From the creators of Mother Russia Bleeds comes something completely out of left field for a sophomore debut, in the party game Heave Ho.
Heave Ho
Developer: Le Cartel Studio
Price: $9.99
Platform: PC and Nintendo Switch
MonsterVine was supplied with a Switch code for review
Heave Ho is a sort of physics platformer where you and three other friends play as what I can only describe as ugly heads with arms sprouting from them. You’ll control your arms with the analog stick and use the triggers to open and close your hands to grip onto surfaces where you’ll climb and swing your way to the goal at the end of the stage. The game features 17 levels each with five stages within them that feature a thematic gimmick such as a copious amount of vines in the jungle area or the caverns only casting light on what’s in your immediate area.
In concept, Heave Ho is very simple in that you need to maneuver your little guy across various obstacles to reach the goal, but where the hilarity comes is in the chaos brought forth when playing with friends. For the most part, levels are doable by yourself but you’re definitely going to want some help when it comes to the trickier ones. This will require you and your buds to coordinate with each other to form chain links to cross wide gaps or toss each other around in trust exercises that will test your friendships. Hell, one particular stage required one person to throw the other in-between the tight space of two spikes to the goal on the other end and we had a big fight of one friend not trusting the other and just making the swing himself. Heave Ho’s best feature is the whiplash of emotions you and your friends will go through; one moment you’re high fiving and cheering and the next you want to rip each other’s faces off.
Adding on top of this is a sort of area-of-effect “push” you can perform that will knock anyone close to you away and even force them to let go if they’re holding onto you. My friends and I christened this the “poppin’” button and as you can imagine, the most nefarious of us would pop one of these off when we were bunched up causing everyone to fall to their deaths and screams of “WHO JUST POPPED?!” to erupt. There’s just as much anger in this game as there is joy, if not more, but when the controllers go down and the game’s over it’s just love and smiles over a good time with your buds.
If your group is having a bit of trouble with a particular stage, as long as one person reached the goal an assist bar will appear; pulling it will cause a balloon to appear for the other players to latch onto and ride to the goal. Of course, things aren’t that easy since the balloon doesn’t just take you straight to the goal, you’ll have to sort of fight it over there and sometimes it won’t even reach all the way if obstacles are in the way. I really appreciated how the balloon was there to help, but wasn’t a sort of “instant win” button, more like a step stool to help give you that little bit of extra “oomph” to finish the stage yourself.
Occasionally a golden rope will appear in a stage which is your gateway to one of the minigames you can partake in. I’m not exactly sure how many minigames there are, however, with the game hinting at possibly only three. In my time playing, I only encountered a dance game and a basketball one. My main gripe with this mode, however, is how infrequently you’ll encounter the rope; in the three hours I played the game with some friends we only got the rope twice and both times we got the dancing minigame. While when playing solo, I managed to encounter the rope twice in maybe just ten minutes of playing and got the basketball game both times. It’s not exactly clear whether the rope is random or triggered in some regard, either way getting the same minigame back to back on two separate occasions is kind of a buzzkill.
Adding to the challenge of getting your friends to work together are coins scattered across the various stages that you’ll need to bring to the goal through good old-fashioned cooperation. The stages themselves can already be tricky affairs, but having to maneuver your entire group while managing who’s holding onto the coin just ramps the difficulty up. In one particular stage, my friends and I managed to get our token through a precarious series of blocks and through a tight squeeze of spikes only to toss the coin towards the goal landing it right on the edge. Before any of us could rush over to push it in, the coin rolled right off the edge and the screams of anguish were enough to warrant a noise complaint from the neighbors. The screams that followed soon after pointing fingers at who was to blame was definitely enough to justify a noise complaint.
Now, these tokens can be redeemed outside of the game for new costumes for your horrible little creatures. There are some pretty typical things like a mummy outfit or samurai, but you’ll also come across references to other indie games like the protagonist from RUINER. Having your party dress up their character just adds a fun bit of stupid to the game, but the one actual helpful thing in the customization screen is the inclusion of an “assistance” mode. Turning that on will put color-coordinated mittens on your character (and only yours if you activate it) that indicates whether it’s your left or right hand. It can sometimes get pretty hard to tell which hand is which when you’re all crumpled up together and the gloves definitely help. Unless you prefer the chaotic element of not knowing and possibly screwing up your friends as I did, then, by all means, turn that sucker off.
If you’re lacking in friends to play with, Heave Ho features a solo mode where you can tackle all its challenges by yourself which is honestly a pretty daunting task considering how difficult some of the stages can be. I struggled to finish some with a full crew of four, I can’t imagine doing some of these by yourself. The only downside with this mode is there really isn’t any way to earn tokens aside from hoping a minigame appears. The cosmetics, while a nonessential part of the game, does as a layer of absurdity to the fun you’re having and it’d have been nice for solo players to get in on it too.
A warning for anyone playing this game on the Switch like I’ve been doing: do not use the separated joy-cons under any circumstances if you value the health of your fingers. Since the grip on your character’s left and right hands are triggered, appropriately, with the L and R buttons then it would be fair to assume you’re going to be holding those buttons down for extended periods of time right? Well if you’re playing with a group of people and your only option is to give everyone their own separate joy-con then that means you have to dig your fingers into the small space where those two buttons are and since you’ll likely be holding them down for minutes at a time, you’ll quickly develop a pain in your fingertips. Even with the black cover that extends the L and R buttons out, the relief offered is only slightly better. The best way to play is either with the combined joy-cons or (preferably) with some sort of pro-controller variant. Hell, in just the 3 minutes I jumped back into the game to check something really quick my fingers were already starting to hurt and are sore now. If you don’t want any sort of early-onset arthritis then trust me on this one.
The Final Word
Heave Ho is a game that both destroys and strengthens friendships and you’d be remiss to not include it in your game night line-up.
– MonsterVine Review Score: 4.5 out of 5 – Great
