’t outright disturbing you, its weirdness comes from its tonal whiplash, like when you’re trying to get some fertiliser from the local big-headed greengrocer and discover his tragic bullied past in a Vietnam-style flashback. I didn’t expect the eggplant-shaped man to be one of the emotional cores of Thank Goodness, but I guess I didn’t learn my lesson from the meat and milk scenes.

Those examples are just the tip of the iceberg for how strange things get, especially if you’re just expecting to see jokes about cups of tea, fish and chips, and pints at the pub. Thank Goodness You’re Here is multifaceted in its weirdness and surprising at nearly every turn, which makes it a must-play game in 2024. You certainly won’t play anything stranger.

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