Joe Danger

The player controls the titular motorbike stuntman Joe Danger and guides him through ten trials to defeat his nemeses, the members of Team Nasty. The game uses elements of both racing and side-scrolling platform genres in which the protagonist can move to the right and, by reversing, to the left as well as hopping over and ducking under various obstacles. Although the game is based on a two-dimensional plane, some of its courses are designed with three layers accessible by changing lanes. The bike is controllable in the air, allowing various tricks to be performed, for which points are awarded with higher scores awarded for long trick sequences, and for manoeuvring onto targets.

Executing a stunt will build a "boost meter", which is used to increases Joe's speed, but drains the meter. The Select button is used to teleport Joe back to the last checkpoint passed.

Joe Danger arose from the team's wish to make "something that puts a smile on people's faces" similar to games such as Mario Kart and Micro Machines. An Evel Knievel toy was a main source of inspiration for the "Joe" character; the team had fun "firing that stunt cycle out of windows and down halls". Nevertheless, Murray likened work as an independent developer to "the reality of eating ice cream every day for every meal" as the novelty of working for themselves wore off. The team often spent more than 60 hours a week working on the project because of the "unrealistic" time scales for development and with only four team members, each had to fulfil several roles; they had no public relations representative nor did they have a business manager or a designer. No software design document was made throughout the production of Joe Danger, since the team felt they understood each other's ideas.

The game was announced on the developers' website on 23 September 2009 and given its first public showcase in November 2009 at the Eurogamer Expo in Earls Court. The team used this event as an opportunity for extensive playtesting, receiving feedback from those playing the game and creating new software builds for each day of the expo. Murray cited numerous "happy accidents" during development, which led to incorporation of various features into the end product. An example of this was a bug in the programming which enabled players to jump as often as they liked in mid-air; the team decided this was fun and incorporated it as a double jump.

The single-player gameplay mode of Joe Danger was generally well received by critics. com, it allows for "five-minute sprints" of gameplay, although more in-depth options take up more time. IGN's Daemon Hatfield compared the game favourably to Nintendo Entertainment System launch title Excitebike, and said that Joe Danger felt like a Nintendo game. , such as non-linear level progression (the ability to play levels in any order, providing that the player has earned enough stars to "unlock" the level), the encouragement to play through multiple times to complete every objective, and the use of platforms.

Another influences noted with favour by critics was the combo system, which some compared with the Tony Hawk's series of skateboarding games. Comments were also made on the influence of early Sonic the Hedgehog titles. The cheerful, cartoon-like nature of Joe Danger's artwork was well received; Eurogamer's Tom Bramwell said "I've worked on games websites for over a decade and not enough games are happy and colourful. This one is.