We went to PAX East! We’re back now.. We don’t know what time it is, or what day it is…
We’ve got some brand new Joe Danger The Movie footage with the lovely Anthony Carboni.
Things to look out for:
Four player Same-Screen Multiplayer!
Dinosaurs!
Tired Sean, now with added beard!
Dave accidentally turning off the TV half way through *slow clap*.
HUGE thanks to everyone who came to see us, we loved Boston, everyone was super friendly and loved the game!
We’ve done a few game expos now and are always amazed by how friendly gamers are. I mean real gamers, the ones who queue for an hour to get into a show, so they can queue for an hour to play a game, and they still come out smiling.
Anyone who doesn’t like games, or has become grumpy, should go to PAX and stand at a booth for a few hours. You’ll suddenly remember what it’s like to be excited.
Boston is a long way away though, and we have a bigger stand than we can manage. Then we thought “maybe there are people out there who would like to come and help us demo Joe Danger The Movie”
We’re looking for a few super fans to be our friends, and help us run some fun competitions throughout the show.
In exchange you get:
1. To become and honorary team member.
2. Free access to PAX East!
3. Behind the scenes access to Hello Games.
4. Indie Cred
5. A date with Sean (he made me add this, its optional we think)
To be eligible you have to:
A) Love Joe Danger!
B) Feel something stronger than ambivalence towards Hello Games. Hopefully the good side of ambivalence.
C) Be over 16? Maybe 18? Basically whatever age it is where people don’t mistake us for your Dad. Sean’s trying to grow a beard, so probably 21.
D) Be a ‘thoroughly nice person’.
E) You need to make your own way there!
If you are interested please pop an email to pax@hellogames.co.uk. Give us some reasons why you think you’d be good at demoing to folks and ideally prove you have some sort of experience of talking and being nice… Also! Send us a photo, proving you aren’t a robot, or an alien (or some kind of mixture). Basically try to prove you aren’t going to murder us and steal all our stuff. Or at least if you are, that you’ll demo Joe Danger well first.
Mails here pax@hellogames.co.uk!
Did you know, we’re going to PAX EAST!?
We’re so excited about it we nearly forgot to tell anyone! Also, we only just organised it (currently we don’t have anywhere to stay – what’s the weather like in Boston?).
We’ll be showing our brand new build of Joe Danger The Movie in Boston from April the 6th to 8th. If you’re going, please come and say HELLO, we’ll be at booth #718!
We’re going to be giving out free stuff, like special copies of the game and also awkward hugs. We’ll be running competitions too…
You can even ask us about what platforms we’re on. Maybe you’ll be surprised.
Hello there!
It finally feels like summer is on the way, blue skies, the sun has decided to show up, and it’s put us all in a really good mood!
This week, Joe Danger Special Edition will cost just 600 Microsoft Points! That’s 600 points for the highest rated XBLA game of 2011! We think it’s a really good deal, and hope that if you haven’t tried Joe Danger yet, you will now! Please tell your friends!
The sale ends on April the 2nd, so be quick!
We recently publicly declared that we love Ken Levine. We can’t give him a Valentine’s Day card in person… legally… So we put one here. And then we thought of some other people we love. Genuinely.
I imagine they all google themselves regularly, so maybe one day they’ll find this. At the very least we hope to appear on their Image Search 
Ken Levine, BE OUR VALENTINE!
Roses are Red,
Violets are Blue,
Bioshock One was better,
than Bioshock Two.
Peter Molyneux, BE OUR VALENTINE!
Roses are Red,
Violets are Blue,
Love’s not on rails,
And neither are you.
Tim Schafer, BE OUR VALENTINE!
Roses are Red,
Violets are Blue,
We might love you more,
Than Peter Molyneux.
Here at Hello Games we love Christmas. Any day of the year you can ask any of us how many sleeps it is until Christmas, and we can tell you. Today is nine sleeps ‘til Christmas.
In the spirit of Christmas, we’re giving away gifts! Our free Santa DLC turns Joe’s world into a winter wonderland, sprinkling snow and presents across the land.
It’s your job to collect the gifts on a brand new vehicle! Introducing the Christmas QuadBike! Powered by holiday cheer, this speedy, bouncy ATV will change the way you play Joe Danger Special Edition.
You’ll be able to download the Santa DLC for free from XBLA on the 21st of December, but you’ll have to be quick, Santa disappears after Christmas and so does the awesome ATV!!
Whenever you release a game, there’s a scary time period when you’re waiting for reviews to come in. What if people hate it? What if they find horrific game-breaking problems? What if they say mean things!?
Luckily, people seem to be enjoying Joe Danger Special Edition. Which makes us feel all gooey. Here are some of our favourites:
Ok, we’re all a little bit too excited right now… But with good reason! Joe Danger Special Edition is OUT NOW on Xbox Live Arcade!
You can even start it downloading from your PC at the marketplace!
It’s 1200 points and we’re awfully proud of it.
During Joe Danger Special Edition I tried to record a video of us making a level.
We got this instead, a behind the scenes look at how levels just kind of ‘happen’.
We read a lot about all the problems with the games industry, and how it’s all miserable. You won’t find any of that in here.
This video features Alex and Gareth. They recently joined us at Hello Games and we love them like brothers. We all hang out together every day and then occasionally we release a game. Hopefully those games are as fun to play as they are to make.
When you play Joe Danger Special Edition, you can unlock clothes for your Avatar.
In fact, you can dress your 360 Avatar as Joe Danger himself (or herself!).
We thought it would be nice to let Joe out and explore some other games on XBLA. At first he was confused, but then he started to enjoy it.
This is possibly the best video we have ever made.
The Lab is our biggest addition to Special Edition, and it’s actually where Joe started life. It was our testing ground for new ideas and from day one we built elaborate Assault Courses to test controls and handling.
This video is from 6 weeks into development on the original Joe Danger, and I remember recording this with my laptop on my knees.
This video is from a Microsoft play test, and it’s the final level in the Lab. It looks hard, but I wish you could have heard him laughing at every crash.
Joe Danger Special Edition is going to be releasing on December 14th for 1200pts.
That is next Wednesday. Next Wednesday we will all download it together, and we will compete on the XBLA leaderboards.
Next Wednesday people will play the Lab for the first time. Next Wednesday someone will be the first to earn every achievement in JDSE… actually that probably won’t happen ‘til Thursday…
It makes you think though… mainly about next Wednesday.
Some days are normal, and boring. Other days are worse, they become night, and you have more bugs to fix. Lots of days go by like that.
Then there are AMAZING days. Days like this one, when we hear that Joe Danger Special Edition has gone GOLD. These are days when we laugh, and hug each other. Days when we do a little dance, then Dave does an impersonation of Ryan, and nails it.
These are days when we sit back, and remember those nasty days of bug fixing, and smile, because they were actually fun as well – now we look back.
What does going GOLD mean? It means that we’re going to be able to release soon. It means we’ll all be on the leaderboards together soon. It means someone will be the first to unlock the Pink Monkey soon.
We don’t know when, but we know we’re staying awake until then, and you will know as soon as we do.
Let’s all remind ourselves what we’re waiting for…
Things we love about Ken Levine:
1. He made Bioshock and invented Art Deco.
2. He taught me that reading other people’s diaries is A-OK.
3. He taught me everything I know about stealing in Thief.
4. He understands the science behind water arrows.
5. He looks like David Duchovny.
6. He says Joe Danger is one of his favourite games.
Announcing a new game is always super exciting, it’s also really really nerve racking… It’s our baby, and we’re sending it off to school. Let’s hope it makes some friends!
We sit and read every comment with our fingers crossed that they’ll be nice to our poor little child. Thankfully, the response to Joe Danger Special Edition has been crazy positive, and we haven’t had to sort out any bullies. Yet.
We’re trying our best to spread the word to as many places as possible, and to explain what we’re up to as well as we can… which isn’t always that well. Mainly we send Sean out, he’s not very good at talking to press, but it gets him out of the office.
Then we sit back and read what silly things he’s said, and never let him live it down. Bless him.
Eurogamer asked us if we’d like to be on their podcast, so we sent Sean down to Brighton to talk to them. It’s literally an hour of nonsense. Warning, contains anecdotes about driving around Germany with a sofa and getting arrested for working late.
GamesIndustry.biz is a website that talks a lot about the business of games. We have no idea how Sean got on this one. I guess that means we’re a business? I’m going to tell my Mum, she’ll tell her friends.
In this interview Sean starts 26 sentences with ‘I think’ and the other 5 sentence with “I don’t think”. In his accent it would be “Oi tink” and “Oi don’t tink”. That’s a lot of thinking.
We talked to Edge Online about the differences between working with Microsoft and Sony – Sean says: “Microsoft are a bit like your Dad and Sony are like your crazy uncle”. Next time we’re going to practice what we say beforehand.
Phew! You’ve no idea how good it feels to be able to talk about Joe Danger SE coming to XBLA! We are so bad at keeping secrets… Please don’t ask us what our bank details are. Here’s a trailer that will hopefully help get you beautiful XBLA players as excited as we are!
If you look closely you’ll spot some of the new additions. For instance there’s a pink monkey. We believe this is a first for games.
Stop the Internet Presses. We’re announcing a new game!
That’s right, we’re bringing Joe Danger to Xbox LIVE Arcade, and what’s more it’ll be in a Special Edition. At long last our friends will be able to play it, and Sean’s brother. Well, they’ll download the Trial, after that we’re not sure.
Joe Danger Special Edition contains the original Joe Danger plus almost double the gameplay again, including new environments, new levels, and new characters – all created especially for Xbox players!
This has been such a hard secret to keep. A woman in the book shop asked me if I was looking for a special edition yesterday, and I started to cry. We’re just glad we can talk about things again. We promise more posts in the future.
We’re still hard at work putting the final touches to Joe Danger SE. It’s actually 5 in the morning now, and we don’t know how to get blog posts to release at a set time. I think we’ll just stay up until 9am when it gets officially announced, and click submit.
I’m just going to put some scores on the XBLA leaderboards while I wait.
After hiding away for over a year. We’re super super excited to announce our next game! Joe Danger: The Movie. It’s kind of a sequel to Joe Danger, but it’s mostly something entirely new!
Sean said we’re making a game for every person who’s ever come running excitedly out of the cinema, made a gun with their fingers and done some pretend fly kicks. Then there was an awkward silence.
We’ll be unveiling the game properly at Gamescom next week. We’re currently filling a van up with goodies and getting ready to go on a roadtrip to Cologne! After that we fly straight to PAX. If you want to see the game first, email sean@hellogames.co.uk.
Think of us hurtling down the Autobahn, on the wrong side of the road, while you sit at home with your delicious hot tea and biscuits.
Did you ever get so into what you’re doing, that you forgot to stop for tea?
Well that’s kind of what happened to us for the last year, except instead of tea we mean eating, sleeping and leaving our little office. We still obviously stop for actual tea (we’re not crazy).
Anyway! We suddenly realised, we better tell other people about this new game we’re making. I’m in the middle of getting everything ready so we can announce it. Sean said I can show off one thing from the game RIGHT NOW, as long as it’s not obvious what the game is.
So here’s a cupcake with a face on. He is important.
We’re getting it printed out six foot tall for our stand at Gamescom and PAX. If you’re going to either of those, you should totally come by our booth.
We will have tea making facilities.
Hello Games is looking for a bright new bee, to be almost entirely splendid and join us in the quest for full awesomeness. Here’s the “job description” – make fun games, drink tea, win awards and talk nonsense.
We’re looking for anyone who likes games, and kicks ass. Specifically we’re really interested in anybody willing to walk on hot coals and climb vast mountains (at the same time), just for the chance to make the games they love. Basically you’re us, but probably younger, better looking, not as grumpy and you consume less tea.
Your duties would be mainly centered around testing the game to ensure optimal levels of funkiness are maintained on a daily basis, with the possibility of jumping into development to reinforce us in any area you’re comfortable with.
You’ll be testing our latest games day-to-day, but you’ll also be exposed to things that will astound you… think of it as a gateway drug for the games industry.
Desired Experience
We’re looking for someone new who loves gaming, is hard working, ambitious and enjoys learning. Here are some other things we’d love you to have:
Right now we’re still a tiny team, imagine what we’ll do with your help! Drop us an email explaining why you’d be an amazing addition to our team, along with a CV and a portfolio of any work you may have to Jobs@hellogames.co.uk to apply. Drop what you’re doing and come join us!
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