Tag board game

“If the artwork compels, it drives people to learn more”: graphic designer Ross Bruggink on how strong visuals helped his Vicious Gardens Kickstarter bloom

When professional graphic designer Ross Bruggink decided to mix his love of gardening with his eye for creative artwork and create his first board game, he was adamant that visual beauty should be at the heart of the game. That push to create a striking game that was also strategic and quick to learn has reaped big rewards, with Vicious Gardens currently closing in on $300,000 with half the campaign still to run. Bruggink explained to BoardGameWire how his design and playtesting process, and his decision to partner with services providers for publishing and marketing, helped the campaign to blossom.

BoardGameWire is one year old today – and we’ve had more than a quarter of a million readers!

I launched BoardGameWire exactly one year and a day ago, on a hunch that the industry had grown so large that there was a market for professionally written, business-focused news and features that just wasn’t being filled by other outlets. Hand on heart, I couldn’t have dreamed of the response. A trickle of readers in those first days and weeks grew to reach more than 278,000 unique users in the last 12 months - that’s about the attendance of four Gen Cons.