It’s grim, the North. It’s also damned wonderful. A land full of hallowed stodge. Pies and gravy. Buttered potato barms. Pickled beef and potato hash. It’s a kingdom with more dialects than sense. Broad accents. Yawning vowels. Enunciation? Pure myth. The industrial roots run deep. Change comes slowly, but somehow that’s not a bad thing. You make do and move on.
Thank goodness you're here! leans into that rough-and-tumble, red-brick vision of England. The “comedy slapformer,” developed by Coal Supper and published by Panic, is a maverick palate cleanser that dares to be different. It’s equal parts puzzler and sketch show, transporting players to the fictional town of Barnsworth so they can help the locals run absolutely insane errands.
The interactive elements are light. You can jump and slap objects as you explore a series of interconnected vignettes, and that’s about it. Coal Supper co-founders Will Todd and James Carbutt (both originally from the Yorkshire town of Barnsley) explain that this was a deliberate choice made in the service of their brand of irreverent, slapstick and slightly raunchy comedy.
Hey! What's all this?
“Early on, we reconciled the fact that humor is all we really have,” says Carbutt, speaking to Game Developer ahead of launch. Initially, he explains Thank goodness you're here! had more robust gameplay elements. There were deeper puzzles, non-linear elements, more complex controls. All of that went away when Carbutt and Todd realized that trying to create a puzzle-based experience would be incredibly counterproductive.
“We realized that if we make a puzzle game and it’s not that great, then we’ve made a bad puzzle game,” says Carbutt, who explains that the pair instead decided to focus on what they’re “pretty good at.” Being absolutely ridiculous.
“One thing we hit on early on, before there was even a town that was apparently Barnsley or something, was this idea of distinct compositions or vignettes,” Todd adds. Exploring that concept convinced the duo that there should be fewer “verbs” in the game, largely because they wondered whether more complex interactions, like asking players to physically drag objects around the world, would actually work in a title that was disparate by design.
“In a certain sense it was a technical limitation. [we imposed ourselves]but it also allowed us to move away from being a puzzle game or any other genre and put the comedy front and center. That's why we basically just have one interaction button,” he says. “Secretly, it's just a short film where the player presses 'play' every once in a while.”
Performing comedy involved slowly teasing out scenarios from gags. The joke would come first, and if they were still laughing a week later, they would begin to figure out how to turn an abstract joke into something more tangible.
“At first we really had no idea [how to make it work]. We tried to make up bits and pieces and then ask ourselves, 'How do we get from A to B,'” Todd says. “We really experimented with that, but I think what worked was we slowly pulled the gameplay and the storytelling out of the gags. If we were still laughing a week later, we'd ask ourselves, 'How does this fit? What is the player doing on screen while this is happening? Should it just be a cutscene or should we have interaction in there?'”
Thank goodness you're here! was initially a less linear experience. Players could complete tasks in any order, wandering around Barnsworth at their leisure. The idea was to give players more freedom, but playtesting has shown that’s not always a boon. “We found that people were often in the wrong areas, just going around paths, and missing the one thing they were supposed to do,” Todd says. “So we basically figured out that we could just put everything on rails and it would still work. We can have a more precise, curated experience where you can only do certain things enough times to see the jokes play out.”
The panels themselves have been left freeform to some extent. Players can explore areas and interact with objects to find jokes that have been hidden, but moving between those sections is a one-way street. “I don’t think we lost much by taking that big, sprawling flowchart of branching paths and just laying it out in a straight line, because you get to the point either way.”
You are making a fool of me?
Testing for design is relatively simple. You put together various elements and observe how the players react. Testing for comedy is a more intuitive task, especially in the case of Thank goodness you're here!– which has been in development for over four years and draws on Todd and Carbutt’s personal experiences. This meant both creators had to follow their instincts and believe in their own brand of zany buffoonery.
“It's very difficult [test comedy] because it's a joke you tell in private for four years, and then in public once,” Carbutt says. “A lot of the humor is in the dialogue and the characters and the details of their facial expressions, you don't really know [whether it’ll land] until it's all done.
“Early on, we decided we had to stick to our ideas and what we found funny. So if it misses the mark and doesn't work, at least we didn't pander and then miss the mark. We created something unique in our tone of voice, and that's interesting. The truth is, some of the jokes didn't work. They don't make a lot of sense. People don't fully understand them, but they seem to be pretty forgiving because it's a nice world to live in. It's something we've struggled with, but the bottom line is, 'Go with your gut.'”
Coal Supper's debut project, The Garden of Good Weatherwas equally absurd but still found an audience. That initial success was a proof of concept the pair could refer to when refining their nonsense into Thank goodness you're here!. The fact that the title is essentially a sketch show, reminiscent of classics like Monty Python and The Fast Show, also helped. This meant that the gags that didn’t quite pan out were rarely overdone, leaving Todd and Carbutt to dive in fearlessly.
“I think the fact that we didn’t come in with a big narrative circle and say, ‘Here are all the characters that we need to develop as people,’ really helped. It’s like a sketch comedy, basically,” Todd says. Carbutt agrees, and hopes the experience’s rapidly shifting pace means it won’t become “too jarring.”
Perhaps the most compelling aspect of Thank goodness you're here! It's the gaudy Nordic quirk smeared across every pixel. It'll be fascinating to see how the game lands with an international audience, and even those Brits who've spent most of their years confined to the South. Poor bastards.
It feels like a love letter to the very foundations of England. A jovial ode to a working-class foundation that rarely gets centre stage in mainstream media. Carbutt and Todd looked everywhere to capture that underrepresented side of the country. The rubbish bins that lined the streets of their hometown. British comics like the Beano and The Dandy. The nonsensical images you might inexplicably find on the walls of a Toby Carvery. And those traditional dialects you can still hear on the potholed tarmac across the country.
That wasn't necessarily the plan from the start. Carbutt says the pair never set out to make the “English Game,” but after working on the first few cartoons using their voices and accents, it seemed natural to simply lean into their heritage.
In fact, the big motivation was to do something “fun” for themselves. They find joy in the chaos of misdirection. Making up a gag just to confuse and entertain. Using puns and double entendres as weapons with reckless abandon. “Making stupid voices and getting paid to do it,” Todd chimes in.
“Having fun has always been the big motivator. We never said, 'Let's make an indie game so we can have a great work-life balance and a healthy income,'” he continues. “It's always been what we enjoy doing. That's been the big motivator. It's just what feels right.”