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Le Cartel Studio and Devolver Digital’s original Heave Ho felt like a challenging multiplayer game that always tasked us with getting from one point to another with (or in spite of) the folks playing with us. For Heave Ho 2, things feel a bit more varied and full of opportunities to encourage people to lock in. There’s more to it, leading to a game that you could play for longer periods due to less repetition.
Heave Ho 2 works in the same sort of way as the original game. Every person controls a character that is essentially a head with two arms attached to it. A minimum of two people are required, and up to four can take part. You essentially control each of the two hands with the left and right triggers and use momentum and skill to grab onto platforms, items, and other people in order to advance agendas. The heart of it comes down to Co-op and Showdown modes, with the former encouraging everyone to work together to go through a thing like an adventure or competition.
It’s still incredibly simple to play, which is great! And with clear visuals that are easy to grasp. Especially if you opt for a beginner player to put optional “gloves” on their character during selection that show which arms are tied to the L and R buttons.
Now, compared to the original Heave Ho, Heave Ho 2 is quite varied at the start. Co-op is a good way to showcase exactly how. Each “Adventure” involves a set of themed experiences to get through. So the first one is called Flying High, and it is a ski resort sort of atmosphere that involves climbing, platforms, gondola lifts, and mountains to traverse. That one can feel most familiar if you came from the original game, since it involves more of the staple stages from the first installment that primarily involved getting from point A to point B.
But others involve other kinds of scenarios and challenges! And there are star difficulty levels indicated at the outset of a group of stages to let you know how friendship-ruining the cluster can be. Like Manor Mysteries is another one-star selection of stages like Flying High, but it’s more of a puzzle-themed section. For example, the first level there involves a locked room with a series of drawers on both sides of the screen with things like crayons, a spoon, and a fake hand inside. You need to find which drawer holds the key and use it to unlock the exit. And the second stage in that section involves lighting up all lights of a certain color in rows at once in order to permanently turn them on until every light in the stage is turned on.
These can scale in complexity, and skills we learn in earlier Adventures can help with later ones. So the four-star Transfolab area’s first stage involves needing to get a floating square and circle into ledges with cut-out spaces for them on opposite sides of the screen, but dropping them resets them to their previous position. Once those are in place, you need to manipulate buttons and dials at the top of the left and right sides of the screen in order to make it possible to pull a level in the center and complete the task.
With Showdown, that gets a bit more simplistic. Each level you’ll need to reach a handle and grab it first, fling yourself to a finish line in basically an obstacle course area, or be the last survivor. Both the handle-grabbing and finish line-reaching objectives feel a lot like the general objectives in the original Heave Ho. The survival challenges feel stronger! Some of them can involve being in a stage with platforms that rotate and move, which encourages you to try and pull people off or turn platforms into awkward positions that are difficult to hold onto. One involved laser swords being in the stage and, if you grabbed and held one, you could swing it into an opponent to defeat them. These stages lack the Adventure themes of Co-op, but since they’re so competitive I didn’t really focus on the lack of cohesive elements.
There are also Challenges here to complete. Those can come up as you’re going through other modes. Especially if you do things like enable a timer that tracks how quickly you’re running through a task. It’s a nice option that encourages you to perform certain actions.
Heave Ho 2 is more varied sequel that still feels feels welcoming to players of all skill levels. I do think the Co-op mode is what really makes this installment special. There’s a lot more care put into making those Adventure stages feel special and challenging in different ways. Showdown is fun too, but a bit more repetitive due to its nature. It’s another fun one from Le Cartel Studio.
Heave Ho 2 is available for the Switch, Switch 2, and PC.
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