Kao the Kangaroo Round 2

Kao the Kangaroo Round 2 is a 2005 platformer developed by the Polish studio Tate Multimedia and published by JoWooD Productions. It continues the adventures of Kao the kangaroo, a character Polish development created as its own answer to the Western mascots of the late nineties.

By 2005 the 3D animal-mascot platformer had a fixed shape: collect things, hop across platforms, fight the occasional enemy, move through levels sorted by theme. Kao fitted that mould and leaned on bright, heavily stylised cartoon visuals, which distinguished it from the more realistic titles around it.

The catalogue records a single-player game with a platform perspective. Publication by JoWooD meant distribution across Europe including its central part — a meaningful step for Polish development in the mid-2000s, since series like this one showed local studios could deliver something comparable to foreign competition.

Seen from a distance, Kao documents what a family game looked like before digital distribution: a box on a shelf, priced accessibly, aimed at children and at parents looking for something without violence.

Polish development was only starting to register internationally at that point. Studios had experienced programmers and lower costs than their Western competition, but they lacked the distribution and marketing that decided whether anyone noticed a release at all. Working with an Austrian publisher filled that gap and opened a route for titles that would otherwise never have left their home market.

We do not offer this one to play, but the OldGame.cz page for it summarises the year, developer, publisher and a picture gallery.