To some, board games are a simple reprieve from stress and constant connectedness. For Travis and Holly Hancock, they're the foundation of their startup, Facade Games, which has grossed over $1 million since they began it as a side hustle. The Columbus, Ohio–based husband-and-wife duo first toyed with creating a board game in 2010. They launched their first funded game, Salem 1692, in March 2015 after about two years of development, starting with roughly $500 in seed money and no prior industry experience. The Kickstarter campaign hit its $6,000 goal in less than a day and ultimately raised $103,000—1,722% of the goal. They have since run three successful Kickstarter campaigns; their latest has raised over $400,000 with three days to go. Their success, they say, comes from the attention to detail and the energy they invested in the games. He recalls his mother saying, "As soon as a game box is ruined, the game is ruined; you never pull it out anymore because it looks like trash." The couple found a manufacturer on Alibaba that made a prototype hollowed-out book to house the game for $100. Facade Games — the Hancocks — came up with the idea of using books as cases for their games; they say each game tells a different story. Travis, who was living with Holly in Utah at the time, also attended SaltCON, the state's largest board game convention, and asked experts for advice on getting started. He later found a small-batch card maker on MakePlayingCards.com to create the prototype's other pieces, and they drew on Holly's background in graphic design. On a Brigham Young University job site, the couple found an illustrator to help bring their characters to life. For two years, after clocking out of work — Travis from his digital marketing job and Holly from teaching — the Hancocks tinkered with their prototype. When they were finally finished, they shot a promotional video for Kickstarter on an iPhone and hired a voice-over actor on Fiverr to speak in Old English to evoke the era in which 1692 was set. Travis says it does wonders for bringing people into the game. They have since used pirate-themed and Western voice-overs to promote later games too. After the campaign, in November 2015, the Hancocks distributed the finished versions of Salem 1692 to backers, and Travis quit his full-time job to split his time between developing a second game and doing contract marketing on the side. Holly, then 24, kept teaching so they would have health care benefits. The Facade Games co-founders joke that they hope their daughter, Margo, won't get sick of playing their board games. In January 2017, after following a similar process as with their first game, the Hancocks launched a Kickstarter for their pirate-themed mutiny game, Tortuga 1667 — and Travis held his breath. "I still wasn't sure if Salem was just a crazy anomaly that randomly did well on Kickstarter, and didn't know if our second game would just flop and we'd have to go back and get real jobs again," he recalls. It didn't flop: Tortuga 1667 raised over $400,000, shattering its fundraising goal by 4,072 percent. Friends tested an iteration of an earlier Hancock idea before it launched on Kickstarter. "That was probably my favorite moment as an entrepreneur," Travis says. "Even more so than the first game — because maybe it was just chance, but with the second one, seeing that they believed in us twice brought me to tears that day." The success led the Hancocks to focus on Facade Games full-time. They converted the business from a limited liability company to an S-corp to start taking salaries. Owning their business is paying dividends and giving them the flexibility to enjoy parenting now that they have a one-year-old daughter, Margo. "I've always been stubborn in that I don't want anyone to control me, so I think that's why I wanted to be my own boss," Travis says. "I kind of knew I was going to have a family one day and thought it'd be really fun to be home with them more."