Spotlight On: Size Five Games

Every once in a while, an indie game developer comes along that is just so, so out of their minds that we here at LD feel like they deserve a little recognition and we absolutely have to do a spotlight on them. This time, it’s Size Five Games!

Size Five Games, formerly Zombie Cow Studios, is helmed by Dan Marshall (https://twitter.com/danthat), one of the hilarious protagonists of “The Dan and Ben Adventures” Unfortunately, neither of them star in “Gun Monkeys.” The studio is famous for creating comedy games and won a BAFTA for “Privates” which was commissioned by the UK’s Channel 4.

The “Ben and Dan Adventures” consist of “Ben There, Dan That!” and “Time Gentlemen, Please.” They harken back to good old point and click games in days of yore, with more references to Lucas Arts and “The Secret of Monkey Island,” than you can shake a rubber-chicken-with-a-pulley-in-the-middle at. Irreverently written and, at times, sacrilegious, if you’re easily offended or have a problem with unnecessary murder, this is not the game series for you. However, if you’re up for some good old fashioned logic puzzles, amusing dialogue and stealing hands from dismembered corpses, have at it! Bonus inclusions are dinosaurs, lasers, Star Wars references and travel by cow butt. The games are bundled as a cheap twofer on Steam and run on Windows systems.

“Privates” won a BAFTA in 2010 in the “Learning – Secondary” category. Rather than a game about Private Detectives as I’d innocently assumed when I stumbled onto the page, it is, in fact, a sex ed video game. No, I’d never heard of one of those before either, but I couldn’t stop laughing for 10 minutes after reading the page description and I knew I had to give it a go. The link on the official games page is broken, however, it’s also available for free download from Softonic (http://privates.en.softonic.com/). With psycho-trippy menu music, the game starts off weird but is fun, if you can manage to not get TOO grossed out by the basic premise of “Condom hatted lads with blasters running around in a vagina with LOTS of diseases.” That, and the game definitely succeeds in its goal of presenting sex ed and STDs in an amusing yet highly educational manner, with all the cheeky and bizarre humor that Size Five is known for.

The newest game released by Size Five is “Gun Monkeys,” a casual action game starring… monkeys with guns. Really, what did you think it was going to be? The game’s official description is “A Procedurally–Generated, Physics-based, Online Deathmatch platform game.” Right then! Just as funny as Ben and Dan, “Gun Monkeys” takes place in a semi-apocalyptic future where all human life has been obliterated (Gasp!). As a modern-day CEO you then send monkeys (with guns) on a time travel adventure to this future to take advantage of all the free energy in the future that is simply lying around, not being very useful to anyone at all. Because it’s procedurally generated you’ll never play the same level twice and it’s equipped with multi-player capabilities, though you can play offline if you so choose to. (We’re not savages like EA here, we don’t advocate for constant internet connections). “Gun Monkeys” is also available on Steam and works on both PCs and Macs.

Other Size Five games are Cruxade and Gibbage, which aren’t available for download on the website, however, if you politely email and ask pretty please with sugar on top, you can get a copy of them. Or you can do what I did and write a completely mental email and pray that they don’t report you to the authorities on suspicions of being just a bit nutty. Your choice.

The next game from Size Five has yet to be formally announced or given a title, but word on the street is that it’ll be announced within the coming months and available to own by the end of summer.

For more point and click, wibbly-wobbly timey-travely goodness, feel free to check out Size Five Games at their website – http://www.sizefivegames.com/.