Heave Ho Critic Reviews

Heave Ho is a delightful game to play with friends. When my roommate and I sat down with it for the first time, we expected to only play for about an hour and call it a night. Before we knew it, we had been playing for four hours, laughing so hard I fell off my couch on several instances. It is the perfect game to pull out during a friendly get together or party, with a control scheme that anybody can wrap their head around and shenanigans that will cause just about any group to laugh until they cry. If you enjoy local multiplayer games, you owe it to yourself to give Heave Ho a try.

After playing this game, I really had a good “sit and think” moment about the state of games. I know a lot of gamers (including myself at times) get caught up with the newest and greatest blockbuster titles, which is fine, but sometimes we need to mix things up a bit. Games like Heave Ho are sometimes passed by without a second thought, but in all honesty, grabbing this title for the low price of $10 is an absolute steal. It will give you some solid, challenging play time on your own, and then when your buddy comes over you can have a ridiculous time flinging each other across the map. I would say El Cartel Studio has nailed this simplicity with this one, I would recommend checking it out.

It's a good chunk of content for an absolute steal of a price. The wackiness of grabbing your friends, flinging yourself around, making faces and noises, and just causing shenanigans all around doesn't really get old. Heave Ho is a much harder sell to anyone expecting to play it solo, but it's an absolute must-have for any local multiplayer get-together with friends.

Heave Ho doesn’t quite reach the lofty heights of Snipperclips, but it’s still one of the best couch co-op titles to hit the Switch. It encourages communication and careful planning, but remains utterly chaotic and achingly hilarious, with a fantastic selection of unique costumes to unlock as you progress. The fact that you’ll face the same stages whether you’re playing multiplayer or single player is undoubtedly a big disappointment, but it’s great fun whatever way you decide to play it.

Heave Ho isn't really for those friends that are unfamiliar with games shy of Mario Party. It's not insanely challenging, but requires a certain amount of dedication (and acceptance of repetitive failure) to enjoy. The levels are short, sure, but the minutes and hours can quickly rack up as you and your friends throw each other into spikes and over walls. A lack of online multiplayer (at least on PC) seems like an oversight, but it's hard to find further fault in a game that fosters friendships and foe-ships with such unbridled joy.

With fun presentation and a well designed co-op platforming mechanic Heave Ho is certainly a great new addition to the party game genre.

Heave Ho is a classic case of ‘better with friends’. Play solo and you’ll get bored quickly, but gather one or two of your pals together, and this shines as a couch co-op title that will grab more of your time than you’d imagine.

Despite the lackluster single player and small other foibles I have with some of Heave Ho's design choices, you're still getting a ton of great bang for your buck here, especially at the $10 asking price. From the scores of levels available to the player, to the sheer variety of the different worlds and to the simple unpredictability of being dropped by a friend that you thought had your back since preschool, Heave Ho is a fantastic experience that'll make for a killer additional to any player's party-game collection. Just make sure you bring a few (trusted) friends along for the ride.

Friends, pizzas, Heave Ho and I are the assurance of an evening of great quality. Be careful, however, in addition to tension in your fingers, your ribs, your ears, your voice, could suffer the crazy control of these heads to arms, between laughter and hilarious confusion, for the final, also a moral: only we go more quickly, to many we go further (and died of laughter).

Heave Ho is an insane party game that ramps up the craziness to the maximum. While there is a single-player option, Le Cartel Studio's wacky title is best experienced with a group of people and a sense of humour. Flinging characters across the stage to land in a pit of spikes is as fun as it sounds, while the joy and elation that transpires after eventually reaching the destination helps to make Heave Ho one of the mainstays of party titles. While it doesn't dethrone the Mario Party, Smash Bros, or Mario Kart series, this can safely sit near the top of party games for when such a time to experience the outrageous and whimsical title arises.

Heave Ho is a fun multiplayer game that provides plenty of laughter – provided you play with three of your friends.

Heave Ho is a nice combination of two genres, platform and party games, which will bring hours of fun if you're going to play it with friends.

Heave Ho is the life of the party: wild and magnetic with a few surprises up its sleeve. Play it on your own, however, and it’s not quite as much fun to hang with.

Heave Ho is still a raucous good time when you are playing with others in local co-op, and for the price, it’s worth a couple of nights with friends on the couch.