FEW would think that Barnsley would make the perfect setting for a critically-acclaimed video game - but lifelong friends James Carbutt and Will Todd saw something in their hometown no-one else could imagine.
‘This is an impeccably constructed masterclass in gag-telling’, said the five-star review by Eurogamer.
‘There are so many ideas, sight gags, word-plays, plants and pay-offs crammed into the game’s three-hour run time that you’ll need another couple of play-throughs to catch them all’, was what the Guardian wrote in their similarly gleaming review.
In fact every major reviewer echoed the same point: ‘Thank Goodness You’re Here!’ is a modern comedy masterpiece - and it all started right here in Barnsley, back when two young gamers met at the old Kingstone secondary school.
What they didn’t realise back then, was that their northern upbringing would influence the setting of an oddball ‘unadulterated, unfiltered’ gaming sensation.
“You don’t really think about it when you’re in it,” 29-year-old James, originally from Wilthorpe, told the Chronicle.
“It’s only in retrospect that certain things seem unique or strange.
“I’m not sure what it is about Barnsley that stood out to us - as we were making the game we knew it would be set in England because we’re both English, and as we were working on the characters together they came out with our accents so became northern.
“They say write what you know, and we know Barnsley, so we slowly ended up creating this surreal version of town.”
The more they developed the fictional setting of Barnsworth, where the game takes place, the more the pair - now known as development studio Coal Supper - realised how strange Barnsley truly was.
Will, also 29 and originally from Pogmoor, said: “It’s not strange in a negative way.
“All the characters are a pastiche or an exaggeration - there’s no one person we’re pointing to and going ‘oh this is who Big Ron’s based on’, it’s more just characteristics we’ve noticed.
“But I think there’s definitely a feeling that northern towns, in particular Yorkshire towns and in particular maybe Barnsley, don’t get a lot of representation in the media, let alone at an international level.
“It felt important to express that and the idiosyncrasies the town has as best we could.
“I think British people are strange full stop,” James joked.
“It’s very cool to represent the particular kind of oddness you find in Barnsley.”
Starring comedy legend Matt Berry - known for roles in The IT Crowd and What We Do in the Shadows - Thank Goodness You’re Here! launched on August 1, but had grown a following before its release after an eye-catching trailer debuted the project at Gamescom, one of the world’s largest gaming shows, the year prior.
With more than 100,000 players on Steam, being ‘officially selected’ at the 2024 London Games Festival and winning the ‘Best Comedy Game Award’ from Sunday Times best-selling author and YouTube star Daniel Hardcastle - AKA NerdCubed - it’s safe to say the duo’s work paid off.
James said: “It’s weird really - on the one hand it’s amazing to see so many people play it, but on the other it’s just numbers on the screen.
“We’re not in people’s living rooms watching them play it so it’s quite a surreal experience.
“The fact we can just watch someone live on Twitch or whatever playing our game makes it feel a lot more personal.”
“It’s extra important when it feels like someone’s got it,” Will added.
“If they’ve picked up on the message of the town and its personality, and especially when it’s someone from town, that’s really sick.
“To feel like we’ve given that to people is really cool.
“We’ve seen online a lot of people say ‘this is where I’m from’ - we never made it super explicit but I guess if you’re from there you know what’s going on.
“People don’t always clock that it’s based on a real place so to see people say ‘I’m from here, it’s really like this’ is always cool.
“I had a really surreal moment when I got recognised.
“I was out for brunch with my mum and someone recognised me from the mini documentary we did and now my mum thinks I’ve got a proper job I guess.”
A career highlight now of course includes getting into the Chronicle, which they joke is what ‘what we were shooting for’.
Though when looking back at their life, Will admits that this was all just ‘a shot in the dark’, even after they published their first game ‘The Good Time Garden’ in 2019.
“Getting into game design was both a deliberate but meandering journey.
“It’s always what I wanted to do, it’s what I studied at university and we’ve both been gamers since we were kids.
“We took a few stabs at making something and then one day it took off with a weekend project that became The Good Time Garden.
“We were mainly doing it for the love of it at that point - we were in our very early 20s, we had these complimentary skills, and we thought ‘let’s try and make something’.
“Then we just loved the process so much that we stuck it out and reached a point where we thought maybe we can do it properly full time.
“Again it was a shot in the dark with that and we managed to make it stick.
“We were in the right place at the right time to get this investment from our publisher.”
So for those hoping to someday develop the next online sensation, James has some advice.
“I’d say follow your nose and follow your gut.
“The thing that’s weird about you is the thing that should be weird about your games.”
