Heave Ho will ask you to trust your friends as far as you can throw them
Catch this
Who among us has not at some point wanted to gently take our friends’ hands and then hurl them bodily across a perilous gap? That’s the aim of the game in Heave Ho, an upcoming cooperative grapple-and-fling physics ‘em up from French studio Le Cartel. Here, I’m slinging a trailer at you across the dangerous pit that is the internet.
The hollow ‘thunk’ of a successful catch here is so satisfying. I love a good sound cue that says “Don’t worry! You didn’t tumble to your untimely death!”
On the other hand, when it all goes wrong these things pop so violently that it might qualify as a jump scare. But that makes more sense if you take into account Le Cartel’s last game, Mother Russia Bleeds. Heave Ho does seem to have quite a different vibe from the edgy beat ‘em up that preceded it, but I can see the throughline every time one of those gelatinous beans goes splat.
The game will support up to four players, “with all manner of stylish accessories and zany accoutrement in a vain attempt to remember who you are.” I'm glad that whoever wrote this game description is speaking directly to the classic multiplayer experience of dying because you inexplicably thought you were controlling a different character.
Here in the trailer we can see a few of the potential bean flavours: sad, angry, and eyelashes and lipstick. Bagsies on sad. Look at their little face.
Heave Ho doesn’t have a release date scheduled quite yet, but it should be lobbed onto PC sometime this summer, according to publishers Devolver Digital.