Stop what you’re doing, switch on your Xbox — if you don’t have an Xbox, buy one with Game Pass — and download Thank Goodness You’re Here!. If you haven’t already played it, which is the only reason to assume you’re an Xbox owner or don’t have a console or PC, you’re in for a real treat.
Thank Goodness You’re Here! is arguably the funniest game of the last decade — an experience so strange and proudly daft, which bowls you over with chaos and endless jokes to the point you wonder if you’ve suffered a light brain injury. I know this doesn’t sound entirely positive, but it’s most definitely accurate.
This two-hour Yorkshire fever dream from Coal Supper is one of my favorite experiences in recent memory — a game that only lost out to the sheer, unrelenting force of Balatro in my best indies of 2024 list — but it did, at least, claim a BAFTA along the way (even though it should’ve taken more).
When I first played Thank Goodness You’re Here!, I thought I knew exactly what I was in for. I was born in a Northern English town, raised on a solid diet of alternative British comedy, and I’ve since lived in Yorkshire for nearly 20 years. There are times when you rightly assume you’re the core demographic for a game, but I was wrong. This isn’t for me — it’s for everyone.
Its set-up is still the perfect bait-and-switch maneuver. Thank Goodness You’re Here! opens with a solemn, Pathé-like montage of mining towns, before fast-forwarding to an altogether slightly more modern world with adverts for tiny and huge pies.
Before you know it, you’re placed into the little shoes of an unnamed traveling salesman who wants to make a deal with the mayor of Barnsworth. Sadly, he’s busy, you’re bored with the waiting room, and your boredom gets the better of you, so you soon become quickly consumed by the town’s vast array of petty crises. With every early cry of “thank goodness you’re here!”, you’re dragged into a dozen disputes, dealing with philosophical mice, a huge-headed greengrocer, a fish-and-cig-monger, and a cow that loves chips.
Thank Goodness You’re Here! is less a game and more an interactive sketch show, with simple controls, lightly railroaded directions, and storytelling that consumes you to the extent that you’ll most likely clear it in a single sitting.
As with a load of big indie games over the last few years, Game Pass is a perfect platform to introduce Thank Goodness You’re Here! to a fresh audience who missed it on PC, Switch, and PlayStation — especially for North Americans who aren’t quite as au fait with surreal British humor. Honestly, despite being the perfect mark for stuff like this, I can’t think of a single person who would walk away from it and say they didn’t enjoy it.
Let December 9 be the day when Xbox finally provides a gateway to a place where reality collapses, ham becomes haunted by existential crises, and where a man repeatedly (and without asking) pokes his sausages through a hole in a fence.
