Jan 21st, 2026

by Juha-Matti Santala

This was published in categories: zine

Say hello to Roll the Zine, a board and card game focused 8-page zine.

I really like the idea of zines and for a few years, I’ve been reading other people’s zines and spent time reading zine forums, dreaming of making one myself. I’ve always felt zines are beyond my skills as I can’t draw or illustrate or write poems or anything like that.

After a couple of sleepless nights sick in my bed to start off 2026, I decided it’s time to make one to get something going. I have some ideas for zines that have been living rent free in my head but decided to start practicing the art of making them with something with smaller stakes.

Hence, Roll the Zine. It’s an 8-page zine with words about games I enjoy. In the first issue, I wrote about Wingspan, Print and Play games, Dandân, Tinderblox and Hive. I wanted to challenge myself and my need to write comprehensive and structured things. Some of the text is slightly tilted, paragraphs don’t align perfectly and some pages have less text and bigger pictures. I was definitely way outside my comfort zone with some of the layout decisions.

I’m so used to publishing in the web (this blog and my digital garden) where I can link to other things that I found it difficult to adjust to a print medium. I’m publishing the zine as a PDF as well but I wanted it to be first and foremost a printed paper zine and to operate within that constraint.

Here’s an example page about Wingspan:

I’m quite happy about how it turned out.

With this zine, the process was definitely the most important bit: I learned a lot about technical stuff (like how to lay out pages so they print correctly) and about the constraints of page space (as in the web there’s always a lot of space and ability to link to more stuff).

If you’re into board games or zines, give it a look! I’d love to hear your opinions about it.

If something above resonated with you, let’s start a discussion about it! Email me at juhamattisantala at gmail dot com and share your thoughts. In 2025, I want to have more deeper discussions with people from around the world and I’d love if you’d be part of that.