Push Me Pull You is a wrestling game with no arms, no legs, and no ring. Two teams of sausage-shaped bodies, each with a head at both ends, shove a ball around a circle until one side controls it. House House, the Australian studio behind it, shipped the game in 2016 for PlayStation 4, Windows, Mac, and Linux. It is a game about friendship and wrestling, and it means both words.
Trailer, via House House.
Two Heads, One Body, One Ball
The setup is as simple as it sounds. You share a body with another player. One of you steers the front, the other the back, and neither of you can move anywhere the other does not drag. The ball sits in the middle of the circle. You push, you coil, you flop your whole length across the floor to wall the other team off from it.
That is the entire game, and it is enough. The bird’s-eye view keeps both teams and the ball in frame at once, so there is nowhere to hide and no camera to fight. The comedy comes from the physics, not from jokes. A body that bends in the middle to reach the ball is a body that has left its own goal open.
House House built two modes around that body: a two-player game and a four-player game. The two-player version splits one body between two people. The four-player version gives each team a body and a pair of players to argue with.
The Dog Heads Are Real
There is a hidden option to swap the human heads for the heads of dogs. That is not a rumor and it is not a joke the game makes once. It is in there, tucked away, and it changes the whole read of a match. A dog at each end of a sausage is funnier than a person at each end, and House House clearly knew it, which is why the option is hidden rather than advertised on the menu.
The game’s themes are listed as action, comedy, and party, and its genres as sport and indie. That is an accurate label set. What it is not is a deep one. There is one ball, one circle, and one body per team.
What You Get, What You Give Up
| Element | What Push Me Pull You does |
|---|---|
| Body | One sausage, two heads, shared control |
| Mode | Two-player and four-player |
| View | Bird’s-eye / isometric |
| Hidden option | Swap human heads for dog heads |
| Platforms | PlayStation 4, Windows, Mac, Linux |
The source lists the game as multiplayer and co-operative, with two- and four-player modes. Those are the parallel facts it gives:
- Multiplayer and co-operative modes
- Two-player and four-player games
- Bird’s-eye / isometric view
- A hidden option to swap human heads for dog heads
That is a short game sold on a single idea, and the idea holds up better than most. The tug of a shared body is a real mechanic, not a gimmick. When your partner yanks the back end, you feel it in the front, and the argument that follows is the game.
A Small Game That Knows Its Size
Push Me Pull You earns a 7.5 out of 10. The score matches the published critic aggregate across five outlets, and it is the right number for what this is. The game is not trying to be a sport you play for a year. It is trying to be the thing you put on when four people are in a room and one of them is bad at games. It succeeds at that.
The weakness is repetition. Once both teams understand that the ball is won by coiling around it rather than charging it, matches settle into the same shape. The dog heads help. They do not add a mode, a rule, or a reason to keep going after the novelty of a dog at each end wears off.
What makes Push Me Pull You worth the money is the same thing that limits it. House House committed to one body and one ball and refused to pad the package. You get a circle, a ball, a body, and another person holding the other end. For a party game, that is close to the whole job.
The game is at its best in the first hour, when nobody knows what they are doing and every match ends in a pile. It is at its weakest in the second, when everyone does. Buy it for the first hour.
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