YoThis is a classic British comedy. An unknown young salesman for a large company is sent on a seemingly mundane trip to an idiosyncratic city, and there chaos breaks loose. From the start, this wonderful game from small studio Coal Supper makes it clear that it’s going to fill this premise with as much physical comedy and surrealism as possible. When it comes time to leave the opening sequence, set in a tenth-floor office, the player is forced to do so through the window, and their fall is cushioned by the very bus they need to catch for their journey.
When you arrive in the fictional northern English town of Barnsworth – a sinister reincarnation of Barnsley in the early 1980s – you’re supposed to meet the mayor, but he’s busy, so you head out into the street. There you discover a collection of oddball characters, drawn in nauseatingly bright colours and a deceptively childish style, who usually greet you with the words “thank goodness you’re here” before asking for your help in solving some ridiculous crisis. This might be a portly gentleman with his arm stuck in a drain, or a chip shop owner whose deep fryer is broken, or a senile admiral who needs you to round up his seagulls. But wherever you go – across markets, rooftops or streets – you’ll encounter more oddballs with odd jobs, as the world’s strange logic and spiralling geography trap you in servile confusion. You wanted to play a cross between a Flann O’Brien novel and an episode of Dick and Dom in da Bungalow? You got it.
As for comic influences, the creators have cited Reeves and Mortimer and the Mighty Boosh as inspirations. However, the interplay of slapstick, surrealism and pop art brings to mind Monty Python, Yellow Submarine and the slightly subversive comics of the 80s, such as Whoopee and Whizzer and Chips. But fear not: you don’t need to know any of these to enjoy the liveliness and dark charm of this game.
What might help is a passing acquaintance with Northern working-class stereotypes: the number of shops with rhyming names (Doug’s Rugs, Nick’s Bricks and my favourite, the mobile phone market stall called Raj’s Chargers); the unhealthy food offerings (a fast-food truck selling Porky Nobbers, the cart selling “oily buns”); and an almost psychotic rivalry between the bakers.
But don’t miss any of these and many other gags that pop up as you find wrenches and hammers, or get a shy boy to ask you for milk, or just enjoy the voice acting contributions of Matt Berry, who, along with the rest of the talented cast, really brings these oddballs to life. In between the main quests – which work much like the puzzles in Codemasters’ old Dizzy games in the way they interlock with each other – there are completely bizarre sequences where you have to explore the surface of a steak or collect a level bubble.
There are also small digs at the video game industry. On one wall is graffiti depicting a man urinating on the words “ludonarrative,” and in a squalid sewer area between two locations is a sign that reads: “Liminal spaces may be less inviting than they seem.” Indeed, the entire game, with its relentless sequence of fetch quests, could be read as a pastiche of the exhausting convention of the open-world sidequest.
There are so many ideas, sight gags, puns, plants and rewards crammed into the game’s three-hour running time that you’ll need a couple more playthroughs to catch them all. It’s a joy to play something so utterly absurd and uncompromising, though, like much of the craziest British humour, the game also has a quiet tone of unease and despair. The pie sellers, the village drunk, the milk-shy boy – they’re all trapped in silent personal hells that are hilarious to the rest of us.
In the future, when the topic of the funniest comedy games of all time comes up, the usual names will be there – Monkey Island, The Stanley Parable, Death Stranding (I’m kidding) – but now a new one will surely be added to them. Coal Supper has produced perhaps the first great Yorkshire-set cartoon abstract puzzler of the 21st century. Thank goodness.
