Update: This blog post has been featured on Gamasutra
Thanks to a recent feature on Gamasutra by Ernest Adams and Joris Dormans and their book Game Mechanics: Advanced Game Design (Voices That Matter) I discovered the fascinating world of Machinations diagrams. This tool really blew my mind because it provides game designers with a powerful new weapon of choice for analysing, prototyping, communicating and testing game mechanics without having to write a single line of code. That’s great because I am not a coder. Even better: I many cases I do not need a coder anymore for a first game mechanic prototype.