Nocked! True Tales of Robin Hood

Note - this review is for the full game, not the beta opening from the Back Garden of the Spring Thing 2016.

This game gambols through every version of Robin Hood you could wish, alternately merry and serious, full of choice and consequence, and highly repayable. Heartily recommended.

I loved choosing and developing my base, and seeing things develop there -- my deepening relationships with companions, buildings rising, it turning into a little township of its own, full of its own activity.
I loved getting mail -- hearing how things have proceeded after I made a choice or helped someone.
The castle sequence is a fond homage to Zork and the era of "go north" and drawing your own maps.
Even choices that seem like they might not be rewarded in most interactive fiction games -- silence in a conversation, going back to sleep instead of chasing a midnight will o the wisp, declining to go on a raid, failing to elude the sheriff -- have interesting outcomes, and the game is full of what feel like hidden nooks. It's remarkably branching and repayable for such a large, even epic game.

It's warmhearted -- the couple romances I've played feel tender and real, as do the friendships and companions. It's often laugh out loud funny.
The art is lovely and evocative. The changing seasons -- especially the seasonally shifting art -- give the game an earthy, sensuous quality appropriate to the Bold Outlaw of the green woods.... whoever he or she may be in your telling.

This Spring Thing entry is a preview of a big mobile friendly game about Robin Hood. Gameplay-wise, it most resembles Choice of Games, with stats and romances and branch and bottleneck gameplay. However, the finished game will have several illustrations, and the game is not constrained by CoG conventions.

Gameplay was exciting, keeping me guessing at what was important but rewarding careful planning. The game is already large, with a great deal of mythology and folklore mixed in.

I recommend this to anyone, especially Robin Hood fans. The one drawback I found was that I did not feel emotionally invested in the story, which of course may vary from player to player.