Coming To PSN: Joe Danger

My name is Sean Murray. My three friends and I are making a game for PlayStation 3 called Joe Danger!

We’re a tiny indie outfit based in Guildford, UK (across the street from our friends at Media Molecule), and we’ve been having the most insanely awesome 2010 so far. To start, we revealed Joe Danger, then had lots of important people say really nice things about us. We’ve been nominated for two Independent Games Festival awards, a Direct2Drive Vision award and now we get to announce that we’re coming to Playstation 3. It feels good to finally tell someone. Whoop, whoop!

Joe Danger is the star of our game. He’s a down and out daredevil, this hapless little dude who’s known as, “The World’s Most Determined Stuntman.” You need to take Joe on the ride of his life and go from zero to hero, across over 50 eye-poppingly gorgeous and eye-wateringly dangerous levels. It’s what we like to call a “Stunt-‘Em-Up,” and your job is to combo, boost and pull ludicrous tricks to fill stadiums and put Joe back on the podium.

You’ll help Joe to wheelie his way into the record books, as you smash through hardcore stunts and take on some of our ridiculously addictive mini-games like Coin-Dash, Bowling-Bounce, Crazy-Puzzle and Target-Grab. To regain the title “Master of Disaster” though, you’ll need prove you’re the best, race against your rivals, out-thrill your friends and defy death to defeat the dastardly Team Nasty.

Before starting Hello Games together, we all worked at much bigger companies on huge teams, making some amazing games like Burnout and Black. Creating our own games is what we always wanted to do though, and PSN gives us the opportunity to get ‘em out there to you lovely people.

About two years ago when we first left to do our own thing, we sat around talking about what our very first game might be. We knew for sure that we wanted to recapture some of the arcade magic of games we grew up with from the SNES and Genesis generation. Then Grant, our only artist, brought a box of toys in from his parent’s attic, and something kind of beautiful happened. There was an instant, awesome power to demonstrating your latest game idea with Optimus Prime in your hands. We kept coming back to one toy though — an Evel Knievel stunt cycle. We sat and played with it, building bigger and bigger ramps, launching it out of windows and down corridors. It didn’t matter that he crashed all the time; in fact, that was almost the point. Just like that, Joe Danger was born!

The really important thing about playing with that stunt cycle was that building ramps was as much fun as launching yourself over them. So with Joe Danger you can freeze the game at any point to enter edit-mode and change your world any way you want. You can put a ramp down just before you land or place a ring of fire just before you go through it. It’s really easy and allows you to create the most ridiculous stunts you can think of, then use them to smash some world records! You can even share your creations with all your friends and torment them with your devious creations.

We’re a pretty competitive bunch here at Hello Games, and never more so than when we take each other on in some outrageous split-screen face-offs. The key to success is to pull tricks and create combos which will earn boost, allowing you to reach ridiculous speeds and pull even bigger tricks. Once you master your motorbike, you can take on the world with your high-scoring combos. We’re really looking forward to having some competition when the game is released.

When people ask me what my favorite film is, I like to tell them it’s Cinema Paridiso, because I like to look clever. It’s a lie though. My favorite film is actually The Naked Gun. I’m a big fan of slapstick, especially people getting clotheslined at high-speed, and that’s something we’ve tried to fill our game with. We use advanced cartoon physics to create a world ripe with humour. As a stuntman you laugh in the face of Danger, but it laughs back when you crash, as you bounce from boulder to boulder on fire, towards a pile of giant mousetraps. Even when you’re flung from your bike at high speed though, you can still make a last ditch attempt to please the crowd by pulling poses mid-air and nudging yourself directly into the path of Danger to score some extra points.

Joe Danger is coming out really soon, sometime in the next few months. We’re giddy with excitement about it and we think it’ll put a big stupid grin on your face.

You can keep up to date with Hello Games and Joe Danger on our blog, follow us on Twitter or even just send us mail!

P.S. Check out Eurogamer soon for some hands-on coverage and an interview!

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