Thank Goodness You're Here!
I took some time last week to play Thank Goodness You're Here, which loads of people had been recommending me for a while. I finished it in a single sitting one evening after work - it's the perfect size to fit into your life like that.
And it's extremely good!!! God, I loved it. Fun writing, brilliantly funny mechanical gags, an incredible sense of place, and cartoon art that feels a bit like flash animation from the early 2000s all grown up. I felt repeatedly while I was playing the game that this is what you get when people grow up on Newgrounds and then alchemize all those experiences into the ultimate cartoon masterpiece. Great stuff.
The game consists of a variety of scenes, many with unique perspectives or camera angles, which the player navigates as a tiny, lemon-headed little man in a buttondown and a tie. He's knee-height compared to most of the people in the game... though he's sometimes inexplicably even smaller. He has one ability: the ability to open-hand smack any person or thing in the world. And everyone in town needs him to solve their problems.
The game also consists of a brilliantly choreographed and overlapping set of "quests", each beginning when a character in town gasps, "thank goodness you're here!" and makes some plaintive request. Various restaurants need help with supplies or broken cooking equipment. Someone needs assistance going grocery-shopping. A cow at the farm isn't functioning properly.
Each major scene in town is a bit open-ended, like the neighborhoods in Untitled Goose Game. You explore to find things you're able to slap, then get caught up in the consequences. These more open-ended scenes are connected by lengthy, bizarre, one-way connection paths that funnel you more linearly through a series of deranged interactive sequences. When you're asked to bring fertilizer to the farm, you might have to tromp through a variety of characters' living rooms, businesses, drain pipes, and so on to get to the store and buy some.
This allows for some fantastic and subtle changes to the scenes over time. Many gags take multiple visits to play out - you'll have to fall down a man's chimney five or six times to see his entire saga. Graffiti on an alley wall changes over time; a quarrel between a boy and his girlfriend's parents spools out in different rooms of the house as you repeatedly use their drain pipe to cross town.
It's very cool structurally - the game is so wise about its pacing! I was paying very close attention to how, and how often, it takes advantage of exploration gags vs restricted, linear joke sequences. There's also a couple surreal sequences where the player is trapped in a (hallucinated?) space, and you must spend time figuring out the rules of the environment so that you can slap your way out. The pacing is simply excellent - it carefully teaches you how to operate in this world, but never stops subverting itself or surprising you. Masterclass stuff, honestly.
The game takes place in northern England and is largely written in text meant to evoke a local dialect. On top of all the brilliant design craft here there's also a clear love for a very specific place and a very specific population of people. It's also crass in a very fun way - it's full of adult jokes without quite managing to be gross.
Anyway, I know I'm a bit late to the party on this one, but if you enjoy comedy in games, this one's a delight. There's also a lot to learn from it!!