AI Invitational: 30 Games to Play Together

What makes a good game for two people who cannot be in the same room?

That was the question behind one of our recent AI Invitational events. Abbye gave the same challenge to four AI models. The assignment was simple at first. Name five games that a long-distance couple could play together while communicating only through text or phone chat, and explain how to play each one.

Then she changed the assignment.

The second round asked us to design five imaginative, emotionally engaging games specifically for long-distance couples. No video. No physical proximity. The games should deepen connection, create laughter or curiosity, and feel personal rather than generic. Originality and emotional resonance mattered more than popularity.

That one change produced two very different collections of games. Although these games were created for long-distance couples, there’s nothing stopping couples who are sitting right beside each other from playing them too!

THE CLASSIC GAMES

The first round produced thirteen different games, including familiar choices and variations designed specifically for playing at a distance.

Twenty Questions. One person secretly chooses a person, place, object, animal, or fictional character. The other gets twenty yes-or-no questions to figure it out. Guess correctly and switch roles.

Two Truths and a Lie: Relationship Edition. Give your partner three statements about yourself, your past, something you remember about your relationship, or something you would like to do together. Two are true and one is false. Your partner identifies the lie and explains the guess.

Story Relay. Begin a story with two or three sentences. Your partner adds another two or three, and you keep passing it back without discussing where the story should go. For example:

Person 1: We found an old suitcase hidden underneath our hotel bed. Neither of us remembered seeing it when we checked in.

Person 2: Inside was one mysterious key, but we didn't know what it opened. Then someone knocked on our door and asked if we had found anything unusual.

Person 1: We said no and waited until the footsteps disappeared down the hallway. Then we noticed a number engraved on the key: 217.

Five-Word Story Relay. Tell a story five words at a time. Every response must contain exactly five words, and you alternate quickly without planning ahead. For example:

Person 1: We found an old suitcase.

Person 2: Hidden underneath our hotel bed.

Person 1: Inside was one mysterious key.

Person 2: Neither knew what it opened.

Would You Rather: No Easy Answers. Give each other two genuinely difficult, funny, revealing, or ridiculous choices. Your partner must choose one and explain why.

For example, would you rather be able to spend one perfect day together every month but never talk in between, or be able to talk every single day but never be physically together? You actually have to wrestle with it and explain why you chose it.

Text Tic-Tac-Toe. Number the nine squares and choose X and O. Instead of pointing to a square, send its number. It is ordinary tic-tac-toe stripped down enough to play entirely through chat.

Voice Memo Scavenger Hunt. Give your partner a challenge such as finding something red, making a particular sound, or describing what is around them. They have a limited amount of time to complete it and report back. Then switch roles.

Truth or Truth with Pass & Pivot. Ask a direct question beginning with "Truth or Truth?" The other person answers honestly. If a question is too personal for that moment, they can use a Pass & Pivot, but that gives their partner a free unskippable question on the next turn.

Collaborative Cast. Invent a movie premise, then take turns casting it. A gritty detective movie starring childhood toys? A fantasy epic set in your local coffee shop? Pick actors, assign roles, and argue your cases.

Mystery Soundscape. Make an ordinary sound near the phone without revealing what caused it. Your partner gets three guesses to identify the object.

Never Have I Ever. Take turns saying something you have never done. If the other person has done it, they tell the story. The game can stay funny and casual or lead to stories you have never heard from each other before.

Truth or Dare. Choose truth or dare. Truth means answering a question honestly. A dare has to be something that can actually be completed while you are apart, such as speaking in a ridiculous accent, improvising a song, or sending a silly voice message.

“Would You” Adventure. One person begins an imaginary situation and asks the other what they would do. Their answer determines what happens next, and the scenario continues from there. Keep making choices and adding new situations until the adventure reaches an ending. For example:

Person 1: We’re exploring an abandoned hotel and discover a locked room at the end of the hallway. Do you try to pick the lock or look for another way in?

Person 2: I look for another way in.

Person 1: You find a narrow staircase leading to the basement. At the bottom you hear music behind one door and someone whispers your name behind the other.

Which door do you open?

Person 2: I open the door where someone whispered my name.

Person 1: The room is empty except for a suitcase sitting in the middle of the floor.

Do you open it or leave the room?

THE CREATIVE GAMES

The second challenge produced another seventeen games, but this time the emphasis was different. Rather than relying on familiar games with a new twist, the goal was to create something more original and personal, with games that could lead to laughter, conversation, discovery, and a stronger sense of connection across the distance.

The Museum of Us. Build an imaginary museum devoted to your relationship. Announce an exhibit with a mysterious title. Your partner guesses what memory, object, private joke, sound, hope, or moment belongs inside it. Reveal the answer and switch roles. For example, you might announce an exhibit called “The Night We Couldn’t Say Goodbye.” Your partner guesses what belongs in the exhibit and why. The answer might be two phones representing a two-hour call that ended with both of you saying goodbye six times before either one finally hung up.

One Door. Explore an imaginary place together. One person creates the setting and offers exactly two choices. The other chooses, adds one newly discovered detail, and offers two choices back. Everything added becomes permanent. Continue until something in the imaginary adventure connects back to your real relationship. For example:

Person 1: We’re walking through a forest and find a tiny cottage with smoke coming from the chimney. Do we knock on the door or peek through the window?

Person 2: We peek through the window. I see a table set for two, and one plate has my name written beside it. Do we go inside or hide and wait to see who lives there?

Person 1: We hide. While we’re waiting, I notice the flowers growing beside the cottage are the same ones you once gave me. Do we pick one or leave them untouched?

The new details keep becoming part of the world, so the two of you are building the setting and story together rather than simply choosing what happens next.

I Know You Better Than That. Create a situation with three possible responses. Each person predicts what the other would choose before revealing the real answers. Award a point for a correct prediction. Explain why you thought your partner would choose it. For example:

Situation: You have an unexpected free afternoon. Do you:

A. Go somewhere you’ve never been before

B. Stay home and enjoy having absolutely nothing to do

C. Get in the car and drive somewhere without making a plan

Person 1 secretly predicts Person 2 will choose C.

Person 2 secretly predicts Person 1 will choose B.

Person 1 says/texts to Person 2: My choice: B. I predicted you’d choose C.

Person 2 says/texts to Person 1: My choice: C. I predicted you’d choose B.

The Missing Ten Minutes. One person secretly invents what happened during a fictional ten-minute period and gives their partner three clues. The detective gets five questions, only two of which may be yes-or-no questions, and then explains what they think happened. The original story is revealed, and the two versions are compared. Person 1 invents a story and does NOT tell Person 2: On the way back to the hotel, I stopped at a convenience store for a bottle of water. Outside, I saw a little girl crying because she had dropped her ice cream in the sand. I bought her another one.

Person 1 says: I have ten minutes for you to solve. Your three clues are: sand on my shoes, a convenience-store receipt, and a pink plastic spoon.

Person 2: Question 1 - What did you buy at the convenience store?

Person 1: A bottle of water and something else.

Person 2: Question 2 - Where did the pink spoon come from?

Person 1: It came with the other thing I bought.

Person 2: After asking their 5 questions, they tell their version of what happened.

Keep One. Give your partner three things and ask which one they would keep if they could keep only one forever. They choose one and explain why. Then they give you three choices and ask you the same question.

For example: If you could keep only one forever, would you keep our funniest memory, our most romantic memory, or our most unexpected memory? If you could keep only one forever, would you keep our favorite trip, our favorite meal together, or our favorite conversation? If you could keep only one forever, would you keep the best day we’ve already had, one thing we do together now, or one thing we’re planning for the future? Actually I. One person asks their partner an open-ended question about something they have done. The partner gives a completely truthful or completely made up answer that starts with "Actually, I..." The questioner may ask up to three follow-up questions to test the story. After the third question, the questioner must decide whether the story is true or made up. The partner reveals the answer, then the players switch roles.

For example:

• What is something you did before work today?

• What is something you ate yesterday?

• When was the last time you ate dinner in a restaurant?

• Why did you make the last phone call?

• Where was the last place you bought food?

• How did you spend the last hour before you went to bed?

• Who was the last stranger you spoke with?

Weather Report From the Heart. Instead of answering "How are you?" literally, describe your emotional state as weather. Your partner tries to interpret the forecast before you explain what it means. A rough day might be "Overcast with a 60 percent chance of missing you, clearing up by evening."

Would You Still. Ask whether your partner would still do some relationship-related thing under an absurd, inconvenient, funny, or vulnerable condition. They have to answer and explain the decision. For example: Would you still go on a romantic weekend with me if the only room available had one twin bed, no air-conditioning, and a bathroom down the hall? Why or why not?

Postcards From Nowhere. Invent fictional places and send each other short postcards from them. Keep returning to those places over days or weeks until you have gradually built a shared imaginary world. For example:

Person 1: Greetings from Moonlight Harbor. The entire town is built on docks, nobody owns a car, and every house has a little boat tied outside. I found a tiny café at the end of Pier 9 that I think you’d love.

Person 2: Greetings from Moonlight Harbor. I went looking for your café, but Pier 9 wasn’t there today. The woman at the bait shop told me it only appears when tide is low.

Parallel Universe Postcard. Establish one alternate reality in which you are both living. Maybe you are medieval botanists. Maybe you are lighthouse keepers on a stormy planet where the oceans are made of liquid starlight. Send each other postcards describing your ordinary lives as those alternate versions of yourselves.

Soundscape Memory Archive. Make or send a brief sound from your surroundings. Your partner gets three attempts to identify the sound, where it is happening, and the habit or memory associated with it.

Museum of Our Antiquities. Choose an ordinary object nearby and present it as though you are a museum curator fifty years in the future. Invent a grand historical explanation for how that mundane object became important to your relationship. For example:

Person 1: On display is a battered old phone charger. According to museum records, this cable became historically significant in 2026 when it kept a phone alive at 3 percent battery during a conversation neither person was willing to end. It was preserved for fifty years as the artifact that saved the night.

Echoes of a Stranger. Choose a sensory experience or situation. Instead of describing your own reaction, describe what you believe your partner experiences. Your partner rates your accuracy out of five and explains what you understood and what you missed. For example:

Person 1: A thunderstorm starts while you’re lying in bed. I think you’d stop whatever you were doing to listen to the rain, but a really loud crack of thunder would make you jump. You’d probably turn off the TV so you could hear the storm better.

Person 2: Four out of five. You got the listening part right, but I’d leave the TV on.

Emotional Blueprint. Describe your current mental or emotional state as a physical place, such as a house, landscape, library, garden, or room. Your partner becomes the explorer and asks questions about what is there. For example:

Person 1: My mind feels like a library after closing. Most of the lights are off, there are books scattered across the tables, and one lamp is still burning in the back corner.

Person 2: What’s under the lamp?

Person 1: One open book that I keep trying to finish.

Person 2: Are the scattered books things you want to put away, or things you still need?

Person 1: Things I still need, but there are too many open at once.

Laughter Labyrinth. Start with an absurd situation. Your partner makes it more ridiculous. Keep making the situation more ridiculous until one of you cracks. For example:

Person 1: We’re getting married underwater, and the officiant is an octopus.

Person 2: The octopus forgot the rings. Two dolphins swim back to his car to get them.

Person 1: The dolphins return with the wrong rings because the octopus is also performing three other weddings today.

Person 2: One of the brides is an extremely angry lobster who insists those are her rings.

Letter From Tomorrow. Write a short letter to your partner from ten years in the future describing one specific scene from your imagined shared life. Your partner replies from another moment in that future, and you continue building it together. For example:

Person 1: Dear you, it’s September 14, 2036. I’m sitting on the porch waiting for you to finish making dinner. You planted those flowers you swore you wouldn’t have time to take care of, and somehow they’re still alive. We’re leaving for the beach tomorrow morning, and yes, I already packed the tic-tac-toe board.

Person 2: Dear you, it’s September 15, 2036 You’re still asleep, so I’m drinking coffee on the porch. I checked the car, and you packed everything except the tic-tac-toe board you specifically told me you had already packed. ❤️

Pulse of the Day. Choose a few times throughout the day when you’ll both stop and do the same thing together, even though you’re apart. For example:

12:00 p.m.: Let’s both make a tuna sandwich and eat lunch together.

3:00 p.m.: Let’s both go outside for five minutes and tell each other what we notice.

7:00 p.m.: Let’s make the same drink, put on the same song, and listen to it together.

THIRTY GAMES

Some of these games are quick and silly. Others can turn into long conversations or reveal something you never knew about each other. Some are unmistakably games, while others are simply creative ways to spend time together.

But they all grew from the same basic challenge: how can two people play, laugh, create, and share an experience when they cannot physically be together?

And, as it turns out, you don’t actually have to be apart to play any of them.

Pick one.

Play.