THANK GOODNESS YOU’RE HERE!
When we previously showcased some of James Carbutt’s gorgeous artwork, in E390, the accompanying text pointed to a few of his cited influences: Reeves, Mortimer, Aardman. Reuniting with Carbutt and Will Todd, the other half of developer Coal Supper, this list grows substantially. Night In The Woods, particularly the way it’s unafraid to switch compositions. The Beano, via its more (or arguably less) mature relative, Viz. Adventure Time, and the accompanying wave of CalArts animation. Monty Python. Kes. “The pitch was Where’s Wally, but every character has something to say and do,” Carbutt says. “That was the image in my head, anyway.”
“The image in my head,” Todd interjects, “was Bloodborne. It was going to be a 3D action RPG. And you’ve slowly worn me down over time.” He jokingly asks Carbutt when the game’s combat system is going to be implemented. Strange as the comparison might seem, though, Todd is straight-faced – at least for a moment. “The perfect game for me is zero gameplay,” he says. “You just walk around and press the interact button and a strange, hooded figure says some bizarre non-sequitur and then laughs maniacally.”
That’s not a hugely inaccurate description of Thank Goodness You’re Here!, albeit with Yharnam swapped for the sunnier Barnsworth, a pastiche of the pair’s Yorkshire hometown. Its inhabitants are just as odd, in their own ways. The gardener who speaks in constant, accidental innuendos. The fishmonger whose produce all have cigarettes dangling from their pouting lips. Rog the veg-flinging greengrocer, with his Ernie-shaped yellow head and a rage problem caused, as shown in a smash-cutting flashback, by a life of constant humiliation at that oversized cranium.
You encounter these townsfolk while completing odd jobs for them, providing a sort of sketch-show structure propped up by the main narrative: a salesman killing time before a meeting with Barnsworth’s mayor. Carbutt makes the comparison to Life Of Brian, but while the emphasis is firmly on the silliness, Todd hints at a “deep lore” underpinning the whole thing. “We decided not to attempt this big, grand narrative that was told very explicitly. There’s not necessarily a lot of drama explicit in the text – it’s more that stuff is alluded to.” He adds, with mischief in his voice: “Little bit of narrative depth for the boys.” There’s that Bloodborne influence at work, then, and Todd hints that the game might head more in that direction as the story develops. “We didn’t want to go psychedelically trippy straight away. Let’s start grounded, and get weirder over time.”
Naturally, Coal Supper isn’t gunning for quite the length of your average FromSoft game – though that wasn’t a foregone conclusion. Todd remembers planning for around 40 hours, “naïvely”; the figure Carbutt has in his head is 18. “Then I think we pitched 12, or ten. Or eight. It was incrementally going down every time.” Todd recalls the preproduction planning: “‘James, how long does it take for you to draw a little man? And if there are a hundred little men, all with silly voices…’ Then we’d look at the spreadsheet and it’s like, ‘Predicted launch date: 2045’.”
A longer game would have been possible, Todd explains, but only by “reusing stuff and lowering the fidelity”. This would go against what makes Thank Goodness You’re Here! so thrilling: the density of jokes, waiting not only in the beautifully produced cutscenes but in the Simpsons-style sign gags and incidental dialogue. To keep up the momentum, a planned focus on puzzles has been scrapped. “It was unclear how that was going to amplify the stuff we’re good at,” Todd says. “We didn’t want it to be, like, the next joke is locked behind these match-three games or whatever.”
For all the unexpected parallels to Bloodborne, the biggest divergence might be that Coal Supper is aiming for a frictionless experience – one that can be enjoyed over a couple of evenings, ideally with someone who might never touch the controller but can share in the laughter. “We don’t want it to outstay its welcome,” Todd says. From what we’ve seen so far, that seems highly unlikely.
“James, how long does it take for you to draw a little man? And if there are a hundred?”