Prism — Visual reference management
Prism is GameDevBuddy's integrated PureRef replacement — infinite canvas reference boards, linked to your game data.
Prism
Visual reference management — an integrated PureRef replacement.
Prism is where you collect and organise visual references: mood boards, concept art, style guides, screenshots. Boards live on an infinite canvas and link directly to game data in Forge, so references stay connected to the entities they describe.
Why not PureRef?
PureRef is great. We use it. But it has four limits Prism is built to solve:
| Limit | What Prism does |
|---|---|
| Isolated from game data | Boards link to Forge entities and Oracle notes |
| No entity linking | Drag a Character DataItem onto a board and it becomes a live reference |
| Separate tool to manage | Lives inside GameDevBuddy — same workspace, same vault |
| No team sharing | Boards sync via the project vault, same as docs and data |
Pricing: Premium.
What Prism gives you
- An infinite canvas rendered with Konva.js — pan, zoom, no edges
- Multi-select, group, align/distribute, batch export
- Cropping, annotations, free-hand drawing
- Snapping and grid arrange for tidy boards
- Outliner panel — a tree view of every panel on every board
- Search bar with cross-board lookup
- Vault integration — boards live alongside your Oracle and Forge data
Linking references to data
Drop any image onto a board, then right-click → Link to entity. Pick a Character, Item or Location from your Forge vault. The image gets a small badge showing the linked entity name.
From the Forge side, the linked entity gets a "Visual references" tab listing every Prism panel that points at it — so when an artist opens a character entry, they see the references. When the writer opens a board, they see what entity each reference is for.