FLINT, MI — People want to play Jason Kotarski's games — lots of people.

The board game designer designed his first game, the Great Heartland Hauling Co., in 2012, and it sold out within a month of hitting store shelves. After it came out he was nominated for "best game by a small publisher" by Dice Tower, the authority for board game news and reviews.

Now he's got a new game coming out, along with a new business venture—he's starting his own board game publishing company.

"I decided to start my own company to try the publishing side of the business," he said. "I'm kind of loving the publishing process...working on the inside."

The indie board game industry is a small market, but a dedicated one, and even established operations, Kotarski said, don't have a lot of money to risk.

The online crowdfunding site Kickstarter has become a sort of de facto method of raising money to publish new games, with rewards given for different amount donors give—like the game itself.

Kotarski is using Kickstarter to launch his next game under his publishing company, Green Couch Games, and he's already finding he's not a one-hit wonder in the industry.

He was looking for $12,000 to publish the game, Fidelitas. With more than a week to go, he's raised $26,000.

Fidelitas is a card-based game set in medieval times, just before the beginning of a revolution. The different characters have to accomplish various tasks—say, gathering certain people at a certain meeting place—in order to achieve points that help them win.

The art for the game is light and cartoonish. It fits the family-friendly theme that Kotarski prefers. In fact, the focus of Green Couch Games will be just that—family-friendly games that you don't have to be a board-gaming aficionado to pick. He just wants to make fun games.

But this game was also his way of poking fun at other games, games that take themselves a little too serious, he said, for being, well, just games.

Some popular board games, like Settlers of Catan, have more serious art, he said, that he just finds kind of silly.

"Using this light colorful fun artwork... was kind of a tongue in cheek way to poke fun at the seriousness of the gaming hobby," he said.

Green Couch Games won't just be for Kotarski's games.

"I don't want to be a vanity publisher. I don't want to only put out my own games," he said, adding that he's looking forward to getting submissions from other designers. It can be quite a process. With each submission he has to sit and play the game to make sure there are no loopholes or problems with how it's played. In other words, yes, his job as publisher is to play games.

He added he might also still publish some of his own games with other publishers, games that might not quite fit the mold of Green Couch but that he still wants to make (he's always got at least one idea he's working on).

"It's a very friendly industry, people have different visions," he said.

Fidelitas will be available in January.