Thank Goodness You’re Here! Brilliantly Satirizes Videogame Tropes

In most videogames, your character is the center of the universe. Whether it’s a kingdom that needs saving, a world-ending prophecy that needs to be averted, or a god that needs to be slain, the world sits in stasis until you blast through the armies that keep you from your goal. Even in notoriously difficult titles, like those made by FromSoftware, death is only a temporary setback, and your immortal undead can keep hucking themself at a problem until it’s solved.

But of course, there is a difference between how unstoppable the main character is when you’re actively puppeteering them and what they’re like during cutscenes or diegetically within the narrative. After all, for most stories to function, there needs to be friction and pushback so the protagonist can’t simply do whatever they want. Most of the time, waltzing up to the final boss right away isn’t an option (unless you’re a speedrunner), and instead, you have to get through a procession of detours to arrive at your destination.

One of the most common ways for games to slow down your progress, especially in open-world ones, is by introducing characters who require you to complete a whole bunch of ancillary tasks that are only tangentially tied to your main objective before rewarding you with some mission-critical item, like a MacGuffin or information. Sending the protagonist on this kind of side journey isn’t unique to games, but it feels much more common in a medium where storytelling is often deprioritized compared to providing reasons to use your cool powers or engage with the open world. At their best, these kinds of digressions tie into the overarching narrative and themes, but at their worst, they are busywork that has little to do with our character’s quest and are mostly there to stop our unstoppable god-protagonist from reaching their goal before this journey has reached an acceptable hour count.

And then there’s Thank Goodness You’re Here!, a one-of-a-kind comedy “slapformer” which makes this kind of busywork a delight. You play as an unnamed little dude sent by his employer to meet with the mayor of Barnsworth, a Northern English town mostly known for its war between rival meat pie manufacturers and a promotional video that includes a family being sent into the mines. When you arrive, you’re told by the mayor’s receptionist to wait until his schedule clears up. At this point, a door cracks open to the outside world, and the implication is clear: go waste time until you can meet with the mayor.

From here, a delightfully nonsensical series of mishaps unfold as your tiny protagonist explores this town and meets the weirdos who live here. There’s a local goober whose arm is stuck in a grate, a guy who loves kicking bikes, an angry Scottish mechanic, and, of course, the feuding meat pie magnates. Your only methods to interact with the world are to move, jump, and slap, as you solve light puzzles that sow chaos.

Along the way, you’ll be greeted by the same phrase over and over, “Thank goodness you’re here!” These words signal the beginning of a new “quest,” such as fixing an oven so Marge can cook her chips or helping someone get their groceries. While these objectives may sound like chores, these skits amplify mundane tasks to over-the-top extremes and deliver as high a rate of gags-per-minute as any game I can think of.

Much of the absurdity comes from these townies being so eager to have you solve all their problems despite the fact you’re some random guy. Even though you play as a diminutive, balding middle-aged man, each of these “quest givers,” for lack of a better term, greets you as if you’re the type of foretold hero on the cover of most big-budget games, creating a hilarious contrast between this doofy character and their outsized role. They talk like you’re the only person who can help them when you’re just some random salaryman who likes to slap things. He’s like, a tenth as tall as everyone else and has a vacant look in his eyes that never stops being very funny, the blankest of blank slates. But the thing is, while there’s no in-world reason for the townsfolk to deify him, he is the only figure who can accomplish these tasks, mechanically anyway. After all, he’s the main character in a videogame, and so the entire digital world needs to revolve around him even though he probably spends his weekends watching paint dry.

It’s a good bit, and like many of the game’s recurring jokes, it escalates as things go on. At first, you’re freeing children from drainage, but eventually, you’re journeying into body horror meat dimensions, acting as a fourth wheel on a nightmarish date involving a cow, and accidentally unleashing gallons of burning hot grease upon the local populace. The jokes get weirder, more feverish, and more complicated as you become familiar with these charming recurring characters. Over its relatively brief three hours, it captures a grinding sense of repetition while still making us crack up at every turn, accomplishing the difficult task of making us do the thing it’s making fun of—inane quest chains—without falling into tedium.

And then comes the ending sequence. As our protagonist is sucked into their umpteenth side journey, a tuba kicks in. Suddenly, we’re in a frenzied musical number where townie after townie presents us with new tasks to accomplish, like fixing a clock or sawing a fish. The montage keeps going as we mash buttons and slam the stick to complete each chore, things growing more delirious as bread grows a face, the butcher gets his hand stuck in the meat grinder, and you crash a car. The cuts get faster and faster until all you see is surreal imagery, and the townspeople chanting in unison like this is a ritual from The Wicker Man. Then, our protagonist escapes and slams the town hall door, panting and exhausted, finally back where he’s supposed to be.

The receptionist lets him know the mayor is finally ready. The door opens, and you walk in, having completed the heap of meaningless tasks that blocked you from reaching your goal. But then you hear those four dreaded words again, this time from the mayor: “Thank goodness you’re here!” He goes on, “I’m just about to tuck into this delicious ham sandwich, but I’ve lost the mayoral mustard!” Smash cut to the title card as the little salaryman presumably performs mundane busywork for the rest of his days.

It’s very hard to lampshade tropes, in this case, to poke fun at how games frequently drown the player in an endless sea of mundane tasks only tangentially related to their overall goal, while still making it fun to engage with the thing being satirized, but Thank Goodness You’re Here! is more than up to the task. Thanks to its non-stop humor, fantastic line deliveries, and gross-out animation, it’s easy to forget you’re in the middle of another long-winded digression that has little to do with what you came here for. In fact, these nonsensical side-adventures are very much the point, constantly introducing extended jokes that blast apart the scaffolding that holds together many games. All things considered, this ability to poke fun at cliches is essential to what makes Thank Goodness You’re Here! one of the funniest games I’ve ever played. Well, that and the meat pie innuendos.

Elijah Gonzalez is an assistant Games and TV Editor for Paste Magazine. In addition to playing and watching the latest on the small screen, he also loves film, creating large lists of media he’ll probably never actually get to, and dreaming of the day he finally gets through all the Like a Dragon games. You can follow him on Twitter @eli_gonzalez11.