45 Long Distance Relationship Games, Sorted by What Each One Needs
2026-10-02
A game solves a specific long distance problem, which is that an hour-long call with no structure turns into an hour of updates. Updates are fine for ten minutes. After that you are both just waiting for somebody to think of something.
What follows is sorted by what each one needs, because that is the thing that decides whether you actually play it. The first twelve need a call and nothing else, which means you can start one in the middle of a conversation that has run out.
The last group is not games. They are the things worth doing when the problem is not boredom but distance itself, and they are the ones that make a difference over months rather than evenings.
Needs a call and nothing else
No setup, no screens shared, nothing to download. Start any of these the moment the conversation flattens.
Twenty questions, properly, with one of you thinking of something absurd.
Describe a photo in your camera roll until the other one works out which it is.
Two truths and a lie, where all three have to be from the last month.
Guess what I am looking at, with three questions allowed and no more.
Take turns adding one sentence to a story until the whole thing collapses.
Name a category and alternate until somebody repeats or stalls.
Hum something until the other one gets it, three attempts each.
Say a year, and both describe where you were and what you were like.
One actor, then a film they were in, then another actor from it, and onwards.
Each pick a stranger out of your own window and invent their entire week.
Spell a word with the first letter of every sentence until they notice.
Describe the plot of a film you have never seen, using only its title.
Needs both phones, on the same call
Still nothing to install. These work because you are doing the same thing at the same moment, which distance normally takes away.
Play the same game turn by turn and keep a running record of who wins.
Both screenshot your home screens and explain the worst app on them.
Race to find a photo of the same thing in both camera rolls.
Do the same quiz separately, then compare the results line by line.
Set a five-minute timer and each buy the other something under a fixed price.
Open the same map and race to find the strangest place name within fifty miles.
Write ten questions each about the other person and score it honestly.
Send the first photo from every month of this year, in order, and explain them.
Both type what you think the other is about to say, then reveal at once.
Pick a song and race to find the worst cover version of it in existence.
Draw the same thing on your phones in two minutes and compare the damage.
Plays out across a whole week
The group that does the most work, because it gives you something running in the background on the days you barely speak.
Set a weekly distance or step target and keep score for a month.
Both learn the same ten words of a language and test each other on Friday.
Pick a recipe each week, cook it separately, and rate each other's photos.
Run a league table of one thing you both do anyway and keep it all month.
Read the same book at a fixed chapter a day, with nobody reading ahead.
Each hide one small thing in the other's bag before you next part.
Set a weekly photo challenge on a theme neither of you chose.
Play a slow chess game, one move a day, for as long as it lasts.
Keep a list of predictions about the month and settle it at the end.
Both watch one episode a night and send a single-sentence review.
Agree a small forfeit for whoever replies slowest in the week, and honour it.
Not games, but the things that actually help
For the stretch where the problem is not that you are bored.
Plan the next trip in detail, including the parts you know you will not do.
Build the list of everything you will do in the first weekend you are together.
Write down the five best days you have had and put them in order.
Make a playlist for the journey back to each other.
Go through the photos from the last visit and label every single one.
Each write a letter to be opened on the day you next see each other.
Work out the real budget for closing the distance, in actual numbers.
Decide one thing together about how you want the next six months to go.
Tell each other the full story of a day they were not there for.
Each pick a documentary about the other person's city and watch it.
Set the date. Not a month, a date, and put it in both calendars.
Why a game works better than a longer call
The instinct when a long distance relationship feels thin is to talk for longer, and it almost never helps. A three-hour call where both of you have run out of material at minute forty is worse than forty minutes and a game, because the silence starts to feel like it means something.
What a game does is give you a shared present tense. Living in the same place supplies that for free, in the form of the same weather, the same kitchen and the same irritating neighbour, and distance removes all of it. Anything you do at the same moment puts a little of it back.
The weekly ones matter more than the call ones, even though they are less fun. They work on the days nobody has the energy for a proper conversation, which over a year is most of them.