Welcome to Kickstart Monday! This is our weekly series featuring 2 or more crowdfunding projects that have caught our eye. We scour over platforms like Kickstarter and Gamefound to find projects that interest us. This week’s picks include:

Read on to find out more…

Grunlings: Fantastic Fruit

First up this week we are looking at Grunlings: Fantastic Fruit from Johanna Forster on Kickstarter.

Grunlings: Fantastic Fruit is a fantastical fruit gathering family card game for 2 to 5 players. What’s a Grunling? I can hear you asking. Well Grunlings are cute little fruit creatures like apples, pears, melons and blueberries with feet and arms and cute smiling faces.

In Grunlings: Fantastic Fruit your main goal is to collect the best team of Grunlings you can trying to find the best combinations of these little fruit fellows to earn you the most points. The game features delightful and adorable artwork from German illustrator Johanna Forster. Each turn of the game you will have the chance to play special action cards, swap cards in and out of your personal player basket, and then draw one face up card and one card face up from the deck or a discard pile minding your personal hand limit of 10 cards.

Each Grunling card is worth some points and has a special bonus scoring condition  that you will be trying to meet to earn points, for example each pair of pear cards you have is worth 22 points, while the honeydew melon is worth negative 10 points unless it is also paired with a watermelon card and is then worth 25.

But there are other surprises in the deck besides Grunlings! You’ll need to avoid Darkling cards like the Dark Shrub which is worth 0 points and junks up your hand. And occasionally you will draw special Nature Effect cards which trigger a special effect for all players like the Tsunami which causes all players to discard a card and must pass another card to the player on their right.

After 4 of these Nature Effect cards have been drawn and resolved the game end is triggered and the player who has collected the most bountiful harvest of Grunlings will be the winner!

Grunlings: Fantastic Fruit is available now on Kickstarter for $32 and looks to be a game that will be great for a cozy family game night. The campaign for Grunlings: Fantastic Fruit ends on May 1, 2025 so be sure to get your pledges in before then if you are looking to harvest this fruit filled gem.

Raising Rabbits

Cuteness abounds this week as we leap into our next pick with Raising Rabbits from Aaron Rebelo and Rebel Raptor games on Kickstarter.

Raising Rabbits is a strategic board game for 2 to 5 players where you will be competing to raise rabbits and win ribbons monthly shows to ultimately gain the most reputation in the community. The game takes place in the village of Burrowbrook with each player taking the role of a local rabbit breeder and shower.

You’ll participate in rabbit auctions, play rabbit cards into pens on your board, draw goal cards to earn endgame reputation points, breed your rabbits, visit the market to adopt more rabbits and even collect rabbit poop to earn more money!

You’ll also participate in monthly rabbit shows where your bunnies will compete for the coveted first place blue ribbon. Each of your rabbits has a bse show value you use to compete but you can add Show Buff tokens to improve their chances of winning. 1st place ribbons are of course worth the most points, but 2nd and 3rd place will also earn you some reputation. After 6 months the player with the best bunny business is the winner and gains the respect of all of Burrowbrook!

Here are the pledge levels you can check out for Raising Rabbits right now on Kickstarter:

  • Raising Rabbits Standard Edition – $46 – The base game of Raising Rabbits plus any applicable stretch goals
  • Raising Rabbits Deluxe Bundle – $67 – Raising Rabbits with stretch goals and deluxe upgrades including a cloth bag, a market board, wooden Show Buff tokens, 3D nesting boxes and a wooden month token, breeding buff tokens and ribbon tokens
  • Raising Rabbits Warren Package – $94 – Raising Rabbits with all the deluxe upgrades, sticker collection and metal coins
  • All-in Package – $113 – Raising Rabbits with the deluxe upgrades, sticker collection, metal coins, Bunny Bundle expansion and Small Bunny meeple replacement

Hop on over to Kickstarter now to make your pledge for Raising Rabbits because the campaign will be ending on April 17th 2025.

Did we miss your favorite project?

Thank you for checking out this week’s Kickstart Monday! If you find these interesting or want some attention on a Kickstarter or other crowdfunded projects that you would like to read more about please share your thoughts with us via social media or email.

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