Fallen Marches FAQs

JamesP (IGN: Jam) is the sole developer of Fallen Marches (FM). The game was started as a passion project and was never intended to be released. However, after building the world, skills and quests, James wanted to share his creation with others to obtain feedback and improve on what he’d built.

FM is heavily inspired by the skilling loops, combat and questing systems of the classic browser RPGs of the early 2000s. The games that grew out of those have become very large, and their sheer scale and complexity make them difficult for a new player to get into, so FM is designed to be small scale and accessible for anyone.

The website is a React and TypeScript application. Behind it sits a Node and TypeScript server with a PostgreSQL database, which holds every account and all of your progress.

The game itself is plain JavaScript drawn onto an HTML canvas. There is no game engine and no plugin: your browser loads the whole thing when you enter a world.

Mobs, NPCs, player characters and most world objects are authored as 3D models, but the game never shows them as a live 3D scene. Each one is drawn into a flat sprite matching the camera’s angle and redrawn whenever the camera turns, with background workers helping to prepare those sprites. The ground, walls, roofs and a few simple objects such as fences, doors and signs are painted directly. That is what gives the world its illustrated, isometric look while keeping the game light enough to run on modest hardware. Your own character is always drawn fresh the moment their pose or equipment changes, so armour, clothing and animation respond instantly.

The world map is built in a map editor made for FM. The terrain and every object placed on it are compiled from that map into the data the engine reads, and the engine works out the walkable ground from it.

The server is authoritative. It runs the world on a 0.6 second tick, and it, not your browser, decides whether a blow lands, whether an ore is mined, what experience is awarded and what is in your inventory. Your browser draws the result and predicts only what it safely can, which is why progress cannot be edited from the client.

Yes. AI is used to assist with coding, create 3D models and create music tracks. In a game with this amount of assets, it would not be feasible to hire artists to create assets for the game, as FM is a self-funded project.

However, all game design decisions are made by the developer personally. AI is never used to make balance decisions, write content (such as skills or quests) or design the game world.

FM is in open beta. It opened to the public on 30 September 2026 after a period of closed playtesting. All account progress was reset at the start of the open beta, but accounts were kept. There will be no further resets, though rollbacks may be necessary if a significant bug appears.

Your account was kept, but your character and all of its progress were reset when the open beta began, so you will create your character again and start in the Tutorial Yard. As a thank you, every account that existed before the open beta has a Founder’s Wreath waiting in its Storage Chest, and the three players at the top of the playtest leaderboard also receive a Gold, Silver or Bronze Tester Cloak. These items cannot be traded and cannot be obtained any other way.

No, and it is not meant to be. FM is under active development. Skills, quests, regions and items are added as they are built, and existing content is rebalanced when testing shows it needs to be. Changes of that kind are a normal part of running the game rather than a fault in it.

Email [email protected], or post it in the Discord. Bug reports are genuinely welcome, and reporting a bug is always better than using it – deliberately exploiting one is against the rules of play.

Yes, at discord.gg/PRcrqJSJfY. Announcements go there first, and it is the quickest way to reach the developer or other players. There is also a YouTube channel at youtube.com/@fallenmarches.

A desktop or laptop computer and an up-to-date browser – Chrome, Edge, Firefox or Safari. The game has been tested in Chrome, so there is no guarantee that the game will run efficiently in other browsers. There is nothing to download and no plugin to install. Hardware acceleration should be switched on in your browser, since characters, mobs and objects are all drawn using WebGL 2. If any of them fail to appear, check this setting first.

Not yet. The game will load, but it is built around a mouse and keyboard and has no touch controls, so the experience will be poor on a small touchscreen. Mobile support is being looked at, but it is not part of the open beta.

No. FM is free to play, there is nothing to buy, and you do not need to give any payment details to create an account or to play.

FM may be monetised in the future; however, ‘pay-to-win’ type mechanics will never be introduced.

FM is built and run by a single developer, and the servers, hosting and development costs are paid for personally. If you are enjoying the game and would like to help keep it going, you can make a donation through Ko-fi at ko-fi.com/fallenmarches. Donations are entirely optional and do not give any in-game items, advantages or perks.

Select Create Account at fallenmarches.com, then choose a username, enter your email address and a password, confirm that you are 18 or over, and accept the Terms of Service and Game Rules. Please use an address from a mainstream email provider, such as Gmail, Outlook, Yahoo or iCloud, as temporary and disposable addresses are not accepted.

You must be 18 or over to create an account, and you confirm that when you register. The 18+ restriction is imposed due to the social features that our game has.

Your email address is how your password is reset and how you are told about anything important, so it has to be one that actually reaches you. A link is sent to you when you register: follow it and your account is confirmed. The link lasts 24 hours, and you can ask for a fresh one if it expires.

Between 3 and 10 characters, letters and numbers only – no spaces and no symbols. Your character name is also your username. It is shown to other players and it appears on the public leaderboard, so it must not be offensive, impersonate anyone, advertise anything or contain personal information. Please do not use your real name or your email address as a name.

No. Your character’s name is the username you chose when you created your account, and it cannot be changed.

Use the forgotten password link on the sign-in screen. A reset link is emailed to the address on the account and lasts an hour. Using it signs the account out everywhere else, on every device.

Yes. Every new character starts in the Tutorial Yard, where the Master of the Marches walks you through moving, the camera, running, climbing, the map, items, chat and the side panels – 11 short steps, with an on-screen marker showing what to do next. It teaches the controls only, and hands you straight to Albert the Elder and the first quest, which is where the skills and your first taste of combat are taught.

You can leave early through the gate in the north wall, but the Tutorial Yard is one-way: once you are out you cannot go back, so it is worth finishing.

Skills to level, quests to complete, enemies to defeat, loot to collect, and a world to explore.

13, in three groups.

• Combat: Melee, Archery, Spellcraft, Defence and Fortitude.
• Collecting: Forestry, Mining and Agriculture.
• Producing: Cookery, Metalworking, Bowyer, Apothecary and Leatherworking.

Skills are interconnected and feed each other. Ore becomes ingots, and ingots become weapons and armour. Logs become bows. Hides become leather. Crops become food that heals you in a fight.

Every skill runs to a maximum of level 100. Most start at level 1, but Fortitude starts at level 10. Experience is earned by performing an action in a skill, such as fighting an enemy or chopping a tree. The experience curve is exponential, so the gap from level 1 to level 2 is much smaller than the gap from 99 to 100.

A single number worked out from your five combat skills. It is a rough measure of how dangerous you are, and every enemy carries one of its own, so you can judge a fight before you start it.

The world runs on a tick: a heartbeat of 0.6 seconds. You take one step per tick, blows land on a tick and a rock is mined on a tick.

No. You cannot attack another player, and no other player can attack you. PvP is planned for a future update.

You lose everything you were carrying and wearing except the single most valuable item among it, and you return to the Cirenvale spawn point with your health, spirit and run energy restored. Items are valued one at a time rather than by the stack, so a large pile of coins is rarely the one you keep, though if a stack does win, you keep all of it. Everything you dropped is left in a pile where you died that only you can see. It stays there for two minutes, and the clock keeps running if you log out, so it is worth heading straight back. Quest items are not lost.

Yes. Both you and the other player need at least 325 Total Level, 14 Renown and an account at least 5 days old. The Total Level and Renown needed go up as new skills and quests are added: 25 Total Level for each skill in the game, and 1.5 Renown for each quest, rounded up. Right-click another player and choose Trade, and they accept by choosing Trade on you within 12 seconds. Both sides put items and coins into the window, and both have to accept twice, once on the offer and once on a final summary, before anything changes hands. Quest items cannot be traded. Some special items are also untradeable.

Yes. A Storage Chest holds up to 400 different item stacks. The contents of your Storage Chest are shared across all locations in the game world.

Toggle Run beside your health and spirit bars. Running covers two tiles a tick instead of one and drains an energy pool, which refills while you walk or stand still. Your Fortitude level decides how quickly it regenerates.

There are 9 quests in the current game, with plans to add more.

The minimap in the corner of the screen shows the ground immediately around you. The World Map button next to it opens the full world map. It marks your position, except when you are underground, upstairs or in the Tutorial Yard. The same map is also on the website at fallenmarches.com/map.

No. Bots, macros, scripts, automation and modified or third party clients are all against the rules of play, and accounts are actioned for using them.

You may register more than one account, but you must not play two at the same time. Only one may be signed in at once.

The rules of play are paragraph 4 of the Terms of Service, and they are reproduced in full at fallenmarches.com/rules so you do not have to read a contract to find them. In short: treat other players decently, play fairly, do not trade anything in the game for real money, and choose a sensible name.

Depending on what has happened, you may be warned, have an offending name reset, have items or progress obtained by cheating removed, be muted, be suspended, or have your account closed. Automated systems apply the chat filter and the rate limits, and can mute you for 24 hours if your messages repeatedly match our safety filters. A person decides every suspension and ban. If you think a decision is wrong, you can appeal: a mute from your account dashboard, a suspension or ban from the sign-in screen, and anything else by email to [email protected]. Either way it will be looked at again – we aim to reply within 5 UK business days.

Use the in-game report system.

Add them to your ignore list. Ignoring is enforced on the server, so their public chat, private messages and group messages stop reaching you at all rather than being hidden after the fact. You can also set the Social tab to accept private messages from friends only, or from nobody. The Activity, Chat, Private and Group buttons in the log bar only hide lines on your own screen, and they all switch back on each time you load the game.

Yes, from your account dashboard. Deletion has a 14 day cooling-off period: the account carries on working as normal during it, and you can cancel at any point. After the 14 days it is erased, along with your character, your progress and everything held with it, and that cannot be undone.

What is needed to run an account and a game: your username, your email address, your password (stored hashed, never as text anyone can read) and your game progress, along with the technical and safety records that keep the game fair and secure, such as your IP address, browser and device details, and any reports or appeals. It is set out in full in the Privacy Notice at fallenmarches.com/privacy, and the two cookies the site sets are explained at fallenmarches.com/cookies.

Continuously. The server holds your progress and writes it as you play – there is no save button, and nothing important lives only in your browser. Closing the tab loses nothing, though if you close it during a fight, your character stays in the world for six seconds and can still be killed.

Ten minutes without a click, a key press or a scroll takes you out of the game and back to your dashboard, and a notice there tells you that is why. You stay signed in, so you can enter again whenever you like. It is deliberate: a character should not be left standing in the world with nobody at the keyboard. The timeout waits for a fight to finish rather than cutting you off mid-combat.

Yes, within the ten minute limit above. A minimised window or a background tab keeps playing, because the game clock does not depend on the window being drawn. If your machine or your browser stalls the game for more than about six seconds, though, the session is ended and you are returned to your dashboard rather than having the missing time quietly filled in afterwards.

No. The server runs the world, so a connection is needed throughout. If your connection drops, the game tries to reconnect on its own for up to 45 seconds. If it cannot, the session ends and you are sent back to your dashboard, where you can enter again once your connection returns.

Open Settings and lower the Frame Rate Cap. It starts at 60 frames a second, and dropping it to 45 or 30 cuts the work without changing anything about how the game plays or how fast anything happens. If yours has been raised, or set to Unlimited, the world can be redrawn as often as your monitor refreshes, which on a 144Hz or 240Hz display is far more often than it needs to be, so bring it back to 60 or lower. Making the window smaller does not help: it is the number of frames that costs, not their size.

Yes. The arrow keys rotate and tilt the camera, and holding the middle mouse button drags it. Either axis can be inverted on its own in Settings, which also holds the minimap zoom, an option to hide the minimap, an option to keep building roofs hidden all the time, and a toggle for the floating experience drops.

Yes. Sound effects and music have their own controls in the game’s Settings, and they are saved to your account, so they follow you to any computer you sign in from. The music on the sign-in and dashboard pages has its own mute and volume control, which is remembered by the browser you are using rather than by your account.

Each world holds 300 players at once. The world picker on your dashboard shows how busy each world is, and a full world cannot be entered until places open up, so pick another world or try again shortly. If it starts happening often, more capacity will be added.