# Mek: Mechanics Prototyping Tool for 2D Tile-Based Turn-Based Deterministic Games

## TL;DR

This paper introduces Mek, a mechanics prototyping tool and language designed specifically for 2D tile-based, turn-based, deterministic games, enabling rapid and efficient game mechanic design and testing.

## Contribution

The paper presents the first mechanics-focused language and tool tailored for 2D tile-based turn-based deterministic games, facilitating quick prototyping and comparison with existing methods.

## Key findings

- Capable of succinctly implementing various well-known game mechanics
- Compared favorably to existing prototyping tools in usability and expressiveness
- Supports rapid iteration in game mechanic design

## Abstract

There are few digital tools to help designers create game mechanics. A general language to express game mechanics is necessary for rapid game design iteration. The first iteration of a mechanics-focused language, together with its interfacing tool, are introduced in this paper. The language is restricted to two-dimensional, turn-based, tile-based, deterministic, complete-information games. The tool is compared to the existing alternatives for game mechanics prototyping and shown to be capable of succinctly implementing a range of well-known game mechanics.