25 Non-Video Games to Play With a Long Distance Partner

You said everything you had in twelve minutes. What's left is the "okay, I'll let you sleep", and the feeling that the call emptied out before the two of you did. It's eleven at night on your side, the coffee isn't even made on theirs, and you're looking up games to play with a long distance partner, slightly ashamed of it.

It isn't that you've run out of things to say, it's that talking has become your only way of being in touch, and no relationship holds up on a single one.

Video games work beautifully and they have a list of their own, the 18 long distance relationship games to play. This one starts where those stop: no controller, nothing to install, and nothing that asks you to know how to play.

Games by text, for the time difference

A long distance game isn't judged on what it is, but on the hour you can actually play it, and games by text get played while the other one sleeps.

1. The chess game that lasts a month

On Chess.com in Daily mode or on Lichess in correspondence, each of you has several days to play a move, and the game lives between your two mornings. A move never leaves on its own, it leaves with a line about your day. You'll lose the game, you'll have the chronicle of their month.

2. The hunt through your own archive

Ask a question and hide the answer somewhere in your history: it's in a photo from April. They scroll back up the thread until they find it, and cross six months of the two of you on the way.

3. The false line before bed

Before you fall asleep, you leave three lines about your day, one of them invented. When they wake up, they point at the fake one and leave you theirs for your night.

4. The very close-up to guess

You photograph a detail from an inch away, the weave of an armchair, the skin of a fruit, with one guess allowed. In three weeks they know your apartment by heart, corners included.

5. The clues from my day

You send three details without explaining any of them: a smell of paint, a train ticket, the name Janet. They put the rest back together with their eyes barely open.

Question games, beyond the list

A question only becomes a game once there's a rule around it: who answers, when, in what order. The material is already in the 80 questions for long-distance couples, all that's missing is the rule.

6. The answer without its question

Send an answer on its own: three, and especially the last one. The question is the thing to guess, and they have until their night to try.

7. The thirty folded papers

You write thirty questions by hand, fold them, and photograph the numbered pile. They pick a number without knowing what they've just asked for.

8. Answering in their place

You answer five questions in their place: their Sunday dish, their song in the car, their worst fear. It's scored out of five, and the game starts on the ones you got wrong.

9. The three wildcards of the month

Each of you gets three wildcards a month, a question the other answers straight, whatever time it is on their side. They're hard to spend, and that's exactly why they count.

Calendars and challenges over several days

Spread across several days, a game turns into a standing date that asks nobody to be free. The 30 challenges to take on together run as they are, the ones below are empty structures.

10. The ten challenges written by the other one

Each of you writes ten challenges, not for yourself but for the other, and sends them sealed. One a day, one pass only.

11. The bingo of the month

A grid of twenty-five squares, identical on both sides: a photo of the sky, make the other one laugh before noon, write something during their night. First full line wins.

12. The challenge that changes hands

Whoever took on yesterday's challenge writes tomorrow's, never more than a day ahead. The chain breaks the moment somebody forgets, and somebody always forgets.

13. The calendar you open when you wake up

One door a day until you see each other again, a photo, a question, a voice note, a tiny challenge, and it opens in the morning while you're still asleep. The only game where the other one plays without thinking about it.

Board games online, free for two

Hundreds of boxes run inside a browser, and most of them need you both there at the same hour (the nights without a game have their own 20 long-distance video call ideas).

14. Board Game Arena, one move a day

Board Game Arena is more than a thousand free games in the browser, with a turn-based mode you can set to one move a day. 7 Wonders Duel, Patchwork and Targi are two-player only, and they hold that rhythm beautifully.

15. Hanabi, on the same side

On the same site, Hanabi is played by two in cooperation, nobody beats anybody. Across the distance, competition ends up stinging on a tired evening, and co-op settles that in advance.

16. The game neither of you knows

You open a rulebook neither of you has ever read, and you get it wrong together, out loud. Nobody starts with ten years of practice, and that's often what was missing for the one who doesn't like games.

17. The empty table on PlayingCards.io

A room code, fifty-two cards on green felt, no rules imposed by the site. They sit down across from you, and you replay the rummy their grandmother taught them with half the rules wrong.

Apps for two, the ones that last

An app saves nothing on its own, it works as a timer. These four have held up for years, and they work while the other one sleeps.

18. Paired, the locked answer

One question a day, each of you answers on your own side, and theirs only opens once yours is written. The time difference changes nothing, the whole day is your window.

19. The Gottman Institute card decks

The free Gottman Card Decks app lines up decks of cards to draw from, questions, rituals, subjects nobody opens alone. One card on Sunday, and they answer when their Sunday comes around.

20. Marco Polo, the video walkie-talkie

A video walkie-talkie: you record, they watch as they're getting up, and nobody waits for anybody. The extra rule: sixty seconds, and you show a corner of your place that has never been on screen.

21. Locket, the photo on the screen

The app puts a photo of you on the other one's home screen, with nothing to open. One a day, taken within the hour, never pulled from the camera roll.

House rules, games you invent

A long distance game almost always dies after two weeks, and the only one that survives is the one you made up (the dates themselves are in these 51 long-distance date ideas).

22. The rule laid on top of a habit

Don't go looking for one more activity, take the one you already do every day and lay a tiny constraint on it, a stake that costs a little, and an end date. A game that belongs to the two of you looks less like a project than like a habit you picked up together. It holds six months where the big ideas hold four days, and a game with no ending goes out on its own.

23. The dictionary with two entries

Every week, an ordinary word takes on a second meaning at your place and becomes unusable anywhere else. Six months in, it's a language.

24. The invented life of a stranger

On the bus, you pick somebody and describe their shoes, their bag, what they're reading. The other one invents them a whole life and tells it to you during your night.

25. The tab you settle at the airport

Points, forfeits and bets pile up and never get settled across the distance. On the day you finally land, the first half hour goes to paying off six months of debt, and it's worth the rest of the trip.

“

We've been keeping score for two years. Neither of us really knows who's ahead any more, and we keep writing it down anyway.

— Anna, 32

The evening you play for the first time, the conversation won't be any longer, it will be less polite. Somebody will cheat, somebody will complain, and you'll hang up with something left to finish tomorrow. That's all anybody asks of a game: to leave a next time.