24 Long Distance Relationship Games (Over Text, Call, or App)

The hardest part of long distance isn’t the missing, it’s the flatness. You get on the call, you trade the same “how was your day,” and twenty minutes later you’re both scrolling in silence with the video still on. A game fixes that faster than any deep talk, because it gives you something to do together instead of just reporting your lives back and forth.

Here are 24 games built for a couple that can’t be in the same room, grouped by how you’re connecting: over text, on a call, in an app, or across the day. None of them need you to be in sync every second, and most cost nothing. Some are silly, some get surprisingly deep, and the best fun games for long distance couples usually manage both at once. For more ways to close the gap, our long distance relationship ideas has 50 more that aren’t games.

Games to play over text

Text is your main room now, so the best games there are slow-burn ones you can keep going through the day. The wait between replies does half the work, and a game running in the background gives every “ping” a little charge of anticipation instead of just another logistics update.

• Would you rather, played for the “why” behind each answer, not the answer.
• Never have I ever, as a slow confession game one line at a time.
• Truth or dare, long-distance edition, where dares become photos, voice notes, or a song.
• Three emojis to describe your day, and the other has to guess what happened.
• The story game: build one story together, one sentence each, all day long.
• Two truths and a lie about your day, sent every evening.
• “Rate my…” — your lunch, your outfit, your parking job — for no reason.

Games to play on a call or video chat

On a call, the goal is to make the time sharedinstead of just talking. These give the call a shape so it doesn’t default to small talk. A game also takes the pressure off the “so what’s new” silence that long-distance calls sometimes hit, where you’ve already texted all day and there’s nothing left to report. When that happens, you don’t need more to say. You need something to do.

• 20 questions about a memory only the two of you share.
• The Newlywed Game: guess each other’s answers to “how well do you know me” questions.
• Trivia night: one of you hosts a five-question round about the other.
• Pictionary or charades over video, using your phone camera.
• An online multiplayer game you both open (chess, a word game, a co-op mobile game).
• “Draw my day” — sketch what happened and make them interpret it.
• A cooking race: same recipe, same time, funniest result wins.

Apps and online games for long distance couples

Sometimes you want a game that runs itself, no rules to explain or turns to track. A few kinds of long distance relationship games online do the setup for you, so you can just show up and play on a night when neither of you has the energy to invent something:

• Co-op mobile games you play in the same session, so you’re on a team.
• Sync-watch tools that let you stream the same movie in step and chat alongside it.
• Shared daily-question apps that send you both a prompt to answer.
• Multiplayer word and puzzle games for a low-key game you dip into between texts.
• A shared playlist you build together, adding a song whenever one of you thinks of the other.

The private-question kind is where a lot of the good stuff hides, which is exactly what melt is for: you both answer on your own, and only the things you both said yes to are revealed, so the shy questions finally get asked without either of you having to go first.

Slow games you play across the day

Not every game needs you both online at once. These async ones keep a thread of play running even when your schedules or time zones don’t line up, which is half of what makes long distance feel less lonely. They’re especially good if one of you is a night owl and the other’s up at dawn: the game waits for whoever’s awake, so there’s always a little something pending from the other person when you check your phone.

• A scavenger hunt: send a photo challenge (“something red,” “where you had your first coffee”) and wait for their shot.
• A running bucket list: take turns adding one thing you’ll do together on the next visit.
• A countdown game with a small reveal each day until you see each other.
• “Song of the day” trades, each one saying something you didn’t text.
• A shared journal or note you both add one line to before bed.

How to actually keep them going

The trick with games to play in a long distance relationship isn’t finding the perfect one, it’s lowering the bar so you actually play. Pick one, keep it dumb and easy, and let it be silly. The point was never the game. It’s that for a few minutes you were doing something together instead of apart. If a game naturally turns flirty or deep, follow it there — our guide to spicing up a long distance relationship and our intimacy questions for long distance couples pick up right where the games leave off. And when you want a whole planned night rather than a quick game, our virtual date ideas for couples turn it into a real date. Distance takes your routine. Games hand you a new one.