Adventures in Sherwood

Sometimes you download something from an old floppy disk with no cover label, and suddenly you understand the DOS creators' mindset — they did their job and moved on. Adventures in Sherwood is exactly that kind of quietly forgotten gem you stumble upon in archives by accident rather than intention.

It's a text adventure set in the world of Robin Hood legends. You control a character, issue commands, solve logic puzzles, and gradually try to explore Sherwood Forest. The developer is unknown, but judging by its looks and spirit, it's a typical point-and-click or text quest of that era — whatever fits on one or two floppies, no action, just brainpower and patience.

Playing is repetitive and cautious. Every attempt to visit a new location or interact with an object takes forever. Places repeat, descriptions stay the same, until you're bored stiff. Dialogue isn't particularly engaging, the plot drags without real structure. If this was meant to be an exercise in logical thinking, fine, but as entertainment it doesn't work — waiting for each step's result just exhausts you before the game even gets going.

Sherwood was already well-trodden ground in the nineties. King's Quest, Monkey Island and others already had atmosphere, humor, punch. This feels more like a school project in DOS BASIC than a game you'd remember. It aged not just technically, but mainly through its sheer tedium.

Today you play it in your browser mostly out of historical curiosity — you want to see what the middle ground looked like between pure text adventures and the first graphical quests. It's nothing that'll make your day, but as a curio from an era when everyone with a computer tried to code something, it has its place.