Coal Supper“Dead reyt”, “faff” and “keep gu’in” are words you don’t often see in video games.
But two pals from Yorkshire have changed all that.
God’s Own Country, as the locals call it, is the inspiration for Thank Goodness You’re Here!, a new game created by James Carbutt and Will Todd, from Barnsley.
The pair – aka development team Coal Supper – are the minds behind the fictional northern town of Barnsworth.
Players pilot a tiny, silent character through a series of surreal odd-jobs given to them by local residents.
It’s a deliberately weird experience, but it’s also been hailed as hilariously funny and “reyt proper Yorkshire”.
One of the first buildings players enter – the local pub, of course – has a blackboard outside advertising today’s special.
“Drinks.”
It’s little touches like this, along with a script full of regional slang delivered in Yorkshire accents, that have led people to call Thank Goodness “the most northern game ever”.
But how did it get made?
Will and James, who provide voices for many characters in the game, say the distinctive script came naturally as they developed it.
“The more we worked on it, the more we started drawing out characters that just sounded more and more like us, because we’re doing it in our voices,” says Will.
The video games industry has been criticised for becoming more risk-averse and leaning into sequels and remakes as the cost of making blockbuster titles has increased.
James and Will admit that a lot of publishers were “sceptical” when they pitched their unique project to them.
“I think part of that was we were obviously trying to shirk traditional game design,” says Will.
“Tropes and genres and stuff. And it wasn’t necessarily super-clear what the game was going to be.”
They say the Yorkshire setting was a bit of a hurdle too.
Some of the bigger indie game publishers are US-based and Will says there are “assumptions about what Britishness is when you’re pitching for funding”.
“Colin Firth and the rain British,” says James.
“This is more like flat caps and whippets,” adds Will.
They eventually signed a deal with Panic! – the publisher behind mega-hit Untitled Goose Game, which cast players as a wildfowl on a mission to cause havoc in a small village.
The publisher helped them to get IT Crowd and What We Do in the Shadows actor Matt Berry – known for his deadpan baritone – on board for a bit of star power.
And they have made some allowances for an international audience.
“There’s subtitles for people from Yorkshire and subtitles for proper English – translation options for Southerners,” says James.
“If we wrote the script in the dialect and then recorded everything, we had to go through and then put the proper English in,” says Will.
The Chinese RoomThank Goodness isn’t the only high-profile game released this year to feature strong UK accents.
Horror game Still Wakes the Deep, set on a North Sea oil rig in 1975, employs a mostly Scottish voice cast.
Creative lead John McCormack says developers The Chinese Room agreed early on that they wanted the story of the ill-fated Beira D rig to feel “like it actually happened”.
And that meant no compromise on the way it sounded.
“To be authentic to the setting and the period there was only one way to do it,” he says.
“And that was to hire the right voices for the story.”
John admits it will be “hard to understand” in places for some, but the performances help to convey the mood of a scene even when the audience doesn’t understand every word.
“When you bring in realistic accents to double down on that authenticity, it just sort of solidifies the kind of sense of place,” says John.
“So when the horror kicks in, it feels more real.”
Coal SupperJohn feels audiences have “completely embraced” the performances in Still Wakes the Deep, even if conventional wisdom suggests otherwise.
“When it comes to funding, when you’re going to publishers and you’re trying to sell your idea, it’s generally looking for global appeal,” he says.
“And in the gaming space that tends to be a clean American accent or kind of posh English accents or something that can be fully understood.”
John says that Still Wakes the Deep is relatively unusual because it’s grounded in real-life, and many games are set in fantastical worlds where they aren’t tied to a geographical location.
But he hopes projects placing regional voices front and centre will inspire others.
“If you’ve got a story to tell, and you want it to feel authentic, be specific and own the place that it’s set,” he says.
“The audience is intelligent, the audience will, as we’ve seen, they’ll embrace that even more.”
So far Thank Goodness You’re Here! has had a positive response since its release on Thursday.
But Yorkshire lads Will and James are humble about their aspirations for it.
“It’s something that we always dreamed about as kids,” says Will.
“And I think other than massive financial success, I hope it finds an audience.
“It really is a love letter to the north and specifically our hometown.
“And we will be reaching as many of those people as possible.
“And then also an audience of 100,000 Americans.”
Additional reporting by Áine O’Donnell.
