The Game Idea is nice, but i hate the time component. At the start it feels too short and anoying and later you have so much time and no objectiv after the wall, except farming gold. Would be great if you could retreat in the run, to save time, if you just want to farm gold or something. Just an idea, but maybe instead of timer from the light tower, you expand the area your army can march. This keeps the light upgrade interesting and not like a anoying necessity
Thanks for this. The time pressure is the part of the game I go back and forth on the most, so having it laid out this clearly is really useful.
Some context first: the short-runs-early, longer-runs-later arc is intentional. Great Walk takes a lot of cues from games like Timber Rush and Agrivore, where the early loop is deliberately tight and each upgrade stretches it out. So the time pressure isn’t going away as a concept — but that doesn’t mean the current version of it is right, and a few of your points land.
Retreating mid-run — that already exists: press ESC and there’s a “retreat to town” option that ends the run early and banks everything you’ve gathered. You may have tried it before I added the end-of-run summary screen, which now lays out exactly what the march earned you — so both the option and what it does for you should be much clearer in the current build.
Too short early, too long late — the “short then long” part is by design, but the feel of “upgrade so the annoying thing gets less annoying” is a real problem. Framing the Lighthouse as expanding how far you can march instead of buying seconds is one idea — especially since the darkness is already a physical wall sweeping in from the right, so pushing that wall further out is a natural reframe of what’s on screen. No promises on a rewrite next week, but that’s one of the directions I want to explore.
Nothing to do after the wall — this is the part I’m actively building. The endgame goal is: unlock the infinite mode past the wall, get as far into it as you can, then reset the cycle to bank passive bonuses and push further on the next run. The latest build already adds a scripted run of escalating enemies past the wall — those waves are pretty thin right now, but they’ll keep growing, and I’m looking at extra incentives out there too, possibly tied to how many times you’ve reset. So it should already feel less like an empty gold farm than the version you played, and a lot less over time.
Really appreciate you taking the time to write all this out <3
Hey, tried to check it out, but now if you start a run it crashes into console.
I will check out your other game references, since i dont know them. I like the concept of your game and the army feeling to conquer something.
Its just my feeling, but these time based games are popping out like crazy and your game feels like it can do something unique,. I understand that you want a limiting ressource for the runs.
Just some ideas:
HP and Defense Upgrade for survival and limiting factor - Just had this idea after you start entering lich teritory and there are arrows come flying and it was like "oh man would be brutal if they oneshot my units". Like you could make a whole barrage of arrows to gatekeep until the units are strong enough to survive the shots.
Levels for individual units, based on kills or like a verteran status - since some units storm ahead like a hero it would be funny to see them level up or something as attention retainer.
Lane Switching units - i really liked the vampires coming after your units. Would be funny to see some Tanky shield guys sidewalk your units and be like "your shall not pass"
Best Regards!
Oops — that was an HTML-build-only crash, the other versions were fine. Fixed now, and thanks a lot for catching it.
I know a lot of these games have been coming out lately — Great March is meant to be my take on the genre. But your idea of dropping the timer is a really interesting one, and it genuinely could set the game apart. I’m going to experiment with it.
HP and defense upgrades — this already exists, but you need to reset the cycle at least once to reach it. The first reset gives permanent resource bonuses and unlocks new buildings. Right now each further reset just raises those permanent bonuses, but this “endgame” layer is something I’ll keep building out.
Units leveling up during the march — good idea.
Lane-switching units — glad you like the new Vampire mechanic! Noting down the idea of tanks that switch lanes when an enemy passes beside them instead of heading straight at them.
I love your feedback, massive thanks <3
Best!
Hey, glad i can help.
Just some last things i want to give feedback:
In the Expedition Summary, can you add a "Run again" Button? That would alleviate the pain a bit for the short runs at start.
And i was wondering: Is it intended not to be fully zoomed out? It feels more relaxing on the eyes, especially if your troops get much faster. Also the Pattern and color of the grass stings in the eyes, especially if it gets fast, maybe some patterns or lines horizontally along the march direction will be better, dont know, so that its in flow with the screen movement. Oh and just some finetuning, but it seems the grass is split in the middle, maybe the scene is not properly merged, but this is nitpicking now.
I will look forward for new releases!
Best Regards!
Hey, thanks again — this kind of feedback is really useful.
Update on the last batch:
- “Run again” on the Expedition Summary — added, so the short early runs don’t force a trip back through town.
- Zoom — it was already in there on the mouse wheel, just with no visible control, so it’s easy to miss. Added a – / + zoom readout in the HUD next to the speed buttons.
- “Grass split in the middle” — not nitpicking at all, good catch. The scrolling background wasn’t tiling seamlessly and a seam was sweeping across the screen. Fixed.
- Grass pattern being hard on the eyes when fast — noted. I want to see whether the seam fix alone already takes the edge off before I redraw the grass tiles, so I’m putting this build out as-is — would love your read on it.
One more thing — your idea of dropping the timer for a pure distance limit. I gave this a proper go, because it’s a good instinct. It splits into two versions and both hit a snag: if the darkness advances and you outrun it, that’s just the timer with a new label (a countdown in metres instead of seconds); if it sits at a fixed line further out, a run can stall forever with nothing to end it, and the town unlocks that currently depend on how far your army actually fights would collapse into “just buy more Lighthouses.” So the timer stays for now — but the framing you’re pointing at (Lighthouse = pushing the dark back, not buying seconds) is the direction I want, and the darkness now shatters instead of receding when an Angel finally breaks it, which came straight out of this thread.
More soon, thanks again!
Hey, so i tested the new version and will give some feedback:
Good:
Run Again Button - My Life Saver, this helps a lot with game flow.
Wall Animation - Finally you can see that this thing gets hurt, it was like a endboss previous versions :D
Vampire Barrage - Thats a really spooky part, i was like oh oh, i will die! As previous mentioned i like the animation and its a step in the right direction since everything else is more stationary and this wakes the player up.
Endgame - Now it is more challenging and i started scratching my head how to get further
Angel vs Darkness - Animation looks good!
Cycle - Good start for that system, also new unshockables are nice
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Improvements:
Cycle - Cycle Bonus can be a bit more generous i fell. its kinda hard to get there now. reading single digits hurt my feelings :D
Scrolling in Town - Dont know why but i spin the wheel like crazy and still see Peasant House
Vertical Line in the Run - the horizontal line is gone, but know its brother appeared. its hard to see in native window, but in webversion it appears and if you maximize the .exe you can also see it.
Per March Ressources - Here you need to know, that this can be exploited if the user flees and starts runs in quick succession. Maybe Distance Traveled Multiplier instead. Gladly you have no Gold Mine, so this doesn't transfer into mid to late game.
Ressource Overflow - If the Ressources reach 6 Digits, it runs into the other icons, here you maybe need a conversion to 100k
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Also i downloaded the client, since i want a save for future updates, hope you have save migration! For HTML5 Version, maybe a export button with save code is useful, so the players which use html can write it down and import later.
Best Regards!
Hey! As promised, the new version is live, along with a devlog here.
I haven’t gotten to all of your feedback yet, but we’ll get there!
As for saves in the HTML build - adding a save-file export would be a bit… fiddly, given how the web build works. I’ve reported the underlying problem (the engine not persisting data in browser builds) to the engine’s devs, and the fix should land in their next release. If it doesn’t, I’ll patch the build myself ;)
Cheers!