A familiar legend can become more interesting when someone moves the spotlight a few feet to the side. The famous names are still there, but suddenly the person who used to orbit somebody else’s adventure gets ambitions, mistakes, loyalties, and consequences of her own. I tend to enjoy retellings most when they use familiarity as a starting point rather than a cage. Made Marion does that with Lady Marion of Glastonbury, a proud noblewoman whose unwanted arranged marriage sends her toward Nottingham at a particularly unstable moment for Avalon. King Richard is missing, the kingdom is deeply in debt after war, commoners are demanding greater political representation, and humans maintain an uneasy relationship with the fae who share their world. Marion arrives with her own opinions rather than waiting for Robin Hood to supply them, and I enjoyed having the political conflict treated as something she could actively influence.
Her choices can eventually place her among Robin’s rebels in Sherwood or inside Nottingham’s political struggle, and those branches lead toward seven love interests across six routes. Robin Hood, Little John, and Will the Scarlet Blade belong to the Sherwood side, while Meissa, Alanna, Gui, and Geoffrey occupy Nottingham, with Gui and Geoffrey sharing a route while receiving separate romances. That split immediately gave the larger structure more purpose for me than simply picking whoever looked most appealing. Choosing where Marion belongs also changes the political environment surrounding her romance, so attraction and allegiance can pull in the same direction or complicate one another.
Only the Sherwood half is currently complete. Robin launched with Early Access in November 2023, Will followed in October 2024, and John’s route arrived on December 7, 2025 after a short delay. Each love-interest route is designed to run around 60,000 to 80,000 words, and finishing routes can unlock extra scenes from the love interest’s point of view. John’s POV material was added in January 2026, for example, after his main route was already available. I liked those perspective shifts because Marion normally controls how I understand a relationship. Seeing selected moments from the other person’s side gave me information she could not have without turning the entire story away from her.
Choices inside those routes also reach further than affection. Different versions of Marion can handle missions differently, and Will’s route includes an achievement for completing one sequence through the less-smooth approach. That small reward caught my attention because it encouraged me to stop treating the cleanest result as automatically correct. Routes can also move toward Challenge or Compromise outcomes based on how Marion approaches the relationship. I enjoyed having her personality shaped through repeated decisions rather than choosing one obvious personality label near the beginning and watching the script remember it for me.
Avalon gives those decisions somewhere substantial to exist. The Robin Hood material shares space with fae, druids, magic, political factions, and an alternate Arthurian history built around a pact between humanity and the fae. One detail I particularly enjoyed was the treatment of Shadow. It is associated with chaos rather than evil, while Avalon traditionally values balance between chaos and order. The Temple of Shadow therefore isn’t presented as an ominous headquarters for villains. Beast Druids inhabit its wooded grounds, and its library preserves forbidden, secret, and politically inconvenient knowledge. Details like that kept the fantasy side from collapsing into a simple light-equals-good shorthand.
The writing is at its strongest for me when that worldbuilding collides with Marion’s decisions rather than stopping the story for explanation. Becky Cunningham, who owns Velvet Cupcake Games, is the game’s sole writer and programmer, and Marion benefits from having a strong enough personality to push against the people around her. Robin’s charm, Will’s more resentful edge, and John’s presence within the Sherwood group give that side three different relationship dynamics without requiring Marion to become a completely different protagonist for each man. Some political and lore-heavy conversations ran longer than I wanted, but I preferred that excess to a Robin Hood setting where Nottingham exists only because the Sheriff needs somewhere to live.
Presentation has changed considerably during development. Arrapso is the current lead sprite and CG artist, while Sandra Zedekiah handles backgrounds, creatures, and additional cut-in work. Lawrichai took responsibility for cut-ins and the lore introduction, eventually learning Live2D so the planned in-engine sequence could become a full animated movie about Avalon’s history. By John’s release, that movie was complete and accessible both when starting a new game and through the gallery. The backgrounds deserve particular credit for scale. Sandra had completed around fifty of them, plus variations, by late 2024, and that range helped Sherwood, Nottingham, interiors, and the more mystical parts of Avalon avoid feeling like a handful of recycled stages.
I also appreciated how often the artwork breaks away from standard character sprites. Cut-in illustrations appear during longer scenes, animals and fae creatures receive their own sprites, and animations accompany magical moments. Those touches matter in a long visual novel because several consecutive conversations can otherwise begin to feel visually identical. The Celtic influence advertised in the game’s presentation fits the wider mix of Northern European inspirations without forcing every location into the same medieval-fantasy look.
Sound received similar attention after the Kickstarter. Much of the music was licensed from Alexander Nakarada, and a stretch goal funded three original compositions from him, including John’s theme and the romantic piece “Heartbeat.” Ambient sound has its own volume control separate from music and effects, with environmental audio used to give locations such as Sherwood more presence. Alanna’s bard material goes further, using period-minded backing tracks created by early-music multi-instrumentalist Mathieu Lavoie. I responded more to those location and character-specific touches than I did to generic fantasy scoring because they made Avalon’s different spaces and people easier to distinguish.
There is no full voice cast, which I noticed most during the longer dramatic conversations. Made Marion relies primarily on text, music, ambience, and its expressive sprite work instead. Alanna’s songs are a special case within that presentation, but the Steam release does not list full audio. I would have welcomed performed dialogue for major scenes, particularly with seven love interests carrying such different personalities, although the lack of it never made Marion herself difficult for me to read.
Accessibility is unusually visible rather than buried several menus deep. The options include font changes, font scaling, self-voicing, and controls for disabling animations and screen shaking, while the itch.io listing identifies the game as color-blind friendly, subtitled, and blind friendly. I especially appreciated self-voicing being exposed alongside the other accessibility settings instead of treated like a hidden Ren’Py function someone would need to know existed beforehand.
Made Marion also carries the marks of a project whose scope became much larger than its original schedule could handle. Its Kickstarter ran from February 16 to March 18, 2021 and raised C$46,076 from 978 backers against a C$15,900 goal, unlocking every stretch goal. About a year into main development, Cunningham developed Long Covid, with fatigue and brain fog extending production enough that the game eventually moved to an incremental Early Access model. Knowing that history made the route-by-route release structure understandable, but it also creates the biggest reservation I have about recommending the game right now. This is still an unfinished seven-love-interest story.
As of July 2026, Robin, Will, and John are playable in full, completing the Sherwood romance lineup. Meissa is scheduled as the first Nottingham route in 2026, with Alanna and the shared Geoffrey/Gui route still to follow. That means the side of the story built around working within Nottingham’s political machinery remains largely future content rather than something I can judge alongside Sherwood. I can already see how much potential that contrast has, especially because the common routes establish such different environments, but potential is not the same thing as a finished route.
That incompleteness matters because the central idea I enjoyed most is bigger than any single romance. Marion is being asked what kind of person she wants to become while Avalon is asking a similar question about itself. Rebellion, political compromise, old systems of power, fae relations, class, and competing ideas of order all surround relationships that can push her toward different answers. The available Sherwood routes gave me enough of that conflict to care about where the larger project is headed. They also left me aware that half of its most interesting political equation is still waiting to be written.
Verdict
Made Marion gives Lady Marion enough agency to make a Robin Hood retelling feel like her story rather than somebody else’s legend viewed from the sidelines. I enjoyed how its choices connect romance with politics, while Avalon’s fae lore, alternate Arthurian history, detailed artwork, accessibility options, and character-specific music give the setting more substance than I expected. The route-by-route Early Access structure remains the unavoidable limitation. Sherwood is complete, but Nottingham still holds four of the seven love interests and much of the political material I most want to explore. What’s available already has enough personality to keep me interested, but Made Marion will be easier to judge as a whole once Marion finally has access to every path the story promises.
