GFX47, creator of No Plan B

From a personal point of view, No Plan B is one of this year’s pleasant surprises. A precise, demanding but rewarding strategy game once you’ve mastered it a little. With GFX47, the game’s creator, we take a look back at his first game, Gladiabots, as well as No Plan B’s early access phase.

Point’n Think: To begin with, can you tell us about your transition to professional video game development with Gladiabots and how you evolved to No Plan B?

GFX47: So, how did I fall into professional video game development… Actually, I always wanted to do this, but I didn’t have the opportunities right away. After graduating in 2002, I worked in IT services companies for a few years. Then, by a stroke of luck, I joined Ubisoft because they were looking for web developers, something I was already doing. It was a perfect alignment of the planets, as I’d just put my CV back on the market at the time. I started in 2006 at Ubisoft, first working on a web game based on the Might & Magic license. I then took part in other projects that unfortunately never saw the light of day. I was never part of large teams working on AAA games, which suited me because I was attracted to small teams where you have more control and impact on the project.

PnT: What drew you to independent development?

GFX47: I was increasingly attracted to independence, especially with the rise of the first indie games. I joined Amplitude Studios, working on Dungeon of the Endless with a very small team, which I loved. There were only four of us at the heart of the project in the early days. This allowed for rapid iteration and a very stimulating work dynamic. But I still had personal projects on the go, like Gladiabots, which I’d been developing for a while and which was starting to attract attention.

PnT: How did you decide to go solo with Gladiabots?

GFX47: Gladiabots was already in prototype on Itch and Android and was receiving positive feedback. I took part in events and won competitions, which convinced me that it had potential. In 2019, I released the final version after around five years of development. It worked well enough for me to consider continuing with a new project. That’s how I started work on No Plan B.

PnT: Why did you choose to launch No Plan B in Early Access?

GFX47: Early Access provides valuable feedback from players. As a solo developer, it’s easy to get too focused on your own vision without realizing that certain things aren’t working well for players. So I launched No Plan B in Early Access in December 2021, to see how players reacted and adjust the game accordingly. This allowed me to fine-tune the game before releasing the final version just over a month ago.

PnT: Let’s talk about No Plan B. How did you come up with the idea for this game, which focuses on mission preparation?

GFX47: The big influences for No Plan B came from Door Kickers. I’m a big fan of the game. With No Plan B, I wanted to respond to a personal frustration: the difficulty of synchronizing characters in Door Kickers when you plan the whole mission at once. I wanted to keep this concept, but with a real synchronization system to enhance the gameplay experience.

PnT: How did you set up the mechanism with all the pre-mission chronology, the choices you can make, the moves you can make? 

GFX47: From the outset, the technical constraint was to make the whole game not only “pausable”, as in Door Kickers, but also “rewindable”. In other words, you can go back in time, review what’s happened, slow down, change the speed, and so on. Come back at a moment when you want it to be in sync, pause the thing and redraw your plan, or re-synchronize your characters, and so on. In fact, the further I got into the concept, the more it resembled video editing. You see the timelines of your different tracks, your sound, your video, and you drag them in relation to each other to synchronize them. That’s kind of what introduced the timeline system, even though it’s something I had in mind from the start, because it was also in Gladiabots. At first, I really thought I had a system that was very timeline-focused. But as I tested and iterated, I realized that it was more practical to use the game space as a means of synchronization. In other words, instead of clicking on a precise timestamp, it was easier to click where the character should be on a path, for example, and place myself at the moment he arrived there. In fact, this was the link between time and space in the game. And that’s when I decided that when you click on a character’s path, it had to be placed in the timeline at the moment he reached that point.

PnT: You can really feel the crux of the gameplay here. 

GFX47: I also realized that technically, it was a big challenge, because I think it took 3-6 months to get this system really up and running. For a while, I wondered why nobody had done it before. And as I was doing it, I thought… Ah, okay, that’s why (laughs). It’s very complicated to manage.

PnT: By the way, how did you go about creating the game’s tutorial?

GFX47: It’s a step I took quite early on. I learned the hard way with Gladiabots that it was very difficult to integrate if it wasn’t thought through from the start. I think the tutorials came for the beta, for Early Access. I also knew that it introduced concepts that were quite innovative and original, to which few players had ever been exposed. So it was important to introduce at least the basic concepts of synchronization, the fact that the timeline moves at the same time as the characters, and so on. After that, it was always iterative. In other words, with almost every version, I redid part of the tutorials. I also tried to get a bit of data on the missions, to find out what players were getting stuck on.

If I made a simple game, it would be easy. I’d press A to shoot, the arrows to move, and so on. But I can’t help doing complicated stuff. As a result, I’m obliged to explain all these different aspects as clearly as possible. I’m even working on advanced tutorials where it’s not just about the simple mechanics of the game. But it introduces the concepts of all the theories of CQB (editor’s note: Close Quarters Battle). CQB is the art of indoor assault. It’s something I did a lot of research into for this game, even though I was already quite interested in it before. I’d like to do a few tutorials that answer a lot of the questions I see appearing on the Discord or on the Steam forums, such as how can I be sure to open a door without getting shot if there’s a guy in front of it, etc. These are things that, for those of you who don’t know how to do them, I’d like to do. These are things that, for gamers, aren’t necessarily obvious, because they’re not things you see a lot of in other games.

PnT: You mentioned the different factions in the game. How did you go about researching them, particularly in terms of weapons and forces, and how they operate? Did you watch documentaries, films or read books for inspiration?

GFX47: The game’s main faction is clearly the SWAT team of super-trained tactical soldiers. For this, I relied heavily on forums, Reddit subforums and specialized channels. I also consulted quite a few guides on Steam, often created by passionate gamers who were bridging the gap between gaming and the real world. These content creators often explain these concepts on charts or with diagrams.

For the bad guy factions, I turned instead to cinematic references like Heat and all the heist movies. I tried to make a list of stuff that was both realistic and fun to watch, even if it’s complicated to have both, cinema being cinema. That’s what prompted me to make replays in a dynamic, cinematic way, allowing you to control the camera during execution to create cool little movies to share on social networks. This works well on Twitter and YouTube, although it’s complicated to export as GIFs because of the length of the sequences.

I’ve also created a YouTube playlist of all the players’ videos, some of whom do incredible editing, adding effects, creating stories around the videos and really giving it their all. It’s exactly what I was hoping to see. Seeing players from different countries, notably Japan and China, create didactic videos explaining the game and its mechanics is really interesting.

PnT: Tell us about localizing the game. It’s often a challenge for a small team or a solo developer.

GFX47: Yes, it’s a challenge, especially for languages like Chinese, for which I had to call in the pros for the initial translations, but this didn’t always produce the desired results. They didn’t always grasp the subtleties of the game mechanics and sometimes introduced misunderstandings. I got a lot of feedback from players to improve these translations. It was really interesting. I also had the case of a pro translator who used a reference to a macabre event between China and Japan during the Second World War, which is not well known in Europe. Fortunately, a player alerted me in time to prevent the game from being released with this reference.

Thanks to the community, the game now supports some twenty languages. Initially, I used my own translation system, but it lacked features. I discovered a system called Localizor, developed by a group of developers. It supports around thirty languages and is easy to use, whether for importing things or for players to edit translations and vote for suggestions.

PnT: Speaking of the community, how do you get in touch with them to gather feedback and suggestions?

GFX47: Mainly via Discord, which is where I’m most present and where there’s the most interaction. The Steam forums are also active, especially as soon as the game is released. I often encourage players to come to Discord to exchange ideas more easily and get other players’ opinions. 

PnT: How did you go about managing all these aspects on your own, and even working with someone who did the music? Did you have any particular tools to do this? 

GFX47: It depends on the phase of the project. At the start, when it’s still in the idea stage, I tend to use things like Trello, so I can list things easily, no matter what time of day it is or where I am. I have the Trello app on my laptop and I can do it on the desktop too. It’s shared, but pretty soon, I’m going to abandon this tool because it’s just a way of building the vision of the game. After that, I can’t force myself to use only that. I’ll often start from an idea in Trello, but that will lead me to other things. If I stay on Trello, it forces me to put everything in order, to scrum using methods that don’t suit me. I tried to force myself to do it at first, but the creative side of things makes it too restrictive. As a result, I’ve got a board in my office, which is a mess by the way, with five lists corresponding either to the post-release, or to upcoming stuff, or to personal stuff, and in the middle, drawings, diagrams of the next game. I work a lot in a visual way, with priorities that change easily. I have a main idea, for example character customization, but if a really interesting gameplay idea comes along, it can take over. So I prefer a system similar to post-it notes, flying things that can change priority.

For No Plan B, I used a community tool called FeedBear. It’s a suggestion system where players can post ideas without creating an account, and others can vote on them. It gives me a clear, visual idea of what the community wants, even if some of the most popular suggestions can’t always be integrated into the game.

PnT: Finally, the question that might make you angry: have you considered looking for a publisher for No Plan B? Was this in your plans at any point, or did you want to remain independent to preserve your vision and avoid wasting time and energy on a publisher?

GFX47: No, it’s something I’m a bit afraid of and don’t really want or need at the moment, as I manage to finance myself with my projects. That could change if a future project fails completely, but as long as I can remain independent, I’d rather do it. I’ve heard a lot of stories from developers with publishers, even reputable ones, where things can go wrong. Teams can change, marketing can fall short, and there are often constraints and touchy negotiations. Publishers are in a position of power and it’s rarely you who’s in control, which doesn’t appeal to me at all.