STUDIO PROFILE

SIZE FIVE GAMES

How a solo developer has navigated the indie scene for almost 20 years

BY CHRIS DONLAN

Even on a monitor screen via a flickering video call, Dan Marshall brings to our conversation a cheerful, comfortable kind of presence, his energy an unlikely blend of head boy and class clown. It’s hard to imagine him saying anything too out of left field. And then he hits us with it: “I don’t really like playing adventure games.” He laughs. “I haven’t played any in forever.”

This is the same Dan Marshall who’s been making and releasing adventure games ever since he first started coding, the Dan Marshall behind such games as Ben There, Dan That, Time Gentlemen, Please! and Earth Must Die. Through his one-person label, Size Five Games, over the past 20 years he’s become inextricably linked to the adventure genre – but how can that possibly be if he “doesn’t really like” playing the games themselves? To Marshall, it all makes perfect sense. “I used to play them frequently,” he continues, listing dozens of LucasArts classics he’s worked his way through in the past. “I had a great time with them, and really enjoyed making them.” Over the years, however, he says a blend of over-familiarity and mechanical toil came to complicate the fun. “With Time Gentlemen, Please!, something broke in my brain, and I stopped enjoying them.”

For anyone who’s ever successfully turned their hobby into their job – which admittedly carries significant perks – this eventual kind of weariness may be a familiar sensation. But there’s something deeper to Marshall’s revelation, something that hints at the core of his approach to game design. Since he’s known for making adventure games, the conventions of adventure games have also become the thing he tries to push against. Or, as he puts it, “I don’t see the value in being an indie developer and just making obvious things.”