Fboard: gameplay¶
Written 2026-10-27 from the project's own docs.
Fboard plays like an arcade skate game, scaled down to a hand on a fingerboard. This page describes what is built. As the section index says, most of it has been tested by scripts rather than played by people, and every physics and scoring number started as a first guess.
Skating and tricks¶
- Moving: push, brake, carve, and ride quarter pipes into vertical ("vert") air.
- Ollie: hold the button to crouch, release to pop. An ollie is the basic jump in skating, made by snapping the tail down.
- Flip tricks: five of them, chosen by direction plus the flip button.
- Grabs: five, held in the air.
- Grinds: on rails and ledge edges, with a balance meter.
- Manuals: riding on two wheels (tap up then down; down then up for a nose manual), also with balance.
- Spins and reverts: a revert is a quick 180° turn on landing a ramp, used to keep a combo going.
- Specials: a meter fills as you skate; when full, special tricks are available.
The feel pass (October 2026) added:
- Pop straight into a trick: press flip or grab while crouched.
- No-comply 180: press revert at the pop.
- Finger tricks: revert plus a direction while rising does a knuckler, superman, airwalk, helicopter or thumb flip. These are tricks only a hand can do; the project's research notes that the serious scene looks down on them, and that no skateboarding game can offer them.
- Landing calls: the HUD reports landing quality as "Bolts.", "Clean." or "Sketchy.", borrowing the scene's own vocabulary ("bolts" means landing with the fingers squarely over the trucks).
Scoring and combos¶
Scoring follows the THPS model: a combo's score is its base points times a multiplier. Tricks raise the multiplier, repeats are penalized, gaps (named jumps between specific spots) add points, landing banks the combo, and a bail loses it.
Scoring is shelved
The TAS showcase showed that this scoring is unbounded: repeats still raise the multiplier, so long chains score quadratically. The project decided to shelve scoring and focus on feel first. The research base proposes fixes. See The TAS tool and showcase run.
Career and free skate¶
- Career runs last two minutes. Each level has eight goals: score targets, a combo target, collecting the letters F-I-N-G-E-R, a secret tape, and gaps. Goals pay cash, and progress unlocks the second level.
- Free skate has no clock.
- Levels: Kitchen and Workbench. Levels are data files, so adding a level means writing a new data file rather than code. After the switch to real-scale physics, several gaps were resized so they can be made at real speed, and a simulation test proves each one is makeable.
Customization¶
52 items across eight categories: deck, paint, grip tape, wheels, sticker, tattoo, nail polish and jewelry. Tattoos, nail polish and jewelry are for the hand. Items are bought with cash and some unlock through goals. The menu shows a live preview.
Controls¶
Keyboard, gamepad and mouse all work in menus, and keys can be rebound.
| Action | Keyboard | Gamepad |
|---|---|---|
| Push / brake / steer / spin | W S A D or arrows | Left stick / d-pad |
| Ollie (hold, release) | Space | A / Cross |
| Flip trick (+ direction) | J | X / Square |
| Grab trick (+ direction, hold) | L | B / Circle |
| Grind (near a rail or edge) | I | Y / Triangle |
| Revert | K | RB / R1 |
| Pause | Esc | Start |
An optional finger mode for gamepads turns each stick into one finger. It is described on Feel and physics.
Platform features¶
Menus, video, graphics, audio and gameplay settings, multiple local profiles, and cloud saves through a folder that a sync program (such as OneDrive or Dropbox) mirrors. When two copies of a profile differ, the newer one wins and the other is kept as a backup. The project notes that two machines playing offline at the same time will conflict under this scheme.
Not built yet¶
Networking (designed, not built), real art and audio assets, wall rides and lip tricks. The handoff notes also record a few known quirks, for example that the hand model reads as a blob and the thumb is barely visible.