15 Long Distance Relationship Games to Play Tonight

Three minutes into the call you've run out of updates. You both ate a thing. Work was work. The dog is fine. Now you're looking at each other through 1080p and silently hoping the other person has something interesting to say.

This is where long distance relationship games save the night. Not because games are a substitute for connection, but because a shared activity at the center of a call removes the pressure to perform conversation for two hours. You play, you laugh at how bad you both are, you actually relax. The conversation that happens around the game is better than the conversation that was supposed to be the whole thing.

The list below has 15 games sorted by what kind of night you want. Five quick card and question games for when you've only got 15 minutes. Four real co-op video games for when you both have a Saturday evening. Three casual web and phone games that work on any device. Three async games for couples whose time zones don't overlap. Pick one or three and go.

How to pick the right long distance relationship game

Most lists of long distance relationship games are sorted by what the writer happened to play recently. That's why so many of them recommend the same five $40 video games and leave you stuck if neither of you owns a gaming PC. Four things actually matter when you pick.

Time you both have. A card game takes 15 minutes. It Takes Two takes 14 hours across multiple nights. Match the game to the evening, not the other way around.

Hardware match. If one of you has a PlayStation 5 and the other has a six-year-old MacBook, you can't play Split Fiction together. Cross-platform games or browser games are the equalizer. Always check whether the game supports a "friend pass" so only one person needs to buy it.

Skill gap. When one partner plays games and the other doesn't, a sweaty competitive shooter ends the night badly. Coop puzzle games, conversation games, and slow simulators handle skill gaps better than anything competitive.

Cost. Plenty of long distance relationship games are free. Skribbl.io, Chess.com, Words With Friends, and most card-deck question games cost zero. Don't spend $80 if you don't need to.

Run the game through those four filters and most options disqualify themselves. The 15 below all pass at least three.

5 quick card and question games (under 10 min to start)

These are the games for "I've got an hour, my partner just got home tired, neither of us wants a project." All free or cheap, all playable on a phone or laptop, all start within minutes.

1. We're Not Really Strangers (Couples Edition). Three levels of prompts that go from light to genuinely vulnerable. You can buy the physical deck and share photos of your cards, or use one of the free online versions. Best played when you actually want to talk about something real.
2. The 36 Questions That Lead to Love. The famous study deck, now everywhere online. Read them one at a time, both answer, no judgment. The last few questions are where the magic happens.
3. 21 Questions. Classic for a reason. Pick a theme (childhood, exes, future, deep), take turns, no skipping. Pair it with a drink if you want it to get loose.
4. Two Truths and a Lie. Sounds basic. Becomes incredible at 11pm when you're both tired and the lies get weirder. Bonus points for inventing a backstory.
5. Couple Game: Love Quiz. A free mobile app where you each answer questions about your partner and compare results. The disagreements are the funny part. Quick to install, perfect filler when one of you is killing 20 minutes before bed.

If you like the conversation-game format, the cards from our virtual icebreaker games list work surprisingly well for couples too.

4 co-op video games worth a real evening

These are the games people remember years later. Each one takes a full evening at minimum. Each one demands actual teamwork. All four show up regularly in r/LongDistance recommendation threads, especially It Takes Two, which has been the single most-recommended pick there for years.

1. It Takes Two (Steam, PS5, Xbox, Switch). The reference standard. Two players, every level requires both, only one needs to buy the game thanks to the Friend Pass. Won Game of the Year in 2021 and still holds up. Plan three to four sessions to finish it.
2. Split Fiction (Steam, PS5, Xbox). The 2025 follow-up from the same studio. Two writers stuck in each other's genres. Also has Friend Pass. If you've already played It Takes Two, this is the obvious next pick.
3. We Were Here Forever (Steam, PS5, Xbox). A cooperative escape-room series where you're in separate rooms and have to describe puzzles to each other over voice. Sounds simple, breaks brains. Free intro game (We Were Here) lets you test the format before buying.
4. Stardew Valley (Steam, PS, Xbox, Switch). The cozy farming game. Run a farm together, build the world, get distracted talking. Slow, ambient, perfect for "let's play but also we're just hanging out." Multiplayer is most reliable on PC and console; the mobile version's multiplayer is experimental and the App Store / Apple Arcade builds don't support it. Both players need to own a copy, but it's under $15.

3 casual web and phone games for any night

The video games are great but they're a commitment. Sometimes you want something you can start in 30 seconds, play for 20 minutes, and stop. These three are that.

1. Jackbox Party Pack (any device). One person buys it on Steam, streams the screen, and both of you use phones as controllers. Quiplash, Drawful, and Trivia Murder Party are the couple-friendly favorites. A single Pack runs $25 and has 5 games.
2. Skribbl.io (free, browser). Pictionary in a browser. No signup, no install, just a room link. You can both join from a phone. Six rounds takes 15 minutes and somebody will draw something cursed.
3. StayClose / Couple Dice Game (free, mobile). A mobile-first couples game built specifically for long-distance pairs. Daily prompts, dice rolls for activities, gentle game-ified relationship maintenance. Less intense than a video game, more structured than a question deck.

For more party-style game options that scale beyond couples, our virtual game night guide covers the wider menu.

3 async long distance relationship games for brutal time zones

When you're 9 hours apart, "let's play tonight" doesn't mean what it used to. These three games don't need you both online at once. Each player takes a turn whenever they're around, the game waits.

1. Words With Friends. The OG async game. Scrabble by mail, basically. Each move can take seconds or a day. Couples in opposite hemispheres have run single games for weeks. Free.
2. Chess.com correspondence chess. Same idea, with chess. The site sets a per-move time limit (one day, three days, whatever). You play your turn when you wake up, they play theirs when you're asleep. Free, and you can actually get better at chess together.
3. Word Race / async daily puzzle exchanges. Both of you do Wordle, Connections, and the NYT mini crossword at your own time and message scores when you're both up. Sounds dumb. Becomes a ritual. Plenty of couples cite "we both still do the daily puzzles" as a relationship anchor.

If you want games scheduled around live calls instead of async, our piece on long distance date night ideas has 30 more options including non-game dates.

Where to actually play together: rooms vs scheduled calls

Mei and Jonas tried co-op video games for the first year of their long distance relationship. Mei lived in Seoul, Jonas in Hamburg. The scheduling killed them. By the time both of them were online and not exhausted, they had 90 minutes to load the game, drop into voice, play, and say goodbye. Most weeks at least one session got canceled.

What changed it: they opened a persistent flat.social room and left the link in their notes app. Now when Jonas wants to play Stardew Valley in the morning before work, he walks his avatar into the room. The room's empty, but he leaves a note saying "going to feed the chickens, join if you can." Mei walks in eight hours later, sees the note, sometimes joins, sometimes just leaves one back. Game sessions still happen, but the room exists in between. The relationship lives in the room. The games live in the relationship.

The point isn't that you need flat.social specifically. The point is that the scheduled-call format is what makes long distance gaming feel like a chore. A persistent room, a shared Discord channel left open, any setup that doesn't require a fresh "are you free" message every time, beats a calendar invite every week of the year.

Pick a game from the list above. Pick a room you can both walk into. The combination is what makes a long distance relationship game feel like actually playing together instead of two people playing alone on a call.

Pick three games and stack them by length

If you read this far, the move is to pick one game from each category and stack them. A 15-minute card game for tired Tuesday nights. A 90-minute Jackbox or Skribbl session for normal weeknights. A 3-hour co-op video game for the weekend. An async puzzle exchange for the days you don't talk in real time.

Stacking matters more than any single pick. The couples who say "we play games together" don't mean one game. They mean a small repertoire that fits every kind of night, including the nights when one of you is exhausted and the other is wide awake.

The best long distance relationship games are the ones you actually play, not the ones with the highest Metacritic score. Open Steam, install one cheap thing, install one free thing on your phone, screenshot the question decks. Then open a flat.social room and drop the link. Tomorrow night, drop into the room and play whichever one fits. The setup takes 20 minutes. The relationship benefits last years.