Robin Hood: Sherwood Defenders

by Aethyna Mar 28, 2025 | 1 Votes | 7 Played | 0 Reviews

5 rate

Genres:

Strategy

Graphics:

Labels:

Building , Tower Defense , Archery

Platforms:

Publishers:

PlayWay S.A. Help legendary outlaw Robin Hood strategize and defend various villages from waves of increasingly more overwhelming armies. Get a taste of action yourself by releasing a volley from your bow at range, or go in for some close combat once the enemies start rushing in. Will you be able to keep the villages safe against all odds? Play Now Similar Games

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Summary Gameplay Graphics/ Sound Conclusion

Summary

Robin Hood: Sherwood Defenders is a first-person tower defense (TD) game where you step into the boots of the legendary outlaw, Robin Hood. Help him strategize and defend various villages from waves of increasingly more overwhelming enemies. Get a taste of action yourself by releasing a volley from your bow at range, or go in for some close combat once the enemies start rushing in. Will you be able to keep the villages safe against all odds?

Gameplay

To start, Robin Hood: Sherwood Defenders comes with a simple tutorial level where you can learn all about the game in a more relaxed environment, thanks to the lack of a timer. Here, you can learn how to build, upgrade, and even recruit units to defend the village – or at least the shrine-like “main building” - at your own pace. However, the timer kicks in once you decide to play one of the three maps available.

The game alternates between two phrases – the Build phase where you get to… well, build your defenses and the Defense phase. You only have a limited time during the Build phase to decide how to best use the resources you have on hand, be it to build a new tower, upgrade an existing one, place other defenses like walls and traps or even units like swordsmen and archers, set up new village facilities, like resource producing ones or houses to increase your manpower, as well as to upgrade them. It’s a good idea to invest in resource producing facilities early on so you can reap their benefits in later waves where costly tower and wall upgrades are crucial for survival.

Unlike most tower defense games, the tower defense element here is rather rudimentary. From the get-go, you’ll quickly realize – to your chagrin – that the game has predetermined spots for you to place walls and towers. Granted that, for towers, you can still choose which tower to place in that specific tower slot, but considering that you only have three tower types, you don’t really get a whole lot of options to really strategize your defense.

Instead of variety, the challenge in the game mostly centers around setting up your critical kill zones early on with towers, walls, the occasional traps, and units, as well as building up your production facilities so you have a steady stream of resources to build more towers and walls, along with their upgrades. Note that, unlike some TD games, there’s no need to repair or even pay a repair cost since all buildings and units will restore their respective durability and heath once you win a wave.

Of course, aside from building stuff, you can also spend some time with the trader to purchase special arrows that typically do more damage (including elemental effects) than the free copperhead ones you have by default. Don’t forget to equip the arrows you bought either! Unfortunately, aside from the arrows, there’s no way for you to upgrade Robin’s gear like getting better bows or swords, or even armor and other gear like the quiver. Oddly enough, you can’t buy any more of the health potion through the trader either, despite having a free bottle in your inventory when you start the game.

The Defense phase is pretty self-explanatory. Enemies will start streaming into the battlefield from the indicated spots, and you’ll finally get to see some action yourself. There are plenty of nice and high places for you to perch on if you want to show off your skills with the bow, or you could switch to the sword and try to get some kills dueling the enemies in close combat. Enemies also come in all shapes and forms, including alchemists who lob explosive flasks at your towers. Make sure to get these early or you risk losing an upgraded tower which can be costly to rebuild.

Note that you have access to a nifty slow-motion function, which can make shooting arrows accurately and dodging attacks easier, as well as parry which, when done right, can lead to a free and effective counterattack. Enemies will dodge your attacks too, so it’s probably a good idea to use that slow-mo to stop your target from suddenly leaping to the side – like he got sixth sense or something - before the arrow hits.

Similar to all TD games, the goal here is to defend a main structure. In this case, it is the “main building”, which looked like a shrine of some sort, that’s located at the center of the village. However, to my surprise, there are some ways you can “cheese” this. For example, I noticed that I was able to peel enemies off from attacking my main building by simply attacking them long enough to gain their attention. With some clever kiting, I managed to bring the bunch of them who made it through my destroyed wall back to my kill zone nearby. Enemies can also be distracted by towers, units like archers, and other walls if they are close enough.

As fun as it is to play as Robin Hood in a tower defense game, I did find Robin Hood: Sherwood Defenders rather lacking, and its gameplay rather shallow. For a tower defense-centric game, the developers seem to have completely omitted the “tower variety” component... and don’t give me that BS about trying to keep the game realistic – Robin has access to different arrow types so why couldn’t my archer towers have them as well?

Not to mention, the fixed tower-building positions take away another huge part of a good TD game. In fact, the game does end up feeling more like a resource management game with some action-RPG-style action. Of course, let’s not go into the (only) three maps available and the rather limited (and painfully linear) progression system to unlock new “tech” which doesn’t happen to include new towers.

Balancing-wise, the game could use a lot of work considering that coins are painfully limited here and there’s no way for you to earn more, especially once you proceed to the second map and are facing larger enemy forces in the later waves. Your default arrows feel like needle prinks on the enemies even if you aim for headshots, and as mentioned, since coins are super limited, I opted to spend them on my buildings rather than on depletable arrows. The game touts combos and a special attack in the tutorial, but I don’t seem to see any of them during actual combat.

Robin Hood: Sherwood Defenders also seems to reuse a lot of assets from its original game, Robin Hood – Sherwood Builders, which I’ve had quite some fun with as well, which does make this “spinoff” a bit on the low-effort side. Even the UI is exactly the same. To be honest, this game feels like it could have been a fun, bonus game mode in the original title, or even a paid DLC if that’s the option they want to go with, but it just doesn’t have enough of a leg – or content – to stand on alone.

Graphics/ Sound

Similar to the original title it was based on, Robin Hood: Sherwood Defenders features a realistic medieval aesthetic, complete with natural and earthy color palettes and tones, producing environments that are highly immersive and atmospheric. The game even has kill cams and nice death animations for combat, but they don’t seem to trigger as often, which may be the whole point.

In terms of sound, the game provides players with two kinds of tunes—one for the Build phase and the other, more ominous-sounding, complete with war horns, for the Defense phase. There are plenty of sound effects and ambiance here as well, mostly the sounds of combat, including the slashing of swords and the twang of a bowstring being released. The NPCs are also voiced here and will repeat some phrases in a way similar to the units in old-school RTS games.

Conclusion

Robin Hood: Sherwood Defenders ultimately feels like an uninspired and shallow attempt at a tower-defense spinoff. While the core gameplay has some entertaining moments, the lack of depth, variety, and innovation prevents it from standing out in the genre. That said, if you're a fan of Robin Hood or just looking for a simple first-person tower-defense experience, there’s some fun to be had—especially if you grab it at a discount. Just keep your expectations in check, and you might squeeze a few enjoyable hours out of it before moving on to something more substantial.

New Game Added: Robin Hood: Sherwood Defenders

by Aethyna Mar 28, 2025

Help legendary outlaw Robin Hood strategize and defend various villages from waves of increasingly more overwhelming armies. Get a taste of action yourself by releasing a volley from your bow at range, or go in for some close combat once the enemies start rushing in. Will you be able to keep the villages safe against all odds?