About Gray Dog Games
We’re Bill and Kim, the husband-and-wife team behind Gray Dog Games.
For years, we kept saying the same thing: Someone should make cards specifically for this game.
Eventually, “someone” turned out to be us.
In November 2020, we launched Hand & Foot Remastered, a version designed to make the game easier and more enjoyable to play without changing the game people already loved.
At the time, Gray Dog Games was very much a side project. Bill was working for Ferrari, eventually becoming a Regional Marketing Manager, while Kim worked at BMW and helped keep the fledgling game company on the rails.
Then something unexpected happened.
People bought the game.
Then they told their friends.
Then their friends bought it.
And they kept doing that.
When the growth continued year after year, we realized this might be more than a side project. In April 2022, Bill left Ferrari to run Gray Dog Games full time.
Kim continues to work with the company part time as our CFO and official cat herder.
Bill is the cat.
From One Game to a Game Company
Hand & Foot Remastered may have started Gray Dog Games, but we quickly discovered that creating games was something we wanted to keep doing.
Our second game, Bread & Milk, was our first completely original game and helped define the kind of games we want to make: fun, family friendly, and easy to get to the table.
It has become the game that even people who say they “aren’t game people” enjoy.
Easy to learn. Easy to play. Easy to love.
Today, Gray Dog Games has two games available, along with the Hand & Foot Remastered Action Pack, and Bill is working on six new games. Among them are Thanks for Nothing, a game about trying desperately not to inherit your family’s stuff, and Van Life Challenge: Off the Eaten Path, a cross-country board game built around RV travel, regional foods, and reality-TV competition.
Two more games are expected in early 2027. Apparently, Bill has a problem.
There isn’t one formula for a Gray Dog Games game. Some are card games. Some are board games. Some are ridiculous. What they have in common is that we want them to be fun, family friendly, and easy to fairly easy to learn.
More importantly, every game has something personal behind it. Bill doesn’t have much interest in creating a game unless he genuinely cares about the idea, the subject, the joke, or the experience. We want the things you read, the situations you encounter, and the conversations the game creates to be entertaining beyond simply trying to win.
So far, that philosophy seems to be working. We’ve sold roughly 30,000 games, largely without major retail distribution, with much of that growth coming from word of mouth.
People play our games. Then they tell somebody else they need to play them too.
So Why “Gray Dog”?
That part has nothing to do with gaming.
Gray Dog Games is named after our first Weimaraner, Vegas.
Vegas with her little sister Reno
Vegas was the first, but definitely not the last. Over the years, four Weimaraners have been part of our family.
Trinity, Thea, and honorary gray dog, Bailey
So while there may only be two humans running Gray Dog Games, we have always been, and probably always will be, a gray dog family.
And we’re just getting started.
