Heave Ho 2 looks almost identical to its predecessor — the same armless-legless beans, the same grabbing and swinging, the same farts. Underneath, Le Cartel Studio have made a substantially different game, and whether that’s good news depends almost entirely on why you liked the first one.
The short version: the original was a physics platformer. This is a physics puzzle game. It’s a genuine achievement of level design and, for the right group, comfortably better than the first. For the wrong group, it’s a slog.
What Actually Changed
Get from one side of the level to the other. Levels varied in length but worked the same way. Playable solo. Cooperation was usually optional — with enough skill you could swing your own path. Racing your friends was half the fun.
Objectives change constantly: throw aliens out of a locked room, find a missing key, make a sandwich. Even goal-reaching levels are more involved — launching a teammate from a catapult to drop a drawbridge. Coordination is mandatory.
That’s a meaningful shift in genre, not just in content. The first game’s comedy came from failure — ill-advised leaps, accidentally flinging a friend into a pit, everyone dying in a heap two feet from the goal. Heave Ho 2 asks you to solve things instead, which changes what the game rewards.
The Loop
The core mechanic is unchanged and still delightful — grab surfaces, grab each other, form chains, and fling.
Work out what a level actually wants from you. New gimmicks arrive level to level rather than world to world.
Two to three challenges per level plus global ones, several built around an equippable camera item.
Costumes, cosmetics and new fart effects, earned through challenges. Exactly as essential as it sounds.
The Level Design Is Genuinely Exceptional
Our reviewer called it outright “an accomplishment of level design,” and that’s the fairest summary available. Sustaining that much variety from a two-button grab mechanic is genuinely hard, and Le Cartel have done it.
The presentation supports it. Despite deliberately simple graphics the game looks polished and — as one player put it, slightly surprised at themselves — beautiful. It also runs cleanly; one reviewer played couch co-op via a Steam Deck hooked up to a TV without a single issue.
The physical comedy, the noises and the farts are all intact. This is still very much a Heave Ho game.
Your Group Decides Everything
That’s not a flaw so much as a change in audience. Heave Ho 2 rewards groups who want to solve something together and talk through it. It does not reward groups who want to lark about — and the original very much did.
Get the right four people and our reviewer reckons it may well be superior to the original. Get the wrong four and you’ll spend the evening frustrated by someone who was previously the funniest part of the night.
What’s Been Lost
The level editor request is worth flagging to Le Cartel. Multiple players independently landed on the same conclusion — that a game with level design this strong and a mechanic this simple is practically built for community creation, and that its absence is the main thing standing between “great” and “essential.”
The Good, The Bad, & The Ugly
| The Good | The Bad | The Ugly |
|---|---|---|
| Exceptional Level DesignNo two levels are alike — environments, obstacles and objectives change wholesale, with new gimmicks arriving level to level rather than world to world. Each world tells its own small story and flows into the next gracefully. Genuinely hard to do with a mechanic this simple. | Solo Mode Removed EntirelyMost levels can’t be completed alone, so single-player is simply gone. If you can’t reliably get people together, you cannot play this game — full stop. | A Chaos Agent Breaks ItIn the first game a friend messing about was part of the fun. Here, because levels are coordination puzzles, that same person becomes a roadblock. Bring a larking-about group or a young kid and it turns into a slog. |
| Deeper Co-Op, Properly EarnedWhat it loses in competitiveness it gains in cooperative depth. Constant communication, real problem-solving, and for the right group our reviewer thinks it’s straightforwardly better than the original. | The Racing Is GoneThe original’s competitive streak — sprinting your friends to the goal, sabotaging each other en route — has largely left the campaign. If that was your draw, this isn’t it. | Shallow, Repetitive ChallengesTwo to three per level, but rarely deep. Our reviewer preferred the first game’s coin-carrying — a genuine constraint — over hunting for a hidden hand to grab. |
| Polished, and Still Very SillySimple graphics that somehow look beautiful, clean performance (including Steam Deck to TV for couch play), online co-op added, a full versus mode, plenty of costumes, and all the physical comedy and farts intact. | Around Five HoursShort for a campaign, though the versus mode and challenge unlocks extend things. Whether that’s enough depends on how often your group actually meets up. | No Level EditorThe one addition multiple players independently said would push this to masterpiece status. A game with design this strong and mechanics this simple is built for community levels — and hasn’t got them. |
The Verdict
Heave Ho 2 brings the chaotic couch co-op fun online with hilarious swinging mechanics for up to four players. It’s a must-buy for party game fans seeking pure, unapologetic mayhem — with one significant caveat that the store page doesn’t make nearly clear enough.
This is not the first game with more levels. It’s a cooperative puzzle game wearing the first game’s clothes, and Le Cartel have executed it beautifully. The level design is the genuine standout — constant variety, per-level gimmicks, worlds that tell little stories, and a simple grab mechanic that somehow never gets stale across the whole runtime.
What you give up is the chaos. The original thrived on failure being funny; this one asks you to coordinate, which means a friend messing around stops being the entertainment and starts being the obstacle. And with solo mode gone entirely, you need people every single time.
The honest read: if you have a reliable group who enjoy solving things together, buy it immediately — it may well be better than the original, and the level design alone justifies it. Our reviewer’s positive verdict came with exactly that framing.
If you mostly treated Heave Ho as a silly party game, played solo, raced friends, or play with young kids, think carefully. This is a different proposition and it will not scratch the same itch.
A genuinely accomplished sequel that made a bold choice about what kind of game it wanted to be. Just make sure it’s the kind you actually want.
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