Our Story

Fun Dad Games started with a friendship, a weekly snooker night, and two dads talking far too much about business, parenting, and how hard it is to stop kids turning into iPad zombies on long journeys.

Dean and Lawrence became good friends a couple of years ago and clicked pretty much straight away. Before long, Wednesday nights became snooker night. In theory, we were there to play snooker.

In reality, we spent most of the night chatting rubbish, talking about business ideas, and discussing the daily chaos of parenting. One topic kept coming up again and again: screens.

Somewhere along the way, we realised building a business together might actually be more exciting than getting a 13 break, which says a lot about both our snooker ability and our standards of excitement.

Like loads of parents, Dean knew the struggle very well. His family regularly does the five-hour drive to their caravan in Wales, which sounds lovely until you remember there are children in the back asking for snacks every seven minutes.

I Spy helped for about four minutes, then came the moaning, then came the temptation to hand over the tablets and enjoy a bit of peace, followed immediately by the classic parent guilt.

Dean had already built an amazing community of over 600,000 parents across social media, so we started talking about whether we could turn a real parenting problem into a proper product. Not some gimmick.

Not another thing that ends up in a drawer. Something parents would actually use.

BoredGame was not the first idea, and it definitely was not the first name. Lawrence originally came to Dean with the idea of creating a better car game for kids.

The first version was called Ride & Seek, which we thought was clever for about six minutes. Then we realised it sounded a bit like a theme park ride or a dating app for cyclists, so back to the drawing board we went. 

After many hours of WhatsApp messages, voice notes, terrible names, even worse names, and the occasional idea that was not completely awful, we finally landed on BoredGame.

Then came the hard bit: creating 50 challenges that actually worked in a car. Turns out, that is not easy. Every card had to be simple enough to understand quickly, fun enough to keep kids interested, and flexible enough to play more than once.

We went through version after version, testing ideas, scrapping cards, rewriting challenges, and constantly asking ourselves whether our kids would actually enjoy it, or whether we were just pretending it was good because we had spent too long on it.

Eventually, we had a game we were proud of. Then came manufacturing. Neither of us had ever ordered 3,000 units from China before, so when the boxes finally arrived, it was a proper moment.

Exciting, terrifying, and slightly confusing when you realise your idea now takes up a lot of physical space. Suddenly, the WhatsApp chats and snooker-night waffle had turned into actual stock.

Before launch, we shared the idea with Dean’s audience and the response was incredible. Parents instantly understood the problem because they were living it too.

They helped us shape parts of the box design, gave honest feedback, and made the whole thing feel like more than just our idea. At that point, we knew we might be onto something.

Not because of a fancy business plan, but because real parents were saying, “Yes, I need this.”

Then we put BoredGame on pre-sale, and people bought it. Honestly, that feeling was unreal. Launch day was a strange mix of excitement, nerves, panic, and refreshing the sales app so many times it probably should have staged an intervention.

We told ourselves we would be calm and sensible. We were not calm or sensible. We refreshed everything constantly.

Since then, BoredGame has been played by families in cars all over the place, helping parents turn long journeys into something a bit more fun and a lot less screen-heavy.

It has already been a proper emotional rollercoaster. Some days it feels like we will end up floating the business on the stock market. Other days, it feels like we should be quietly Googling how to liquidate a company before lunch.

We have had amazing messages from parents who love it, which honestly means the world. We have also had the odd tough moment too, including our first one-star rating with no explanation.

That one stung more than we pretended it did. But that is part of building something real.

You get the lovely messages, the stressful days, the great reviews, the random bad ratings, the exciting wins, and the moments where you wonder why you ever thought ordering thousands of card games was a sensible life choice.

We are still right at the start of the journey, and BoredGame is just the beginning. The bigger aim with Fun Dad Games is to create games that genuinely help parents in those everyday moments where kids are bored, patience is running low, and screens feel like the easiest option.

That might be in the car, around a table, on holiday, in a waiting room, or anywhere else parents need something simple, fun, and actually useful.

We want to build games that bring families together, make tricky moments easier, and give parents a proper alternative to handing over a screen.

Thanks for being here, supporting us, and being part of the journey.

Dean & Lawrence
Fun Dad Games