GridlessDB Reviews

Able to create simple form-based associations and info layouts. Particularly useful for story developing and RPG-like loot.

I'm quite content with Gridless in my time using it (playtime is inflated). The user interface takes a minute to learn, but once you do it's intuitive enough. I like it a lot, it's helping me define units for my RPG with ease. As far as I can tell, it's lacking in help resources and documentation, though. I found some on the itch.io community page, but it's still sparse. However, as I said before, this isn't a huge issue once you have everything down. Just experiment for a little while. For the developer(s): There is one feature that is absolutely needed: Enums. Just give the option to make a drop-down list like usual, but rather than inputting strings manually, allow a list of constants as the input for the list. Also, this might be in and I missed it, but allow a predefined list of strings to paste in for options. This doesn't seem like it would be particularly difficult either, though manual text input is of course an option. One more thing; this might be a little difficult to do, but don't affect slider values when scrolling through a page. Being able to use the scroll wheel to change slider values is convenient, but it becomes a liability when I'll be scrolling up and down and not even notice that my values have changed.

Gridless has a lot of quality-of-life issues. The duplicate feature doesn't seem to do anything. If you click off fields instead of pressing enter, what you've typed wont actually be saved, moving an item between folders with the same property name will clear the property anyways. However, it is making creating and editing the databases for my game a heck of a lot simpler, and I can't imagine making them without it anymore. At least, me as a newbie game dev.

It's a fairly neat product to create jsons and similar files fast. While it feels fairly superfluous if you have sufficient knowledge in coding with the likes of VSC, it does fulfill its nieche for people that just want to create data.

It's a good start to creating a game CMS. Dev should really test this on large or high res screens, like a macbook's.

This thing is amazing for use with Godot. I haven't used it for anything else and there are some minor graphical/UI changes that could be made but nothing serious and nothing that cant be changed in-engine with Godot.

Generally speaking, I do not recommend this tool. The tl;dr is it's a very simple tool. There are other ways to accomplish the same thing, so you are basically just paying for the UI to streamline the process instead of doing it yourself. I am wiling to pay for that, but 20 bucks is a BIG ask for something like this. When you think about it the work and effort that goes into other things on steam you can buy with that money, including many indie games that take a LOT of time and talent to make, asking 20 bucks for some thing like this is pretty icky... Anyway, I'll give a more detailed review, and some context as to why I payed for this knowing full well they were asking way too much, but if you just want to know if you should buy it, read that first paragraph and then maybe skip to the end. The middle is just fluff/context. So the reason I caved and bought this, is because I am a long time TTRPG player, and I have recently decided I really like the FATE core ruleset. For the uninitiated, the FATE system is a very flexible, roleplay oriented system. Its basically template to create your own ruleset, but it does all the heavy lifting for you. The thing is the rulebook gives you some ideas for dealing with items, inventory, and money within your setting that basically streamline the whole thing, and completely eliminate inventory management. When it comes to TTRPG's I love me a simple ruleset with more of an emphasis on RP, however in more "harsh" settings where survival is part of the setting (ie dystopian or post-apocalyptic settings) I really like having inventory management, keeping track of items, weight, food, and containers to carry it all in. I thought to myself, with all the player made character sheets people have made surely, SURELY there is a nice generic autofill pdf style one that tracks your encumbrance, allows containers (ie backpack), AND allows you to track gear slots (head, neck, gloves, belt, etc.) I spent 30 min or more check various sources that provide that kind of thing, and unbelievably I could not find one that was ruleset neutral and did what I wanted. So basically by the time I stumbled across this little tool, I was pretty fed up with looking, and had already spent more time on this than I wanted to. This tool, is VERY basic. Its basically just a spreadsheet with a bit more UI. For example you can have a Category that represents you character's inventory (think like you just created a folder and named it inventory), then you can create more folders inside that folder and name them for various gear slots or containers you character might have. To be clear, my problem with this isn't the tool itself, it's A) the fact that it's $20 effin dollars, and the fact that it doesn't come with any kind of obvious readme or help section. Currently I'm finding the program pretty easy to use except for adding additional details. Like if I want to add an item and add in it's weight and stuff, I'm having trouble figuring that out, and there is no help anywhere. Honestly even though I bought this out of desperation, I still regret the purchase. I'm sure if I spend a bit more time looking I'll find something better, and probably for free. Do I recommend this software? NO, final answer. Save your money, be a little more patient, and keep looking for something else!

The app is cool and I think I will use it a lot eventually. I hope the dev fixes a bug present in the Linux version. Very cool project nonetheless. Edit: it works well now.

Godot 4 direct exports are not implemented (Godot 3 seems like it's supported). Based on the comments on itch.io, it seems the developer has abandoned the project. It's too bad, because this seems like it would be a very useful tool. If the developer decides to continue support at a later date, I'll change my review.

(most of my time with gridless wasnt logged in steam) I wish steam had an average recomendation. I liked the ui, general idea, sort of ease of use and it already have a couple of nice export options- but for me an cms like this should be able to handle and make sense of an ever increasing amount of content and i dont even know if any of that is planed as the dev didnt answer me, so i ended up refunding for the time being. If its a database i expect being able to see the contents in a table too, sort, re-order and filter by the various properties; I want to be able to count how many of an object/entry type that fits x and y criteria is already in, wich have the highest variable x so on so forth... theres nothing of that yet. I dont mean advanced filtering- theres no filtering, sorting or proper useful search... ...at wich point the app isnt much different then filling pages in any other software minus the templating of objects/entry types- and if i cant use or extract more sense i could quickly layout pictures, values and such on onenote, excel even word for that matter in a quicker fashion (the ui and layout is neat but not the quickest to adjust either). At least right now the app is just making pages with pictures, text and values, its only saving grace exporting to unity and godot- wich for me is the last step. I hoped gridless db would make one part of articy draft in a quicker, more practical and useful way without articy`s clunkiness. I wanted to like it in its current state but at the end of the day i looked at how i use something like notion and at least for the planing and making sense of the data i couldnt justify sticking with gridless. That said i think gridless have potential and i will keep tabs on it and its updates. Since the dev didnt explain any roadmaps nor answered questions i will just have to wait and see.