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The holidays mean gametime, but not just televised football. ’Tis the season to turn off screens, gather round the table, revive friendly rivalries, and roll the dice. Or deal the cards. Or, in the case of Hootenanny Games’s quirky pastime Floats McGoats, construct rafts from scrap wood to rescue shipwrecked goats from menacing sharks.

Yep, you read that right: Goats. Rafts. Sharks.  

What a hoot.

Floats McGoats is just one of the family-friendly games dreamed up by Nashville-based Hootenanny Games founders Whitney and Alex Kimerling. At home during the pandemic, Whitney, who was practicing law, and Alex, who was working for a board game publisher, recognized an opportunity to create a playful brand together. The pair of Vanderbilt alumni merged their legal and engineering-and-business résumés to launch Hootenanny Games in 2023.

Floats McGoats debuted in their inaugural lineup at New York Toy Fair, along with games Verses, Snarkas, and SIXEM. So far, Hootenanny has launched a dozen titles in all, including board, card and dice games.

“I grew up playing games, and some of my favorite memories are from game nights,” Whitney says. “I wanted that for my kids. That’s what was behind our starting this company as something that puts joy into this world.”

Hootenanny’s 2026 catalog introduces new card games Santa Shuffle and Dizzy Dreidel. And if you’re thinking no game portfolio could be complete without Mahjong, Hootenanny teamed up with Nashville artist Amanda Norman to debut Mahjong playing cards in a magnetic box with dice. “Mahjong is everywhere, and we wanted to create something that was a travel alternative to tiles. The cards play the same way,” Whitney says. Norman’s 160-card Mahjong deck is the first in a series of Hootenanny Games to be designed in collaboration with women artists.

Hootenanny Games has offices in Green Hills, but no brick-and-mortar retail establishment. Products are available at playhootenanny.com and other retailers.