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.