Tools & Platforms
Merak
English
Free
Subscription
Merak is a map maker for worldbuilders. Five kinds of map live in one document: a political map of Earth, an editable Earth with real terrain, a blank world, a fantasy map and a city board, and factions, units, labels, cities and lore carry across all of them.
Land can be raised, lowered, smoothed, flattened, roughened and worn down with droplet erosion; biomes paint on top; a thin river tool cuts channels without shattering the coast. The world generator builds plates, mountain chains and weathered coastlines from a single seed, and the Planet Advisor checks whether the result could exist at all, whether rivers have anywhere to drain, whether the biomes suit their latitude. An elevation probe reads back true metres and slope, and any map can be viewed in 3D or wrapped onto a shader globe.
Custom empires are drawn freehand with a lasso, and a coast mode clips the outline to the actual shoreline so borders follow the water instead of cutting across it. The arsenal and battle system has faction tinting and stacking counts, alongside commanders carrying portraits, ranks, decorations and an order of battle. Operational arrows play out as scripted advances with per-province combat. On a battle map, Fight animates the whole clash: infantry and armour close to melee under a counter system, artillery bombards from range with splash damage, aircraft strike fast and hard, and badly wounded units break off to a field hospital, heal, and return to the line.
The timeline holds the progress of the map over the years. Lore notes form a small in-map wiki placed anywhere or pinned to a city, unit or flag, and linked to one another.
Raster paints layers with blend modes, pressure and grain; an Asset Studio for custom symbols; flag and insignia makers; a colour studio. Finished maps exported as PNG up to 16K.