I jumped into Robin Hood Sherwood Builders because I’ve always been a Robin Hood fan. One of the first movies I can remember going to the theater to see was Robin Hood Prince of Thieves. Between that version, the very comical Robin Hood Men in Tights, the Russel Crowe Robin Hood and then the action styled Robin Hood in 2018, I’ve basically always enjoyed the different ways of telling this tale. So when keymailer.co offered me a review copy of Robin Hood Sherwood Builders, I figured I’d jump in and take a chance, and the chance was well worth it.
While there is a lot of polish missing from this game, and while the voice acting proves a very specific point that no voice acting is better than bad (or worse AI generated) voice acting, the rest of the game seems to fall into place. Coming in at a retail price of $29.99, many people balked at that price point (per the Steam Comments) but honestly I think the gaming community is starting to become a little bit spoiled.
We keep saying that we want quality games, but small developers need to eat too. It's a huge undertaking for a developer to produce a video game of sufficient quality to even be worth of publishing. Entertainment has a quantitative value. People have no problem with spending $15 to go see a movie or $20 to $25 to buy a DVD and this provides maybe 2 to 2.5 hours of entertainment, at roughly $6 to $7.50 per hour of entertainment, yet a video game at $30 that can provide 30/60/90 hours of entertainment as seen as “corporate greed”
From the three-hours that I saw of Robin Hood Sherwood Builders, I would say that I think the price point is spot on, but maybe, given the overly comical voice acting, a $24.99 price point may have been better received. Thus far though my 3 hour playthrough I’m pretty certain that I’m going to get way more than $1 per hour of value. After 3 hours I’m not even close to being ready to finish the first zone, and there are three more after that. I have seen no less than 10 quest givers that I still have to visit, and I have to build probably 15 more buildings (plus upgrades) make new gear and that’s not including all the things that I don’t know.