Cheapskate

Cheapskate is a third-person action sports sandbox focused primarily on skateboarding. You skate using snappy, digital trick inputs rather than analog-stick simulation, with an attempt to keep the world semi-realistic in its dimensions, speed and jump height. The game also has off-board movement, early Story and Session modes, and four work-in-progress development levels for testing its mechanics.

Skate and perform tricks

On foot, you can walk, run, jump, double jump and climb, then use a caveman to move into a flip trick, grab, manual, grind or slide. On a board, you can skate, crouch, ollie and spin, with a player-selected default stance and switch stance recognition. Manuals and nose manuals use a balance meter.

The current trick set includes eight flip tricks: kickflip, heelflip, pop-shov, treflip, hardflip, inward heel, varial flip and varial heel. You can also perform eight grinds and slides, including 50-50, 5 oh, nosegrind, feeble, smith, crook and over crook grinds, plus nose slides and tail slides. Boardslides are triggered by landing sideways on a rail with a button; the game tracks boardslides and lipslides separately. Natas spins have three variations, performed on the middle of the board, the nose or the tail.

Eight grab tricks are available: nose, tail, melon, indy, japan, stalefish, madonna and benihanna. Other mechanics include a first pass at transition skating and vert air; frontside and backside wallrides; slappies and wallies into wallrides; wallplants to jump off walls and change direction; reverts to switch stance or gain speed; and powerslides for style. Reverts and powerslides support frontside and backside moves, including while manualing or nose manualing.

Combos and challenges

The scoring system tracks combos and detects and scores tricks, reducing scores for tricks repeated within a combo. It monitors rail balance, reducing it for repeated rails and restoring it for fresh ones, and separately handles balance changes for grinds, slides, manuals and nose manuals. Running off-board during a combo can restore manual or nose manual balance. Each level records session and all-time high combos and high bail scores in the game save.

Story Mode has a progression framework with NPC-style objectives. Its objective system manages story missions and level sidequests, including four test Photographer sidequests in the beach skatepark. Session Mode is a free-skate mode with configurable challenges that can be activated from the pause menu; these are fully supported in the beach skatepark. Challenges can use an optional timer and include high score, high combo, collecting skateboard parts, collecting skulls from risky spots, smashing five billboards, and finding and grinding the mascot cheapass. High score, high combo and smashing billboards are available in all levels except the gap test level, which supports only high score and high combo.

Levels and conditions

Four work-in-progress development levels support testing the gameplay mechanics: a tight skatepark by a beach, a slower and more open rooftop skatepark, a mellow plaza beneath trees, and a downhill city level. A separate gap test level is included for developing and testing the gap systems, and as another place to skate. Each level supports four times of day, with different lighting and atmosphere, and four types of weather, with different environmental dressing and feel.

The gap system detects gaps made by air, air tricks, manuals, grinds, slides, running and wallrides.

Multiplayer and customization

You can host or join a peer-to-peer game using a host code, without an account, and skate with friends. Multiplayer does not yet have gameplay modes, but high scores and high bails are announced to everyone in the lobby while they skate.

You can customize the skateboard. Deck options include the top, middle and bottom ply colors, bottom graphic and grip tape. You can toggle and color the risers, and color the trucks’ base plate, base cups, hanger pivot, hanger bar, king pin, bushings, washers and nuts. Bearing shields can be toggled and colored, as can bearing casings, rings and balls; the wheel core and outer wheel can also be colored.

An experimental, unsupported level-modding pipeline can import geometry into Godot, add gap triggers, surface tags and rail splines, then export levels for the game to read from its Levels folder. The pipeline is intended for testing and may change as development continues.

Planned content

The planned sports include BMX, mountain biking, skiing, snowboarding and speedflying. Extended off-board controls for climbing, shimmying, wallrunning and melee combat are also planned. Future development plans include story missions with NPCs and cutscenes; filmer and NBD (gaps) sidequest systems with NPCs and cutscenes; level interactions that change skateable geometry; character customization; progression through objectives and levels; and mod support for custom characters, missions and progression. Steam Workshop support for selling mods is also planned.