We the people, formally declare that the resurgence of unique, innovative, independently developed games thanks principally to Xbox Live, PSN, Steam and WiiWare is single-handedly preventing the industry from disappearing entirely up its own arsehole.

We’ll talk about Joe Danger in just a moment, but before we do, please join us while we take a quick dip in a pool of unashamedly self-serving reverie. Back in the day – the NowGamer team has an average age in their thirties, so we’re talking dad-pipe and slippers here – games developers often worked on their own, or with a friend, in their bedrooms. Who can forget classics such as Éric Chahi’s stunning Another World? A pseudo-3D 16-bit masterpiece of atmosphere, gameplay and storytelling, which was programmed, drawn, written, designed, and even musically scored by the aforementioned Franco-mastermind.

By comparison, look at the games industry before download games caused everyone to sit up, concentrate, and try harder. For yay the graphics had got better, the teams reached into the hundreds, the budgets rivalled Hollywood, but somehow for the vast majority we were better off spending our money on a gun that pebbledashes raw sewage into our eyes. With one or two exceptions of course. And yes, that’s all just a feeling with no actual grounding in fact, but never let the truth get in the way of a good intro, right?

So… Joe Danger. The guys at Hello Games wheeled this little beauty down to our offices a few weeks back. When folk just turn up with an indy title, there’s always a few nerves knocking about. Us ‘critics’, such as we are, always wonder what tack we’ll need to adopt when miming our way through the usual meets, greets, airs and graces. Will we be modestly understating how much we love it? Or tactfully overstating faux-admiration to save on tears? Having to pretend to like something you’re being shown in this business is disconcertingly commonplace. As is the bitter self-loathing when your very next port of call is to sit down and tap out your subjective view to anyone who wants to read it; that the game you’ve just seen is in actual fact, a cluster of dick.

But, we truly loved Joe Danger – which is nice. The game revolves around its titular character, an Evel Knievel-style showman on a comically diminutive mini-moto. The basic objective is to reach the finish line in the shortest possible time. To do that you’ll need to negotiate loop-de-loops, apply measured velocity to clearing archetypical stuntman obstacles such as shark tanks and school buses, and both duck under and hop over anything from face-stopping beams to arcs of electricity, all the time microscopically adjusting Mr Danger’s angle through the air so as to avoid a face-plant.

The gaming public will most readily draw comparison with Trials HD, however, we’d compare the experience to Super Mario Bros. or any of Sonic’s two-dimensional offerings (takes tug on dad-pipe) from the days of 16-bit. Each course has a multitude of objectives and the more each is explored, the more you realise that simply getting to the end is the least of your worries. Yes, worries. Because at that eureka moment when we comprehended it all in a single thought, it also struck us just how life-consuming completing every objective in the game could become.

… continued