Game footage to prototype plan

Turn reference game footage into an actionable prototype plan and validation checklist

Problem

When prototyping games, developers often watch reference footage but end up with a mix of observed facts, rule guesses, and unconfirmed questions that are hard to turn into a development plan. Someone on V2EX built a tool for this, showing it's a real, concrete workflow pain point.

Solution

A local tool that uses FFmpeg to extract frames with timestamps, guides users to annotate each frame as 'observation/inference/to-confirm/implementation note', and generates a structured Markdown report with gameplay loops, hypotheses to validate, and a prototype task list.

Users

Indie game developers, game design students, small teams building gameplay prototypes.

MVP

Local video frame extraction with timestamps; frame-by-frame annotation UI; four label categories; generate Markdown prototype plan; export task list.

Revenue

One-time $19–29; or free basic version + paid export subscription $5/month.

Why now

Game prototyping toolchains are fragmented and AI can't replace manual gameplay deconstruction; indie developers can ship a vertical tool fast.