Dan Marshall and his studio Size Five Games are one of the most prominent indie developers in the United Kingdom.

Having achieved critical success with their point-and-click adventure titles Ben There, Dan That and Time Gentlemen, Please!, the studio has now received recognition of their work from the British Academy of Film and Television Arts, who awarded the studio a BAFTA Children’s Award for the game Privates last Sunday.

Privates was commissioned by Channel 4 Education as an innovative means of exploring the message of sex education through the medium of a computer game. The minute-to-minute action places you in control of a squad of marines sent to tackle the diseases and infections found in our genitalia.

The game received a lot of attention from video games journalists in September 2010 when Microsoft announced that the game would not be coming to the Xbox Live Marketplace due to the sexual nature of the content.

First off could I just ask where Size Five Games is based, and besides you how many people are permanent staff at the studio?

We’re based in Norbiton (Near Kingston Upon Thames), working out of my home office – I say “we”, but really I’m the only full-time employee. I rely on freelancers to do bits and bobs from time to time, but the vast majority of it is me tapping away at a keyboard from morning till night. It’s amazing, I love my job. Working from home is a dream.

How did you feel when you heard that Privates had won the BAFTA?

I was completely and utterly gobsmacked.

I don’t really remember much of the evening from that point onwards, I’m pretty sure I was in a state of shock. I try to temper my expectations for this sort of thing, to the point of being pretty pessimistic. As a result I’d managed to convince myself there was no chance Privates would win… so when it did I was simply dumbfounded.

It’s amazing, exciting news and probably completely life changing, but at the moment I’m still kind of numb.

You mention on your website blog that along with Channel 4, you would also like to thank their lawyers for helping win the BAFTA earlier this week. Besides the well-reported difficulty you had with Microsoft trying to get Privates on to the Xbox Live Marketplace, did the controversial nature of the game cause any other disputes?

Ha ha, no not really. There were a few vitriolic comments from people on YouTube who seemed to think that cellular-level innards and giant pubic hairs were the most gut-wrenchingly revolting thing they’d ever heard of, but by-and-large it went down really well.

We did want to get it on Xbox, and that was part of the original plan, but we knew from the off it would be a bit of a struggle. The original design document basically broke a vast number of Xbox’s rules about what content they would and wouldn’t allow on the console, but I was hopeful that the educational content meant it might slip through.

As it was, I sent a copy to the (very nice) people at Xbox who loved it, but decided that the rules needed to hold steady. Which is fair enough, I reckon.

Since Privates has been so well-received and is now award-winning, do you imagine you would work with Channel 4 again on a similar project or even a sequel?

I’ve got too much on at the moment to even think about a sequel or doing more – and that’s ultimately something Channel 4 would have to want, too. So right now, I doubt it.

One of the characters in Privates, though, the HIV virus – he’s hilarious. He’s a big cape-wearing skeleton who stomps about the place shouting at you. It’s be criminal not to use him in something, I think he needs a spin-off game where he goes to the beach or something.

Are you willing to give any hints as to what you may be working on currently?

Absolutely! I’m working on a game called The Swindle- it’s still very early in development, but it’s shaping up to be something pretty special.

It’s a Steampunk cybercrime caper – the idea being that you’re a crook who breaks into all these big facilities and hacks their computers. It’s a way off yet, but coming along nicely.

Time Gentlemen, Please! and Ben There, Dan That are both clearly inspired by, and regularly pay homage to, the old Lucas Arts point-and-click adventures. Which would you say is your favourite point-and-click adventure game from back then?

Definitely the original Sam And Max game – it’s a complete masterpiece. Great puzzles, great characters, a brillo storyline and completely hilarious. I played it through several times as a kid, and it never got boring. Day Of The Tentacle comes a close second, and Full Throttle as well. Those three are the holy trinity of Point and Click games

Do you have a particular favourite from / opinion of the more modern adventure titles such as Zack And Wiki on the Wii or the Telltale Games?

I’ve played a few – the weird thing about making Time Gentlemen, Please! is that it put me right off playing adventure games. I don’t know what it is, but I suddenly find them quite laborious.

Maybe it’s because I’m just too au fait with the inner workings, now, but I get about as far as a great big bustling area filled with new things to look at and new people to talk to, and my heart sinks!

Game development has ruined me!

The BAFTA award-winning Privates is free to download. It and all the other games by Dan Marshall are available from the Size Five Games website.