18 Long Distance Relationship Games to Play (9 Free)

There is that two-second silence, right after one of you sets the controller down. One of you said "sorry, I'm terrible at this" laughing, but not quite laughing, and the other answered "no you're not" a little too fast. It was supposed to be the good idea, one of those video games couples play across the distance, and it lasted ten minutes.

Since then, you have each gone back to your own screen. One of you plays alone, the video call stays open in a corner, and the thought has settled in without ever being said out loud: we're not compatible on this.

It isn't about taste, and it isn't about consoles. The ten minutes that failed say nothing about the two of you, they only say that someone handed you a game that already required knowing how to play.

Most lists sort games by how good they are. This one sorts them by what they ask of the two of you. And if it is the controller itself that gets in the way, there are 25 games to play with a long distance partner without a console, by text, in questions, or on a board.

Five questions before you start anything

• Do you have the same machine? If you do, almost everything opens up. If you don't, the game has to cross the border, which is what crossplay means.
• Is it free, under twenty dollars, or bought once for two?
• Does a session fit inside a weeknight?
• Can it be played out of sync, when one of you is going to bed while the other is having lunch?
• Can someone follow along who has never held a controller?

A game that misses one of these is still a fine game. A game that misses three, you will never launch again.

When one of you plays and the other doesn't

An easier game fixes nothing. What works is when the one who never plays holds the thing the other one needs.

1. Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes

A bomb on the screen of the one who plays, the free PDF manual to defuse it open on the other one's phone, and neither of you can see the screen across from you. A single copy, around $15.

2. Operation: Tango

One of you is out in the field, the other reads the screens and dictates what to do without seeing what they see. One of you buys it (around $20) and invites the other with a free Friend Pass, including between a PlayStation and a PC, with the Switch left on its own. Twenty to thirty minutes a mission.

3. We Were Here

Two halves of the same castle, a walkie-talkie, and nothing else (which is roughly your life). The opening episode costs nothing, on computer as well as on consoles, and since 2025 it finally links the machines together. The sequels come one at a time after that, if the appetite holds.

4. Split Fiction

The exception we're owning: around $50, one copy for two, so twenty-five dollars each, and a Friend's Pass that works between a PlayStation and a PC. Fifteen hours you can cut into evenings, without punishing the one who is following along.

In all four, nobody is watching the other one play.

Twenty minutes on a weeknight

On those nights nobody has the energy to learn anything (the tutorial is already too much), and it has to be able to stop at 10:30 without anyone apologizing.

5. Fall Guys

Free, five minutes a round, and nobody needs an explanation to work out that you run toward the door. It even exists on phones, as long as you go through the Epic store and not the one on your phone.

6. PowerWash Simulator

You clean a wall with a pressure washer while talking about something else, and failing isn't possible. Around $25, but it only links PCs to each other and PCs to Xbox.

7. Among Us

Nothing to pay on phones, around $5 on PC, and the rules land in a single round. Just the two of you, it doesn't hold, you have to bring friends along.

A world that keeps going without you

Five hours apart, and you almost never share the same evening. Playing out of sync isn't taking turns, it's leaving a trace the other one finds when they wake up.

8. Sky: Children of the Light

It costs nothing, runs from a phone to a console, and puts everyone on the same servers. No combat and no score, you light candles in it, and when you log in alone you leave behind some light and a gift that will wait for their morning.

9. Minecraft, Bedrock edition

A shared world where one of you builds while the other sleeps, in peaceful mode if nobody feels like fighting. Around $7 on phones, and it's the Bedrock edition that links a phone to a console, never the Java edition.

10. Palia

Free, no combat and nothing to fail, a plot of land to farm and the other one's vegetable garden that grew during your night. On PC, Switch, PS5 and Xbox Series, not on phones.

11. Pokémon GO

The most out of sync of them all, free, and nobody ever files it under this heading (yes, the one from the summer of 2016, it's still running). Every day, a gift picked up on your street corner, that they open when they wake up with the name of your town on it.

The time difference stops being what separates your evenings: it becomes the thing that makes the morning surprise.

Nothing to install

The one argument that lands with someone who has neither a console nor patience: no account to create, the link opens in their browser.

12. A jigsaw puzzle to do together

On jigsawtogether.com, you assemble the same puzzle live, and you can load your own photo into it (the airport one, the first apartment one). Free, and the piece stays where the other one left it during your night.

13. skribbl.io

Free, one link sent, a word to get guessed, ten minutes that go by fast. Nobody has ever needed to know how to draw.

14. Gartic Phone

Telephone, but in drawings, where a sentence warps until it turns into anything at all. Free too, but with two people it's short, save it for the nights when their roommate and your brothers are around.

That is often the door you bring someone back through. And there is a version of that door with nothing of the video game left in it: twenty-one evenings already written, two challenges drawn each night on your two phones, and nobody who had to prepare the evening.

A long distance couple challenge, 21 evenings already written

If you both have the same machine

Both of you on PlayStation, or both on PC? Then the crossplay question disappears, and the titles every list puts at the top are open to you. They are often the most beautiful ones (it just had to be checked before, not after).

15. It Takes Two

Two hours in and you're arguing over a nail to hammer, it's planned, it's even written into the game. One of you buys it (around $40) and invites the other with a free Friend's Pass, on the condition you're in the same family: PlayStation with PlayStation, Xbox with Xbox, PC with PC.

16. Stardew Valley

A farm for two, no schedule and no ending, where one of you waters while the other heads down to the mine. Around $15, one copy each, and playing together across the distance only really holds between two computers.

17. Portal 2

Its two-player mode is a whole campaign the solo game doesn't contain, written for two heads that don't see the same thing at the same moment. Around $10, often discounted, between two PCs.

18. Animal Crossing: New Horizons

Inviting yourself onto the other one's island, leaving a gift outside the door and heading off without saying a word. It takes two Switches, two copies (around $60) and Nintendo's online subscription, which makes it the most expensive on the list and the gentlest.

Those four, nobody ever steered you wrong on. They just forgot to tell you on what condition.

If you have to pick one tonight

Eighteen titles, and that is already a filter: a few much-quoted games dropped out because we couldn't confirm they really link two machines.

The ones you keep getting told about

The previous ones only asked for the same machine. These don't: they come back in almost every list for couples living apart when they won't do the job, whatever your setup.

• Spaceteam. The game is excellent, but it needs both your phones on the same wifi, which closes the question before you can ask it.
• Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp. The free version that let you drop by other people's camps no longer exists in that form, and what replaced it doesn't give those visits back.
• GeoGuessr. It's still floating around everywhere as a free game to play together, which it no longer is.
• Google Stadia, Apex Legends Mobile, Battlefield Mobile. Shut down or cancelled. A list that still quotes them hasn't been reread in years (it's the best test for knowing who you're dealing with).

You don't need all eighteen. Start with the one where the other person holds something you don't, the manual, the control screen, half the castle. The right to be bad at it arrives on its own once you're indispensable, and what closed up after ten minutes usually reopens within three evenings.