A DSL for rapid prototyping of cross-platform tower defense games

Because of the increasing expansion of the videogame industry, shorten videogame time to market for diverse platforms (e.g, Mac, android, iOS, BlackBerry) is a quest. This paper presents how a Domain Specific Language (DSL) in conjunction with Model-Driven Engineering (MDE) techniques can automate the development of games, in particular, tower defense games such as Plants vs. Zombies. The DSL allows the expression of structural and behavioral aspects of tower defense games. The MDE techniques allow us to generate code from the game expressed in the DSL. The generated code is written in an existing open source language that leverages the portability of the games. We present our approach using an example so-called Space Attack. The example shows the significant benefits offered by our proposal in terms of productivity and portability.