Nocked is an adventuresome, statted CYOA in which you play the legendary figure Robin of Locksley – who may be a woman. BLAM!* (More on that underneath the review.) The game has been made with a Twine-descended engine called Disbound.
Nocked! drops you in it immediately by having the Sheriff of Nottingham and henchmen descend upon the Locksley residence. You can click listed links to choose your next action or dialogue choice. Your major stats (Gold, Renown, Merry Men, Bounty) are always on display, and the import of each is described early in the piece. Stat-interacting choices or blockades are highlighted in colour. I don't think I've previously seen a Twine game that handled stats gracefully in a way that also appeared to be very built-in, so this Disbound engine is looking pretty good. The stats can also be slid out of sight, a feature obviously intended for iPhone displays.
Now, in what light should one read that line about Nocked being 'True Tales of Robin Hood?' Well, if you always thought the Robin Hood story sorely lacked a magic-using Maid Marian, a unicorn and a talking wolf who says stuff like, "Don’t worry, Robin. You’re also a special, special snowflake." – then indeed, Nocked! has finally excavated the truth for you. In other words, this is a tongue in cheek truth for a game mythos that has a hint of Nintendo's potpourri approach to fantasy about it. But I've been prejudicial in isolating the 'snowflake' line; the game action is essentially serious adventure stuff. Gathering supplies, outwitting pursuers, dealing with other characters, solving puzzles and exploring the terrain under time pressure. The major Robin Hood characters all take part. I particularly enjoyed the tension of the race against the dwindling daylight which acted as the timer on the puzzle of passing Little John.
In presentation, I found the choices to be in danger of being visually inseparable on screen. They're all link-coloured, and they aren't spaced apart from each other or dot-pointed. The narrower the screen, the more pronounced this effect. It also enhanced the mild trouble I was having parsing the value of the dialogue options in relation to each other. I think sharper writing would allow the choices to flow with a greater sense of motivation from the preceding text, and to more clearly differentiate the dialogue ideas from each other. The game worked for me better when I was choosing physical actions than when I had to decide which of several multi-line dialogue texts to say.
Another issue is that choices whose obvious intention is to allow the player to exit the current stage of the game read a bit gauchely when they find themselves unable to deliver, due to the player having failed to encounter or exhaust some vital content in the current scene. There are a lot of choices worded like: 'I had no more to say so decided to listen to Marian instead' – which don't necessarily move the game forward as you'd hope, but force you to click more choices in the current loop. I understand this is a design complexity for big branching CYOAs like this, but I've seen the outs (or the logic for them) handled more gracefully than they are in Nocked!
The game offers selectable difficulty levels which should speak to your stat management, though the difficulty level naming is a little curious. Easy is called 'Story-Mode' but normal is called 'Normal'. I think Story-Mode definitely needs renaming to avoid confusion. I played the demo through a couple of times on Normal mode, in completely different ways, and was impressed by the major variance in content and characters – and character groupings – encountered on each pass.
Nocked! grew on me the further I got into it. Personally I wasn't crazy about the introduction of talking animals, magic and the like, but I've observed that instant or unquestioning acceptability of that aesthetic in fantasy gaming (well, I didn't know it was going to be fantasy. This is Robin Hood, for cryeye!) comes about a generation of gamers after me. By some standards, I am an oldening man sitting on a throne of dust. As I was saying, the game grew on me in general, particularly when I was trying to solve particular puzzles. Dealing with the dialogue options always felt gauzy to me, so between that and the general aesthetic, this isn't a game I myself will hit up for the full version. But I think it's doing most of its stuff well, and the folks who are in the target audience should enjoy it. The mechanics present as focused and transparent, and traditional adventure content is well, if typically, handled.
* The way the other sex possibility came up quite charmed me, but I should point out that I rank myself as way behind the curve in the world of big, statted CYOAs. I know that the Choice Of Games style has become a major force, but I've barely played any of those games myself, and all I'm saying is that maybe the way the choice of character sex is handled in Nocked is typical of lots of these games by now. In any case, I found it to be an amusing dialogue moment.
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