Need to plan something out? Check out the slick MasterPlan

Something for game developers, and anyone wanting to plan things using a slick app: enter MasterPlan.

Created by SolarLune Games, an indie developer who previously released the non-linear action-platforming exploration game Gearend back in 2017. Quite a nice game actually, do check it out if you missed it.

MasterPlan is not a game though, instead SolarLune are creating an application that is both an idea board and project manager. Giving you a completely freeform grid, you can create all sorts with it including todo lists, timers, put up gifs, lists and whatever you can think of. The developer mentions you can "use MasterPlan your way, whether as a moodboard for art, or as a productivity planner for your next big video game".

I've been testing it out for a while, quite impressed by the idea of it. Like a highly interactive pinboard, that lets you pan around with WASD and make it look however you want. Being able to quickly pan, zoom and use all sorts of fancy hotkeys along with putting up the occasional gif to keep planning on the lighter side, MasterPlan is quite a charming idea to put some fun back into planning, it's almost game-like. It's actually kind of brilliant.

The plan files are easy to backup too, as checking on the save files it produces it looks like it's just plain JSON.

The developer mentions how it's Early Access and so some rough edges are to be expected, and it will eventually make the jump over to Steam from itch.io when it's ready for a much wider audience.

You can find MasterPlan on itch.io. The code is also up on GitHub but it's not open source.