Herts student turns fantasy artwork into award-winning board game
A University of Hertfordshire student has turned a collection of fantasy artwork into an original board game – and is now looking to take her creation to the next level.
Daisy Ragsdale, 21, from Linton, south of Cambridge, has created Trinket, a fantasy-themed strategy board game that challenges players to negotiate, haggle and trade their way to victory.
The BA (Hons) Comics and Concept Art student, who has just graduated from the University, created the game as a way of bringing her artwork and worldbuilding to life in a different format.
Designed for 2–8 players, Trinket features 30 pieces of original digital fantasy artwork created by Daisy. Players take on different characters and must collect, trade, or haggle a range of valuable trinkets, with the winner being the player whose collection has the highest value.
But not every character plays by the rules. Some cards such as ‘the arsonist’ can be used against other players and bring a more mischievous element to the game.
Daisy began developing Trinket in September 2025 after previously considering using her fantasy artwork as the prelude to a novel. Her original ideas brought together different places, languages and magic systems, and she decided to explore whether the world she had created could work as a game instead.
“I wanted to turn my idea into another form,” said Daisy. “I spent my summer working on board game ideas and I ended up developing the idea into something people could actually sit around and play together.”
The project has also given Daisy an opportunity to combine her creative skills with an interest in entrepreneurship.
She entered Trinket into the University of Hertfordshire’s annual Flare entrepreneurship competition, which supports students and graduates developing innovative business ideas. Daisy won the Best Creative Idea award for the game.
Her £2,000 prize from Herts’ Enterprise Team is now being used to market her Kickstarter appeal, launched early this month, to fund the manufacturing of prototypes and to identify reviewers. That’s where the game can presently be purchased until its eventual wider launch on Amazon.
Daisy has already taken the game to two board game conventions to gather feedback and is now conducting further testing before sending the game to reviewers.
“I’ve had really useful feedback from the conventions, and am continually testing it, but there’s still a lot more testing I want to do,” said Daisy. “The next step is getting it in front of reviewers, getting more people to play it and working out what needs changing before I look at producing it on a large scale.”
The project has also confirmed Daisy’s ambition to continue designing games after graduating.
“I definitely want to make more board games,” she said. “I’ve started a few ideas before, so I’d like to keep developing those and see where they can go.”
The Guardian's 2027 subjects table puts the University of Hertfordshire first in the UK for Animation and Game Design – the Comics and Concept Arts course achieved a score of 100 in its 2026 league table.
Daniel Goodbrey, Principal Lecturer at the School of Creative Arts, who tutored Daisy, said:
“I was incredibly impressed by the work Daisy produced for Trinket. The world-building evidenced in her work was incredibly strong, with some wonderfully strange and unique bird-themed character designs.
“One of the great strengths of our Comics & Concept Art course is how much we encourage students to place their work in real-world professional contexts and Daisy really took this to the next level.
“The tabletop gaming industry offers some very exciting opportunities for Concept Artists and this area is becoming an increasingly important part of our teaching at Herts.”
Dr Stephen Partridge, Dean of the School of Creative Arts at the University of Hertfordshire, said:
“Our repeated student success demonstrates the value of a Creative Arts degree. Herts was named Best Concept Art School in the UK in The Rookies' 2025 rankings and Best Creative School in the UK, with our students competing across the creative disciplines against nearly 500 institutions worldwide.
“It’s wonderful to see students not just employing their creative and practical skills as Daisy has done, but also actively marketing and planning to launch their careers in the real world.”