Welcome friends! 

We are happy excited to welcome you to our first Deep Print Games newsletter!

We hope you are fine at health, thank you and highly appreciate your engaging support as partners and community. You all help us to live our passion for board games to develop unique playing experiences!

Fresh news about upcoming games, interesting insights from creators and exciting surprises await you every few weeks. The first issue features stories about our summer releases.

We are a young German board game publisher joining our long lasting knowledge to create games offering fun, strategy and deep impact alike. We love board games by heart and invite you to join us on our passionate journey. 

Feel free to subscribe, join our social media channels and have fun reading!
Stay in the loop, stay safe and enjoy gaming!

Your team of Deep Print Games

Taste yummy Juicy Fruits

Sunshine, waves and fruits: welcome to your little paradise called Juicy Fruits! In this colorful family game by Spiel des Jahres award winner Christian Stöhr you have to  arrange fruits and businesses on your island cleverly. Enjoy harvesting and supplying ships in this quick played competition for the most attractive island in a beautiful archipelago. Summer feeling is on its way, expected release is around June / July. 

Discover mysteries in Rorschach

Dive into an enigmatic puzzle of imagination and association. In Rorschach teams compete to decipher inkblot images by pairing them with matching words. This entertaining party game comes with some of the famous original images along with exciting new ones created by game designer Kristian Klooß. Be ready for your mental connections with friends around August. 

Enjoy sunrise in Savannah Park

This late summer nature unfolds its beauty in the heart of Africa. In Savannah Park, created by the highly acclaimed game design duo Wolfgang Kramer and Michael Kiesling, you run your own wildlife park as a ranger. Take care of animals and try to gather them in large herds, lead them to watering holes and protect them from bush fires. Compete in multiple game modes for the most precious park. Little elephants trumpet its expected release around September.

Hi Annika, many thanks for sharing insights into your creativity. You illustrated two of our upcoming releases, Juicy Fruits and Savannah Park. 
 

Let’s travel back in time into your childhood:
what were the wonders you were fascinated by? 

I was fascinated by so many things, first of all nature and creatures of all kind. I grew up in a rural area of Germany, surrounded by forests, mountains and castles, far from everything urban. So I spent a lot of time outdoors, but I also loved to read, play board games and draw. 

Did you ever dream of becoming an artist?

For a brief period I wanted to become a baker. I first heard of the job „illustrator“ when I was about 12 and from then on I knew that this was what I wanted to be. For a long time I didn’t think it could become my full-time job one day. The happier I am it is today!

How did you step into board games?

I already loved board games in my early childhood, we played them in our family and when I was around ten I started to design my own board games for my younger brother. At university I got more into huge, strategic games. After I went to the SPIEL for the first time I began to work at „Würfel und Zucker“ (a board game café) in Hamburg. That’s when I really started to embrace the hobby and decided I want to pursue it as a career.

How did you get in touch with Deep Print Games and Juicy Fruits?

Silke (she owns the Würfel und Zucker) knew Peter who was working on a new game. That was around the time when Deep Print Games was founded, so in the beginning of 2020, pre Covid. She told him about me and we met at the café a few weeks later. I showed him some illustrations and we kept talking and testing from that day on. When I first heard about Juicy Fruits it was not about fruits at all, it was about robots. So I drew a little robot for Peter and somehow that cleared my path to drawing fruits and ships and tiny people on islands. Then I really started to work on Juicy Fruits.

Imagine being alone on Juicy Fruits island.
Which 3 things would you like to do most?

The funny thing is, I’m fructose intolerant. So I wouldn’t be able to enjoy any of the yummy fruits or the ice cream, unfortunately! I guess I would like to go to the climbing park, swim in the sea and maybe try to find something to eat that doesn’t include fruits. 
 

Many thanks Annika, we are going to reveal more of your secrets regarding your creative journey, Savannah Park and future projects in our next newsletter!

Welcome Kristian, many thanks for joining us. 2021 marks the centenary of Hermann Rorschach`s publication of „Psychodiagnostics“ and history of the controversial test. We are very excited to see your first board game Rorschach entering gaming tables around the world this summer. Let’s start and play a little game of imagination using some words from your game.
 

Please choose…

Goethe or Yoda: „Goethe“
Summer or Winter: „Autumn“
Loch Ness or Africa: „Africa“

What is unique and makes you happy about being a game designer?

Seeing people smile makes me happy. And a game is something that can create a thousand smiles.

Let`s dive into the birth of your creation process …

Actually it happened accidentally. I was creating a more complex game that puts world history into a card game. The prototype has 350 different cards and takes place at the beginning of the 20th century. I thought about including Hermann Rorschach and his inkblot test into the game, because he lived at this time. I decided to go with more influential psychologists such as Freud and Adler though.
Nevertheless, the spirit of Rorschach and his inkblots had already left the bottle. One day in February 2019, while I was sitting in my armchair, drinking tea, and pondering about games, I looked at my shelves filled with several editions of Codenames and dozens of other mass market games. Would my game about world history ever fit into the mass market? Unfortunately not. But what should a game look like that does?
It should definitely be quite easy to learn and fun for beginners and experts alike. And if mechanics, theme and illustration were perfectly knitted together, what a nice game could that be, I thought. Like a Rorschach test. Imaginations with pictures are beautiful, like art. It is so easy that even children can do it. And it is so interesting that a century after its invention it has even become a part of our pop culture. Unfortunately there is no game like this, I thought. Then I thought again. And this is how it all started.

How did the spirit of Rorschach meet the ones from Deep Print Games?

Maybe this has to do with another spirit, the spirit oft the board game café "Würfel & Zucker" in Hamburg. It‘s a wonderful place. Once a month they invite game designers to present their prototypes. In December 2019 some of their guests also tried out "Rorschach". Afterwards several of them even asked me, where they could buy the game.

While I talked to them, a guy next to us listened quietly. He had been around for a while, watching them playing. I kind of knew him, but wasn’t sure. When he told me his name, Peter Eggert, that rang a bell. He asked me some questions about "Rorschach". If I did the artwork and what my plans for the game are? After our short conversation he joined a group of guests to play "Rorschach" himself.

Later that evening he came to me, holding one of my two Rorschach prototypes in his hand. "May I borrow this for a while?", he asked. "It is nothing we want to publish, but I can show it to other publishers, if you like." "Sure", I said. A few weeks later I got a call from Peter. "I am sorry, Kristian, I didn’t find someone else who wants to publish your game." Then he paused. "The reason is I didn`t show it to them, because we as Deep Print would like to publish it. Would you be okay with this?"

Imagine meeting the Professor himself at his centenary party:
what would you like to bring him as a present?

Hermann Rorschach wasn‘t a party guy at all. When he gave a party he did it for his patients in his psychiatry, because he wanted to see them happy. What Rorschach instead loved was art and theatre. And he liked to talk about it with others. For this reason I would bring him something as a present that combines all of these things. There is a theatre play called "Art" by Jasmina Reza. It’s about three friends arguing about a piece of art that one of them has bought for a lot of money – it is a white painting with white stripes on it. Is this art? Is it not? You might call this play a Rorschach test, too.

What would you like to ask him?

I would like to ask him, if he wants to play a game of Rorschach with me. The thing is, I have read so much about his life, work, and character that I am sure I already know his answer…

…which would be?

A clear Yes.

Thanks Kristian. We`ll follow up to dive deeper into fun and mysteries of Rorschach in our next newsletter. 

BGG contest 

We are looking forward to our upcoming Juicy Fruits & Rorschach giveaway contest at Boardgamegeek expected at the end of June, have fun!

It’s time to meet friends!

We are planning for Internationale Spieltage (SPIEL ´21) in Essen and are very happy to meet you face to face for a talk, hugs and celebrating board games, hopefully. An exciting secret awaits you!