Games to play in a long distance relationship

Every long distance couple hits the same wall. You call, you ask how the day went, you hear about the commute and the meeting that ran long, and then there is a pause. Not an awkward one exactly. Just a pause where neither of you has anything left to report.

The problem is not that you have run out of things to say. It is that reporting is not the same as spending time together. When you live in the same city you do things side by side and the talking happens around the doing. Over distance the talking is all there is, and talking alone gets thin.

A game fixes this by giving you something to do. Not a distraction from the conversation, but a reason for one.

What makes a game work over distance

Most games do not survive the jump to a video call. The ones that do share three things.

• Both of you answer. If one person runs the game and the other just responds, it turns into a quiz and the energy drains fast.
• Answers land at the same time. Waiting for someone to finish typing kills the rhythm. You want both answers to appear together so there is a moment of reveal.
• It gives you something to argue about. The point is not the score. The point is the twenty seconds after the answers show up, when one of you says *what do you mean you picked that*.

That last one is the whole thing, really. A good game over distance is a machine for producing small disagreements you enjoy having.

Start with the one built for two people

First Date is the most direct fit. You both get the same question on your own phones, you both pick your own answer, and at the end you get a match percentage. Not a winner. A number that says how alike you two actually think.

The questions are not the standard icebreaker fare. They go at how you handle money, jealousy, silence, other people's opinions. The kind of thing that takes four dates to reach in person and takes eight questions here.

When you want to find out how alike you think

Empathy is the one to reach for when the call has gone quiet. You both get the same prompt, you both write the first thing that comes to mind, and then you see whether you wrote the same thing.

It sounds slight. It is not. Watching someone write the exact word you were thinking does something that no amount of how was your day can do.

When you want the argument

OK or Not OK gives you a situation and asks where you draw the line. Is it OK to look through your partner's phone if you know the passcode? To stay friends with an ex? To go on holiday without them?

Nobody wins. That is the design. You find out where your lines are, and you find out that they are not in the same place, and then you spend the next half hour on that.

A rhythm that holds up

Couples who keep this going tend to land on something like a weekly slot rather than playing whenever. A fixed evening works better than good intentions.

• Pick one evening and keep it. Two games is plenty, twenty minutes total.
• Stay on the call while you play. The game is the excuse, not the event.
• Send the result afterwards. Half the fun arrives the next day when one of you brings it up again.

Which one when

None of this replaces being in the same room. It is not supposed to. It replaces the pause.