the game
The Seven Venues
seven attractions on one island, each a complete game in its own genre. not modes, not stubs: the fighter has its own frames and hitboxes, the racer has item weighting and drift charge, and the campaign derives its par times from the level's own geometry so they cannot drift.
paolo fox
Trick Park
two minutes in a bright plastic playground floating in open sky. an oval pool bowl inside a coping ring, a halfpipe, curved quarter-pipes, a funbox, a volcano you drop into, pyramids, rails, and gem islands hung off the main platform on a rail bridge, a plank bridge and a ping-pong ferry.
the clock does not stop. a panel over the run answers its own keys so closing one does not also quit, but the timer keeps going behind it — a panel is not a pause. at zero the run is scored, the high score is saved, and R goes again.
the combo system is the point. airtime scores on its own past 0.45 s, the multiplier rewards variety rather than repetition, and Paolo's own x1.25 rides on top of everything.
every transition is a real curved mesh. three-degree tessellation, hand-set smooth normals, chamfered slabs, and each piece meeting its neighbour flush. ground-tangent curves are spawned 0.02 under the floor so they surface with no lip, and anything a capsule can ride is chamfered rather than left at a hard ninety. the floor is one checker slab, not sixty-four boxes butting heads.
dash fox
Grand Prix
a course-select lobby with four miniature track models you walk up to, and four closed-loop spline roads with real banking behind them. three laps, four racers, three rivals who are not being polite.
the race-day kit is the difference between a road and a grand prix: painted grid slots, a light tree that counts the field down, lap gates, corner boards, distance boards on the run-in, grandstands with a crowd that bobs, balloons over the start arch, and a podium with a ceremony at the end.
finish in the top three and Dash Fox joins the roster.
the four courses
wide table — scroll it sideways for each course's moving obstacle
| course | the shortcut | it saves | what it costs |
|---|---|---|---|
| Resort Ring | a dirt lane chording the west sweep of the infield. | ~36 m | it is narrow and planted with hedge slalom — real colliders, all of them about twenty-five metres from the racing line. the course's moving obstacle is a smoothie cart on its rounds, ping-ponging across the drive. |
| Sunset Shores | planks across the lagoon sand, chording the east cape. | ~38 m | a tide-pool gap mid-span. coming up short means wet sand: a permanent spill that spins you out, twenty-seven metres from the road and a long walk from sympathy. |
| Summit Switchbacks | a steep rock slide inside the final wrap. | a wrap | the mouth starts past the road edge and below it — a drop-in through a gap in the guard rail — and the exit floats just above the lower road, so you fly the last gap back on. split mid-way by a jump. |
| Shadow Boardwalk | a bare beam of light off the north float, straight across the void. | ~80 m | two metres of nothing to hop at each end, eighty metres of tightrope in between, and only the catch floor below. it is the shortcut that is most obviously a dare. |
the seven items
picked up from boxes, weighted toward whoever is losing. the player fires with F; a rival uses theirs a moment after picking it up, which is long enough to be fair and short enough to be a problem.
cola boost
a straight shot of speed.
beach ball
thrown forward; wipes out the first racer it meets.
smoothie spill
dropped behind you. classic litter.
gull
flies to the leader, lifts their item, leaves them spinning.
bubble
a shield that eats the next hit.
fireworks
three rockets lobbed up the road, bursting on landing.
triple cola
three quick boosts, fired one press at a time.
the corner boards are placed by the course, not by a designer's guess. the threshold is the top quartile of heading change over about fifteen metres, floored at eight degrees. the first version used a flat forty-five, which put zero boards on three of the four courses — which is how you find out a constant was a guess.
boulder fox
The Rumble Ring
percent knockback, stocks, blast zones, and a bill drawn from every population on the island — the seven foxes, the three enclaves, the coyote trade seats behind the range and the rams out of the high country.
a card is one row of numbers: weight, move speed, jump power, jab and smash damage, a special, and then the smash feel — how long the windup telegraphs, how much of the launch is lift rather than shove, and how hard the fighter is to move off the spot afterwards. a ram does not fight like a coyote and neither of them fights like a fox, and almost all of that difference lives in the smash.
the moveset library reads that stat block and builds the whole kit from it — jab string, tilts, smashes, aerials, four specials, grab and throws. a card that overrides nothing still plays as itself, because the numbers are real.
the bill
sixteen fighters in four bands. each one is read in their own civilization's grammar — a fox by their power, a villager by their enclave, a coyote by their sash, a ram by their horn. never by coat colour. a coyote's coat means nothing at all, and the game is careful not to imply otherwise.
wide table — scroll it sideways for the rest of the stat block
| fighter | read as | weight | speed | jump | jab | smash | special |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Paolo Fox | trick bonus | 1.00 | 7.0 | 13.5 | 4 | 12 | trick flurry |
| Dash Fox | super speed | 0.85 | 9.2 | 14.2 | 3 | 10 | cola dash |
| Boulder Fox | stun resist | 1.30 | 5.6 | 12.2 | 5 | 14 | stone slam |
| Skye Fox | glide | 0.80 | 6.8 | 15.5 | 3 | 10 | glide rise |
| Spring Fox | mega ollie | 0.95 | 7.2 | 18.2 | 4 | 11 | spring launch |
| Umbra Fox | shadow dash | 0.90 | 7.8 | 13.5 | 4 | 11 | shadow blink |
| Rollo Fox | marble form | 1.20 | 6.2 | 12.8 | 4 | 13 | marble cannon |
| Squall | gull roost · the cliff | 0.65 | 8.2 | 17.5 | 3 | 9 | wing gust |
| Grandmother Moss | turtle cove · the beach | 1.50 | 4.6 | 10.8 | 6 | 15 | shell spin |
| Brackish | otter docks · the water | 1.00 | 8.6 | 14.2 | 4 | 11 | tide push |
| marrow | gate captain · iron sash | 1.05 | 6.8 | 12.9 | 5 | 12 | wing gust |
| torrin | first runner · the line | 0.86 | 9.4 | 14.1 | 3 | 10 | cola dash |
| brann | seat of iron · oxide sash | 1.44 | 5.4 | 11.8 | 6 | 16 | stone slam |
| brack | broad curl · rope | 1.66 | 4.9 | 11.2 | 7 | 18 | shell spin |
| gorse | full curl · going straight | 1.24 | 6.4 | 15.0 | 5 | 13 | marble cannon |
| cobble | half curl · first round | 1.02 | 7.6 | 14.6 | 4 | 11 | cola dash |
you do not get knocked across the ring by a ram. you go up, the way you go up the wall at the muster, and nobody makes anything of it.
eleven floors
a stage is picked before the fight, and "best of three" here means three floors — you pick the arena for each one in turn. every stage reads out its own blast box (tight or wide sides, low ceiling or open sky, shallow pit or long drop) and its own hazard, because that is all a preview has to say.
the flat the terraces bumper bay drift decks the pier the gondola the gym floor the long hall the crag otter docks roost ledge
stocks are yours to set. win a rumble and Boulder Fox joins.
skye fox
Creature Skies
the venue is two places, and keeping them apart is the whole design. the ring is seven grassy islands climbing around a central tower, crossed by updraft columns and wind lanes, with six residents on them and Skye on the tower deck. it is ungated, it is early, and it is where the fox is.
the high shelf is five more islands stacked above it, a sky trial, a crown isle and a landlord at the roost. it opens on a full badge case — all seven — and it pays a purse and a dex entry rather than a fox.
the residents answer E with a real wild battle at a band a pre-park team can actually fight: weaken, then befriend, with items and status and everything else. a creature you befriend here joins the roster and the dex exactly as it would in the park.
it shipped the other way round, and that is worth saying. the residents stood at level 30-34 with nothing on screen explaining why. the only path to Skye Fox ran through seven gym badges, three trial rungs and a level 44 landlord — a harder fight than the champion's ace. and the sign over the venue's own door advertised the badge gate as if it were the door's. a fresh save walked in holding one level 5 starter and had nothing it could do.
the gate is at the shelf. the signage that states it lives at the shelf. the door says what is behind the door.
the six residents
Plumewisp
the start island, lv 6. a fair first fight for a level 5 starter, which is the entire reason it is there.
Gustling
island B, lv 7.
Drizzlefin
island C, lv 8. there is a cloud pool on the start island it would rather be in.
Thistlewing
island D, lv 9.
Embermoth
island E, lv 10.
Nocturna
island G, lv 12, and rare. the climb to it is a real one.
clear the ring, beat Skye's flight, and Skye Fox joins. the shelf can wait for the badges.
spring fox
The Classic
eight worlds of four levels, an overworld map the fox walks on foot, a boss behind every fourth door, and secret exits that warp past a whole world. cleared nodes fly a green pennant; a found secret flies a gold one.
the 2D fox rides a board, and the level vocabulary is skate verbs rather than platformer furniture: banks, quarter-pipes, drop-ins, pools, deep bowls, hips, spines, kickers, funboxes, rails, rails strung across a pit. every one of them is a rotated slab you actually ride, and every one rises at most 2.4 — inside a plain ollie from the deck at its foot. ramps are how The Classic feels; no level is ever passed by one.
take the flag at the end and Spring Fox joins.
eight places, thirty-two ideas
not eight difficulties. a world reads as a place when its four levels share furniture and share nothing else, and every level owns one piece the rest of its world does not touch.
wide table — scroll it sideways for each world's boss
| world | what the place is | the boss door |
|---|---|---|
| 1 · the meadow lanes | flat deck, first push, rail meadow. the sprinklers are on. | the dust mother's rounds |
| 2 · the pier boards | boardwalk and gull surf, with one level that climbs instead of running. | the gull admiral |
| 3 · the shade grove | a canopy you duck under and roots you roll through. | the foreman surfaces |
| 4 · the lantern caves | a ceiling. thermal chimneys, a sealed drip cage, rails down a shaft. | the warden's rounds |
| 5 · the marina heights | rails a long way above water, and narrow stones in the rigging. | the capo of the docks |
| 6 · the neon strip | speed and empty pools. boulevard kickers, a back-lot bowl, neon spines. | last call at the blender |
| 7 · the cold pool | ice, and things that fall out of the ceiling onto it. | the ram at the rail |
| 8 · the flagworks | the whole vocabulary running at once. conveyors, hoists, a medley, a gauntlet. | the flag marshal |
the power locks, and the rule about them
item blocks hold the seven foxes, and each fox opens a different kind of hole in the level: Boulder smashes a wall into a coin vault, Rollo fits a 1.50 m slot under a ledge, Skye rides a thermal to a stash, Spring reaches a shelf over the ollie ceiling, Umbra phases a sealed cage of light, Dash drops a set of shutters.
every one of those seals a pocket and never the line. the main deck, walked by a Small fox with no power at all, runs past all of them. the non-power route is satisfied by construction rather than by care, which is the only way it survives thirty-two levels of editing.
all thirty-two levels are chunk scripts inside one scene — the same trick the marble campaign uses. a level is a string of tokens laid along a cursor at runtime, so tuning a level is editing a string. the coin par is derived from the script rather than typed in, because a par that can drift from the geometry will.
umbra fox
Shadow Board
seven boards, one per fox, each with its own shape and its own rule. ten to twelve rounds, a minigame every round, stars at ten coins, and a star that relocates somewhere genuinely far away the moment somebody buys one.
twelve kinds of tile: blue pays three, red takes three, bonus pays seven, toll puts five in the round pot for the minigame winner to take, warp rolls you again, shadow swaps you with a rival, duel is a one-on-one roll for five, chance is a small random thing, junction is a fork, and an event tile hands off to whatever this particular board does.
win a board outright on the one that is hers and Umbra Fox joins.
the seven boards
wide table — scroll it sideways for each board's own rule
| board | host | rounds | its rule, in the host's words |
|---|---|---|---|
| the coping loop | Paolo | 10 | the ring runs the bowl lip and the pipe deck. coping tiles pay, and they pay more the more of them you land — because a line is worth more than a trick. |
| the circuit board | Dash | 11 | twenty-eight tiles, one lap, boost pads on four of them. cross the start line and he pays you for the lap. keep crossing it. |
| the ring board | Boulder | 10 | land on somebody and they go backwards. that is the whole rule. he hosts it and he does not apologise for it. |
| the perch line | Skye | 11 | islands, bridges, and a high road that skips five tiles. something lands on your board at every perch, and it is usually kind. |
| the arcade lane | Spring | 10 | springs. that is the board, that is the whole board. land on one and you are four tiles away before you have decided anything. |
| shadow board | Umbra | 12 | twenty-eight tiles on a wobbling loop, and pylons that throw their shadow the wrong way. land on one and everybody shuffles a seat around the board. |
| the long climb | Rollo | 12 | it spirals up, then it drops, and the scree does the rest. the summit pays. so does going past it. |
rollo fox
Summit Trials
a hundred levels in ten worlds, climbing from a meadow to the summit. you play all of it as a marble: no board, no tricks, no push — just mass, a slope, and whatever the terrain has decided about both.
every level is a chunk script. a string of tokens — w7 run10 flip8 mine12 gem run8 unflip8 run10 finish — that one builder lays end to end along a moving cursor inside a single scene. a hundred levels cost no scene files, the scene asset stays small, and tuning a level is editing a string.
stand on the summit at the end of the hundredth and Rollo Fox joins.
four medals, and an honest par
par and gold are estimated from the chunk list, not authored. the builder already knows how long each chunk takes to cross, so the time to beat is derived from the level's own geometry and gold is par x 0.72. edit the script and the target moves with it. a hand-typed par on a level somebody later added six metres to is a lie that nobody notices for a year.
| medal | what it takes |
|---|---|
| cleared | you finished. the level is open on the map and that is all it asks. |
| silver | finished inside par. |
| gold | finished inside par x 0.72. |
| pearl | the gold time and every gem in the level, in the same run. the two are usually opposites, which is the point. |
ten worlds
each world's tip is what Rollo says when you open it, and it is the only coaching you get.
| world | levels | the tip |
|---|---|---|
| 1 · the meadow | 10 | roll. it isn't complicated yet. |
| 2 · the fade forest | 10 | the tiles clock out early. keep moving. |
| 3 · the wind shelf | 10 | fans lift. rings lift more. drift while you rise. |
| 4 · the glacier | 10 | ice keeps your speed. oil keeps all of it. |
| 5 · the cinder flats | 10 | mines are rude. they're also predictable. |
| 6 · the works | 10 | the floor here runs on a schedule. read it. |
| 7 · the flipside | 10 | the field flips down. you fall up. same rules. |
| 8 · the speedway | 10 | take the speed, point straight, stop steering. |
| 9 · the bounce halls | 10 | a bounce pays back what you bring. bring speed. |
| 10 · the summit | 10 | all of it at once. take your time. or don't. |
the vocabulary
every token a level can be built out of. the builder assembles them; nothing else exists in the campaign.
shape
run, gap, up, down, pad, turn, bank, narrow, spiral, and a width the whole level inherits.
fade & trap
fade tiles that clock out under you, and trap doors that open on a timer and come back.
hazard
mined corridors, near-frictionless oil, ice that is fast but still grips, dozing dust puffs, sweepers crossing the deck.
bounce
round bumpers, triangle bumpers that launch at an angle, and stepping plinths over a chasm with one bumper on each.
carry
a ferry that runs forward, a ferry that slides sideways, and an open-air elevator.
wind
duct-fan columns with a housing, and floating wind rings with none.
gravity
anti-gravity flips where the ceiling becomes the floor, and the moment the field lets go again.
items
gems, clocks that buy back time, and in-level super jump, super speed and super bounce.
flow
checkpoints. finishing without touching one is its own achievement.
between the turns
The forty minigames
one idea and one input each, twelve to twenty-five seconds, four foxes who can all honestly win. you are always seat one. the three rivals play by personality — greedy, cautious, chaotic — through a per-round skill roll, so the same fox is not the same opponent twice.
a round picks one that has not been played yet and runs the card, the countdown, the play, the whistle and the results. a game whose result can no longer change ends early, because watching a decided minigame finish is the one thing forty short games cannot afford.
a free-for-all pays 10 / 6 / 3 / 0 coins by finish. a winning pair takes ten each, five on a tie. a winning solo in a one-on-three takes fifteen; a winning trio takes six each. the round pot rides on top for the outright winner, and minigame coins decide the hot-hands bonus star at the end of the board.
wide table — scroll it sideways for the controls and the win condition
| minigame | batch | kind | the idea | controls | you win by |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| grind line | the resort | balance | the rail drifts out from under you; doing nothing is a flowerbed. | A D lean | most metres ridden; falls cost climb-back time. |
| cannonball | the resort | timing | the diving board bounces; leave at the bottom of the compression. | Space send it | most points — tighter release, bigger splash, 5 to 60 a jump. |
| shell dig | the resort | collect | mounds with a pale speck hide shells; the rest hide sand. | WASD skate · Space dig | most shells; the gold ones count three. |
| smoothie stack | the resort | timing | drop each swinging cup onto the one below; the tower remembers every wide one. | Space drop | tallest tower still standing at the whistle. |
| drift line | the resort | reaction | hold the drift through bends, release on straights; chevrons warn a beat early. | Space hold to drift | most metres; the wrong state scrubs speed. |
| lantern run | the resort | collect | one flame at a time — light a lantern, go back to the brazier for another. | WASD skate | most lanterns lit; they burn down and go dark again. |
| gull run 2v2 | the resort | dodge | gulls sweep the pier in two colours; yours pay, the other lot flatten you. | A D swerve | team score. a catch is three, a hit is a stumble. |
| log toss | the resort | timing | your aim wanders across the fire and back, wider as the night goes on. | Space throw | most points; the centre of the fire pays forty. |
| tide pool echo | the resort | memory | creatures surface in order round four pools; say it back on the compass keys. | WASD n w s e | most correct echoes; one wrong answer sits the call out. |
| plank sprint | the resort | mash | mash to run the boardwalk; the dark planks are not going to hold you. | Space mash · A D lane | most metres; a rotten plank stalls you flat. |
| trick call | the venues | reaction | the pad that lights is the direction you push, and the window shrinks. | WASD push the lit pad | most points; a clean line multiplies. |
| the pit lane | the venues | sort | carts roll at your junction; coral goes left, teal goes right. | Space flip the junction | most carts sorted; four straight runs go hot for a bonus. |
| ring out | the venues | survive | the disc shrinks; skate into people, and do not be off it. | WASD shove | survival seconds plus ten per fox you send off. |
| quick hands | the venues | timing | three catches off a bar whose green zone shrinks and speeds up. | Space snap the bar | first to three banks the leftover clock. |
| coin dash | the venues | reflex | jump the high coins, stay down for the low ones, clear the spikes. | Space jump | most coins; spikes cost two and a stumble. |
| hold or fold | the venues | nerve | roll to build a pot, bank to keep it; the bust range widens as time passes. | Space roll · Shift bank | most banked. unbanked is gone at the whistle. |
| the floor goes | the venues | survive | every tile you touch starts to fade; leaving one late pays extra. | WASD pick your next tile | seconds standing plus three per late hop. |
| the derby | the venues | timing | strike on the dip; the long fish give you almost no time to notice. | Space strike | longest fish of the day, in centimetres. |
| gem watch 1v3 | the venues | chase | three foxes ferry gems to their pads; one fox would rather they didn't. | WASD move | thieves bank ten a gem; the guard takes eleven a tag. |
| the sway | the venues | balance | the gondola tips the way you lean, and the gusts announce themselves early. | A D shift your weight | steadiness points. over the rail is over the rail. |
| awning to awning | the island | survive | five awnings, two always rolled up, and it is raining. | WASD skate | most seconds dry; the shiver says which one goes next. |
| egg on the ledge | the island | balance | the roost lent you an egg and the wind would like it back. | A D lean the egg | most seconds held; a drop costs you the climb down. |
| the turtle derby | the island | nerve | slowest across the line wins; not crossing is a different thing entirely. | Space hold to creep | the latest finish that still finishes. |
| the raft across the bay | the island | mash | alternate your paddle, or do a slow public pirouette. | A D alternating | most metres across the bay. |
| night watch | the island | hunt | tag the silhouette the sign asks for; the sign changes its mind once. | WASD torch · Space tag | most points; the wrong shape costs six. |
| the stall rush | the island | fetch | fetch the ordered good; the baskets get rearranged mid-shift. | WASD run the stall | most customers served. |
| fireflies at dusk | the island | chase | the net only closes on a lit firefly, and they know that. | WASD skate · Space swing | most caught. |
| the swell | the island | timing | hop the big waves; the small ones are just water, and jumping them is bait. | Space hop | most points; streaks pay extra. |
| the laundry line 2v2 | the island | balance | two of you on one line — lean apart or you both come off it. | A D shuffle along | team points: a level line pays steadily, pegs pay fourteen. |
| star mapping | the island | memory | the sky picks a shape; skate its ground markers in order. | WASD skate the shape | eight a star, twenty-five a finished chart. |
| sign check | the odd ones | rhythm | the plaza neon blinks on a beat that tightens; press with it. | Space press | most points; dead on pays ten, mashing burns beats. |
| hot gem | the odd ones | tag | one gem, four foxes; do not be holding it at the whistle. | WASD skate · Space pass | most seconds clean. the final holder sinks to last. |
| roof line | the odd ones | balance | walk the wire; lean is an unstable equilibrium. | A D lean · Space steady | most metres; a fall costs you back to the last mark. |
| lost property | the odd ones | hunt | six of the things in the shop are yours. only six. | WASD hunt · Space grab | ten an item; the full set banks the leftover clock. |
| booth time | the odd ones | rhythm | two decks, one note stream; keep the run alive. | Space left · Shift right | most points; long runs pay a rising bonus. |
| barrow run | the odd ones | balance | push a barrow of gems there and back; speed spills, and spilt gems stay spilt. | W push · A D catch the tilt | most gems still in it at the far mark. |
| the quiet game | the odd ones | nerve | last to press wins, and the countdown lies twice or so. | Space press, eventually | the latest press that still beats the real zero. |
| snow line 2v2 | the odd ones | aim | snowbanks are cover; the throw only lands if the line is clear. | WASD move · Space throw | team hits. |
| lantern out | the odd ones | memory | the cave lantern blinks; the floor is whatever you remember of it. | WASD feel your way | most gems; a wall costs a second. |
| the sleeping gull | the odd ones | stealth | creep for the nest while it sleeps; freeze when it looks — and it always looks. | hold W creep | twenty-five a feather plus progress; caught moving means the start line. |
two of them were rebuilt, and the log says so
the pit lane used to be "photo finish": one press of Space, then fifteen seconds of watching four foxes orbit a track. it is now a sorting game with a decision every second and a half. the id was kept, because save counters and achievements point at it.
the sleeping gull used to be a stacking game that duplicated smoothie stack move for move — swing, drop, lean, topple. the forty had every kind except stealth. now stealth is this one.
the list
tell me when it ships
one email, when there is something to play. no newsletter, no schedule, nothing else, ever.