All three packs out now · 3,000 words · 120 clusters · 37 lessons
Learn French with FlashBoss
The French you'll actually meet, in the order you'll meet it.
Listen · Read · Repeat · Rate · Fight
You start with greetings and the people in front of you. A thousand words later you are reading about work, money, the law and the news. Metropolitan French, chosen by how often you'll actually meet it.
From hello to the headlines
Bonne continuation — keep going.
French Core is one road in, walked in five tiers. You start where everyone starts: greetings, the people in front of you, the body, the first verbs, food, numbers, the clock. Then the day widens — waking up, the town, the market, the calendar, the people you're closest to. By the fifth tier you're reading about law and administration, media, digital life, celebrations, and the fine shades of adjective that separate joli from magnifique.
Every word was drawn from subtitle-corpus frequency data — the French that actually reaches your ear in film, television and conversation, weighted toward what matters most for comprehension. Grammar arrives tier by tier, and the example sentences stay inside what you've already been taught, so nothing on a card runs ahead of you. Finish Core and you'll have read more than 7,000 words of French in context.
First contact, family, the body, core verbs, food, counting, the clock.
Waking up, around town, the market, the calendar, close bonds, everyday life.
Getting ready, the house, weather, shops and money, moods, and the past tense.
Work, journeys, school, the wild world, mind and opinion, character.
Admin and law, media and arts, digital life, celebrations, big ideas, fine shades.
Five tiers, forty clusters
Every cluster is 25 cards and ends in a boss fight. Nothing is hidden — the full list is on the word lists page, free to read before you buy.
Core: 5 tiers · 40 clusters · 1,000 cards20 reference lessonsA1–A2 foundation
Pareto 1 and Pareto 2 carry the same map through tiers 6–15 — another 80 clusters, 2,000 words and 17 more reference lessons. Both are out now.
Progressively more challenging
The example sentences increase in complexity tier by tier — and never use grammar you haven't met.
- J'ai deux frères et une sœur.I have two brothers and a sister.
- Le week-end je cours, mais le matin je marche.On weekends I run, but in the mornings I walk.
- Elle couche son fils chaque soir à huit heures.She puts her son to bed every evening at eight o'clock.
- Il pleuvait beaucoup ; ainsi, nous sommes restés à la maison.It was raining a lot, so we stayed at home.
- Pourriez-vous m'expliquer pourquoi vous êtes encore en retard aujourd'hui ?Could you explain to me why you're late again today? (formal)
le · la, in colour
Every noun carries its article colour-coded to gender, so you learn the gender with the word instead of after it. Tap a card to flip it.
Élision is where most learners lose the gender: before a vowel sound le and la both collapse into l', and the clue disappears. FlashBoss keeps the colour underneath the apostrophe, so l'ami reads masculine and l'eau reads feminine at a glance. The h-aspiré words that refuse to elide — le héros, la honte — get their own lesson.
Twenty lessons, fired in sequence
A reference lesson unlocks at the exact card where you first need it, and stays available afterwards. Core's twenty — and the seventeen that come with Pareto 1 and Pareto 2 — are all free to read on the lessons page.
- 01French pronunciationVowels, the nasals, the silent finals, and the CaReFuL consonants that survive at the end of a word.
- 03Tu vs vousWho gets which, why vous is always the safe opening, and what on peut se tutoyer means when someone offers it.
- 06Il y a & telling timeThe two structures you need before you can arrange anything with anyone.
- 08Liaison & élisionWhy l'hôtel loses the vowel and aux hôtels gains a [z].
- 12H-aspiré wordsThe short, closed list where the silent h still blocks élision: la honte, never l'honte.
- 13Avoir or être?Which auxiliary the passé composé takes, and the verbs that insist on être.
- 14Est — a homographOne spelling, two words, two pronunciations: il est [ɛ] against l'est [ɛst].
- 17Subjonctif introThe mood English lost, met at the point where the cards start needing it.
Also inside: reading a card, the present tense, negation, the imperative, futur proche, passé composé, reflexive verbs, imparfait, conditionnel présent, futur simple, héros vs héroïne, and a closing lesson on where to go next.
The words that look like yours
French shares thousands of words with English — and a handful of them are lying to you. The cards say so. Tap to flip.
The Pareto Principle
3 packs. 10% of the French vocabulary for 90% of French use cases. All three are out now.
First contact to belonging, in five tiers, with twenty reference lessons. The road in.
out nowThe next thousand — everyday French at speed, and the casual spoken register. Requires Core.
out nowThe educated standard: formal register, structured argument, the press. Requires Pareto 1.
out nowOn Steam: French Core · French Pareto 1 · French Pareto 2 — each requires the one before it.
Flashcards as an integrated system
- Fibonacci SRS
- Rate each card 0–5. The better you know a word, the longer before it returns — spaced repetition on Fibonacci intervals.
- Boss fights
- Each of the 120 clusters is gated by a duel you can't win without confronting and overcoming your most difficult words.
- Graduation
- Beat a cluster and its cards leave your daily deck for good. The deck gets smaller as you learn.
- Audio
- Clean French Piper text-to-speech on every target word and every example sentence — the siwis fr_FR voice, Metropolitan French. It is synthesis, not a recording of a speaker.
- Your language
- All 3,000 cards carry their translation and their notes in German, Spanish, Japanese, Simplified Chinese and Russian as well as English, and every reference lesson has siblings in the same five. The interface speaks all six. French is fully playable without a word of English.
- Gender by sight
- Blue for le, magenta for la, on every noun — and the colour survives the elision to l'.
- Frequency
- The word list is built from subtitle-corpus frequency data — the French you'll actually hear, first.
- Lessons
- Thirty-seven reference lessons across the three packs fire at the point in the sequence where they unlock what you're about to read.
Questions
The things people ask before they buy.
Which French is this?
Metropolitan French — the French of France — from the first card to the last, in the vocabulary, the example sentences and the voice.
Do I need anything else to play it?
Yes. French Core is a DLC for the FlashBoss base game, so you need the base game as well. Pareto 1 requires Core, and Pareto 2 requires Pareto 1 — the packs build on each other in order. Everything else — the lessons, the audio, the boss fights — is inside the pack. On Windows 10 you also need Windows Terminal — a free, secure download from the Microsoft Store.
Can I play it in German, Spanish, Japanese or Chinese?
Fully. Every card and every lesson exists in all five — no English needed. All 3,000 cards carry German, Spanish, Japanese, Simplified Chinese and Russian translations and notes, every reference lesson has siblings in the same five, and the game's own interface is available in English, German, Spanish, Japanese, Simplified Chinese and Russian.
What level does Core take me to?
An A1–A2 foundation: 1,000 high-frequency words and twenty grammar lessons covering the présent, passé composé, imparfait, conditionnel and futur, plus an introduction to the subjonctif. By the end you can read simple French and follow an A2 classroom, with more than 7,000 words of French read in context along the way.
What about Pareto 1 and Pareto 2?
Both are out now — 1,000 words each. Pareto 1 builds on Core with the next thousand high-frequency words and the casual spoken register; Pareto 2 reaches for the educated standard: formal register, structured argument, the press. Pareto 1 requires Core, and Pareto 2 requires Pareto 1.
Can I see the words before I buy?
All of them. The complete word lists for Core, Pareto 1 and Pareto 2 are on the word lists page, and all thirty-seven reference lessons are on the lessons page — free, printable, no account.
Is there a demo?
There's a playable boss fight in the browser, if you want to know what the fight feels like before you commit: try the demo.
Start with bonjour.
A thousand words, forty boss fights, and twenty lessons between you and a French newspaper.
or read the word list and the lessons first — they're free.
Everything here in one purchase: FlashBoss French — The Complete Course. Already own part of it? Steam charges you only for the rest.