Pegasus Spiele and Deep Print Games announce Caldera Park, a new game in the “In Nature”-series
Friedberg, August 3, 2022: After Renature and Savannah Park follows a new, independent game in the series “Deep Print Games In Nature”. The new family game by Wolfgang Kramer and Michael Kiesling is expected to be released by Deep Print Games for the SPIEL’22 convention and exclusively distributed by Pegasus Spiele from November on. The game lets players create parks for animals in the wilderness of Northern America.
North American nature enchants with breathtaking mountain vistas and spectacular geysers. Vast forests and the wide prairies offer shelter to many species of animals. In their own parks, located in exactly this landscape, players attempt to help animals gather in families that are as large as possible. In doing so, they need to ensure that the families have access to watering holes and that as much terrain as possible is populated. Those who think that this concept sounds familiar are probably thinking of Savannah Park, which was published by Deep Print Games last year and indeed, Caldera Park is a direct follow-up.
But Caldera Park is not simply the same game in a new setting. Instead, the mechanisms of Savannah Park are skillfully interpreted in new ways, varied and complemented with new elements. The game grants players more freedom and offers more tactical depth. Parks now include three differing landscapes as well as new terrain features: a river, waterfall, and geyser. Also, at the beginning of a game not all animal tiles are displayed on the tableau. Instead, players uncover only seven of their 35 animal tokens at a time. Whenever they have added a token to their park, they draw a new one from the pile.
Using an action board with seven spaces for terrain selection and seven animal tokens, the active player indicates which animal species has to be added to which landscape. For example: A bear has to be placed on a river space or an elk has to be placed on a forest space. All players then must place a token with the requested animal on the corresponding landscape in their own park – if possible. Some tokens do include multiple species of animals.
Once all seven animal tokens have been placed on the seven terrain spaces on the action board, the round ends. In this manner, the animals are spread relatively evenly around the park. The action board is reset, and a new round begins. After five rounds, the game ends and the parks are evaluated. Players earn points if certain landscapes are completely populated (for example, all mountain spaces or all river spaces). Additionally, the animal families are evaluated – similarly to Savannah Park.
As a completely new element, weather phenomena play a part in Caldera Park and replace Savannah Park’s bush fires. Every player has ten weather tokens, of which only six are used per game. The sun is always part of the game, the other five are picked at random. At the beginning of each round, all players have to place one of their weather tokens on one of their park’s weather spaces. Weather phenomena include hurricanes, hailstorms, fog, heatwaves and more. Every weather token has different effects on the park and the animals. For example, at the end of the game all wolf and elk tokens that are adjacent to a snowstorm have to be taken off. Weather tokens are resolved before final scoring, which will affect some of the animal family groupings.
Caldera Park is a medium weight family game for one to four players aged ten and up and lasts 30 to 40 minutes per game. It is the third game in the “Deep Print Games in Nature”-series and – like Renature and Savannah Park – entirely abstains from using plastic. Instead of plastic bags, Caldera Park again includes folding boxes as storage for the game’s components.
