What changed in Marrow March
Marrow March is in Early Access and grows one update at a time. Newest first: Early Access updates are dated, and below them are the milestones that led there.
Early Access
Version 0.5.16Latest
The siege waits for you
Close the game in the middle of a run and it picks up where you left it. The first minutes are smoother, and the wall is cheaper.
- New: your run is kept. Reopen the game and you go on from the assault you left, with every coin you had earned; what you had bought is paid back.
- Balance: the wall’s works cost a quarter less, and the masons lay the first course of Reinforce as a gift.
- Fixed: leaving the first night before the castle was raised no longer skips First Blood and the castle.
- Fixed: the lessons’ arrows point at the right button: the Archer’s Place, a trap’s Set.
- Fixed: the Statistics page’s completion figure counts every age, assault by assault.
Version 0.5.15
Every level counts
Fixes, most of them from your reports, and two Frontier columns back. Thank you to everyone who wrote in: you are on the new credits page.
- Fixed: skeleton archers no longer slide up to the wall without shooting; they stand off and fire.
- Fixed: a whole Essence Tree no longer locks you out of the Ancestral Sky.
- Fixed: soldiers on the bridge are no longer shuffled or lost when the wall falls.
- Fixed: the garrison drawer no longer closes itself in a busy assault.
- Fixed: the Bestiary can be finished.
- Fixed: Down Comes the Grate and Sound the Retreat now travel with a moved save.
- Fixed: a Shaman’s Damage training now strengthens its chant.
- Fixed: the Armory’s cards show what your Essence Tree has added.
- Fixed: the Gate shelf no longer shows before The Inner Ward.
- Fixed: Shift-click on the tree shows the price of the whole fill.
- Balance: Attack Speed, Crit and Range training count at every level.
- Balance: Frontier II and III are back, one deploy column each.
- Balance: the tree’s discount and crit steps are smaller, and none is wasted.
- The view slides into the courtyard more calmly when the wall falls.
Version 0.5.14.1
Rain you can hear
The rain was falling, but it fell under the music.
- Rain on the title and on the field is louder, and a storm’s wind louder still: you hear the weather you see.
Version 0.5.14
Traps with ground of their own
The trap field stays where it is, the wall is a thing you save for, and the dead arrive one kind at a time.
- Traps go on a field of their own that never moves: buying Frontier gives your soldiers ground without taking any from your traps. It runs from the foot of the trees to the bottom of the field, with no strip left over.
- Dug Ditch, a new first step in the Works: the dead walk 5% slower, from your first visit to the tree.
- When traps and the wall’s works open, a note shows you where to start. It only suggests: close it with its ×.
- Wall works cost more and come in over the ages: Reinforce from 500 gold, Spiked Walls at 10,000. Open the wall once when it can be fortified, before the next assault.
- Bosses come at the end of an age, on assault 20. New dead join one by one: graves open from assault 10, then the Gravecaller, the Adept and the standard-bearer.
- Soldiers start with sensible targets: archers shoot hounds first, wizards the levy. Archers, wizards and ballistas reach about a quarter less far.
- Crit Chance and Piercing open in shorter, dearer steps. The Essence chip opens the tree. The speed chip waits until the Sky gives you a faster pace.
- Achievements now appear at the bottom right.
Version 0.5.13
A first night you can play your way
The tutorial suggests now. It never takes the controls out of your hands.
- On the first night every button is yours. The note points at the next step, and if you have already done it, the night moves on.
- Skip the first night from the top-left corner: the wall falls as it would have, and the Essence Tree and your castle follow.
- The lesson after the first fall no longer holds you: hire anything, move your soldiers as often as you like until the horn, close it with its ×, or sound the horn when you are ready.
- Thank you to the player who told us where it went wrong.
Version 0.5.12
A breath between the dead
The horde is as big as before, but it takes longer to come out, and the wall stands a little longer.
- Each assault’s dead now come out over 20 seconds instead of 15: the same horde and the same gold, a quarter fewer of them a second.
- The wall starts at 25 HP instead of 20.
- Frontier gives one deploy column, not three. If you bought more, the essence for the extra levels is given back.
Version 0.5.11
Stronger from every fall
The horde is as fierce as before. Your line now grows faster to meet it, and the field looks the part: snow that settles, fog that drifts, a bridge that drops.
- Gold from every kill is up by half, and a level of training gives more: +30% damage, +15% attack speed.
- The Essence Tree’s fighting steps are twice as strong, and a fall pays half again as much essence: a visit after an early fall buys about eight steps instead of three.
- The Wizard opens at 8 damage.
- The first ground to hold is two columns narrower, and Frontier is a bright step to save up for.
- The fall screen says first what happens next, leads with Spend Essence and how many upgrades it reaches, and shows a dash for nothing earned.
- Snow settles on the field as it falls: patchy in a light snowfall, white in a heavy one, and a little on the wall and the gatehouse. Set how much falls on the graphics page.
- Fog drifts over the field in sheets.
- Drop the Bridge: the deck drops open and is winched back up on ropes, and the dead on it fall into the sea.
- Spiked balls drop off the wall, bounce, roll and slow, and a ball with the lane to the edge rolls on off the field.
- Burning, frozen and chilled dead glow, and a standard-bearer marks the dead he wards with a red glow on the ground. He carries his standard like a boss now.
- Nearer bodies are drawn in front of the ones behind them, and the wiki is a click from the pause menu.
Version 0.5.10
Rings to finish
Every ring of the Essence Tree is a goal now, every petal ends in a crown, and every colour swears an oath.
- Finish every step a colour has on a ring and its arc lights up in its glass; finish all six and the whole ring turns gold. The heart in the middle fills band by band as you go.
- A crown at the tip of every petal, the step worth saving for: Warlord, The Wall Rallies, Strongbox, War College, Death’s Ledger and Self-Setting Traps.
- Arcana and works swear oaths of their own: Ember Ward or Ledger Rites, Iron Jaws or Black Powder.
- A step costs its ring’s price, times what it gives. The inner rings are cheaper, so a visit after an early fall buys a few steps, and a first line’s tree asks the same essence as before.
- A line sworn to the Libraries can fill a deep tree again, and Essence Flow II no longer waits on diamonds.
Version 0.5.9
The tree, ring by ring
The Essence Tree is laid out again: every step on its ring, every link a single ring long, and every gift with its own mark.
- A ring is a step. Every upgrade stands on its ring, each link runs one ring out and no two links cross, and every petal opens wider as it goes: one, then two, then three.
- Each colour has one job: soldiers, the wall and its guns, gold, training, essence, traps.
- New steps for every gun, every trap and the road’s machines. Springald bolts can go through the foes behind their target.
- Discounts climb in small steps first and larger ones later, each dearer than the last.
- Every upgrade wears a mark for what it is, with a small badge for what it does: a coin for cheaper, a plus for more, a clock for longer.
- A first line sees five rings of the tree, and the sky opens the rest. A tree grown before this update is given back: every essence spent on it returns, to plant again.
Version 0.5.8.1
A thinner wall
Every body that reaches the stones counts now.
- The wall begins every run with 20 hit points instead of 100: a few of the dead at the stones are enough to bring it down, and the wall’s works and the tree’s Wall HP are worth their price.
- The essence on the bar opens the Essence Tree too, like the tree’s own button and T.
Version 0.5.8
The tree replanted
The opening asks more of you, and the Essence Tree grows in small, steady steps.
- Archers loose once a second, the dead start half again as tough, and training costs more: by the second assault the gold already asks for a choice.
- The Essence Tree is replanted. Its steps are small, a few shining ones give more and cost more, and every ring costs more than the last. A tree grown before this update is given back: every essence spent on it returns, to plant again.
- The tree can be read in the middle of a run, from its button on the bar or with T, and the siege waits while you look. Sound the Retreat lives there now, and asks before it ends the run.
- The wall’s works open at level 5, the first gun socket at level 5 and the second at level 8, so the first lord meets a gun on the wall.
Version 0.5.6
A harder siege
The first day of play said the dead came too easily. They come harder now.
- The dead come as a horde: more of them, all at once, and tougher with every assault, so an army that is not trained falls behind within a few assaults. Each soldier of a kind also costs more than the last.
- The game opens with its sound on.
- The first night teaches only what it has: no lesson on a faster pace, no detour to the achievements. A note that asks nothing of you closes with its ×.
- A pause stills the whole field and holds the music: the bats and crows, the rain, the clouds, the fog and the sea wait where they are.
- News cards close with Space or Enter.
- Before the first assault, the field shows where the dead will come, and the armory gives only the archers the line asks for.
Version 0.5.3
After the opening
Small things from the first day with the gates open.
- On a phone, the game says it is made for a computer and can send you its link, to open later at your desk.
- The browser tab wears the Marrow March shield.
Version 0.5.0
Early Access
The whole loop, from the first night to the fifth age: hold the wall, fall, grow the Essence Tree, and pass into the Ancestral Sky.
- Ages I to V are open: twenty assaults each, and a lord of the dead at the end of every age.
- Every fall opens the Essence Tree; a whole tree opens the Ancestral Sky, and an heir takes the wall.
- Targeting that listens: shoot the front, the toughest or the closest, pick a kind to hit first and a kind never to shoot.
- The dead climb out of their graves, the Cresset sets foes alight, frost freezes the small and the Snare holds the armoured.
Before Early Access August–September 2026
Version 0.4
The First Night
The game learns to teach itself, and finds its name, its look and its voice.
- A guided first night that teaches every control by playing it, soldier by soldier.
- A name, Marrow March, a gothic chronicle look, and the siege’s own words: the Armory, the Garrison, Let Them Come.
- Sound: a war horn for every wave, ambience under every sky, and drums and choirs of its own.
- Three save slots, each city in its own colours and arms.
- AUTO: the horns sound themselves, and assaults march one after another while you watch.
Version 0.3
The ages
The campaign becomes the March: ten ages, each with its own sky, its own host and a lord at its end.
- Ten named ages of twenty assaults, and weather that changes how each one is fought.
- The lords of the dead get their rites: the Grave Warden, the Ossuary King, the Bone Titan and the Bone Colossus.
- Graves break open across the field, and necromancers raise the fallen.
- Twelve promotions, two for each soldier, and every one wears what it became.
- Every body, gun and trap is modelled in Blender and rendered for the game.
Version 0.2
Traps and guns
The wall gets its defenses, and a road behind it.
- Traps on the open field, where the dead walk.
- Guns in the sockets of the wall, firing over your soldiers.
- A wall of stone that becomes a gate, and a road behind it where the fight goes on after a breach.
- Fog, rain, snow and storms over the field.
Version 0.1
The first wall
The first siege: one wall, the field before it, and the dead.
- Soldiers placed on the field and trained with the gold of every kill.
- The skeleton horde, assault after assault.
- The first Essence Tree: permanent upgrades that grow when the wall falls.
- The first lords of the dead.