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Get your game face on!
By Deauna Roane — Written on Apr 23, 2022
Texting games are a great way to interact with friends or get to know your partner better. These games range from fun and amusing for friends to hot and steamy for those who want to spice things up in their relationship.
If you've ever been in a group chat you've definitely been privy to a few of these games which are great for that group chat ice breaker. To play all you need is your brain and your phone. It's that easy and can create amazing memories!
So buckle up for this list of the top 30 great texting games to play when you're bored.
30 Fun Texting Games To Play Over Text
1. 20 Questions
The object of the game is to guess what one person is thinking; it can be a place, object, or person. To find out what it is the people or person guessing gets to ask 20 "Yes or No" questions. The goal is to guess the object within 20 questions or less.
2. Kiss, Marry, Kill
This one is a bit self-explanatory. So you get three people to choose from and they can range from mutual friends, exes, or celebrities. Then you need to pick which you kiss, which you would marry, and which you would kill.
3. Never Have I Ever
This game is usually played with alcohol in person, but since you are playing over text another form of punishment can be used like posting to social media or having a point system going. You can get creative with it. The game starts with an action being said with "Never have I ever..." (skipped school, kissed a boy, skinny-dipped, etc.) Then if you have done this deed, you do the set punishment.
4. Would You Rather?
This game is also known as "either-or" and "this or that." The concept is that you have to pick from two difficult choices. For example, "Would you rather be stuck in a cage with a lion or be stranded in the middle of the ocean?"
5. Trivia
Trivia is great because it can be played anywhere, including over text messaging. You and your friends will pick a category you are familiar with like movies, history, celebrities, etc. Then you will ask each other trivia questions on that category. For each right answer, you score a point and the first one to 10 points wins.
6. Name Game
To play the game the group picks a topic. It can be anything like animals, celebrities, books, etc. The first player will say a word that goes in the category chosen. The second player has to name a word in the same category that starts with the last letter of the first player's word. It continues until someone can't come up with a word that fits.
7. Guess The Riddle
This game is for those who love brain teasers. The rules are to ask a riddle and set a number of guesses they have to solve it.
8. Word Unscramble
This game is super close to scrabble. So one person sends a word and then the other player/players have to make up other words using the letters from the initial one. The person who comes up with the most words wins.
9. Questions Only
This is a great way to waste time on a road trip or a boring afternoon. The name of the game is Only Questions and guess what? You can only use questions to play. The participants can only ask each other questions. When asked a question you must answer but with another question. You cannot repeat another question that's been asked and if someone takes too long to respond, they are out.
10. Finish My Sentence
One player starts a sentence and the next one must finish it. These sentences can range. You can make it dirty, funny, intelligent, whatever you want it to be. Take a page out of Frozen: "We finish each other's....Sandwiches?"
11. Lightning Fast
This game is a wonderful way to really get into someone's psyche. One player sends a word and teh next player has to respond with the first thing they think of when reading it.
12. The Laughing Game
This game gets its name from the reaction its players have. In this game, you must choose your answers to every question from a list of preselected answers. These answers can be literally anything like cat, shoes, George Washington, and scuba lessons. Players will ask each other questions and you will answer with one from the list.
13. Fantasy Team
This game is for the imaginative ones. So have you ever wondered who'd you want on your team during the end of the world? In a rock band with you? In an operating room? On treasure hunt? This game gives you the chance to decide. Your group decides on the concept of the team you are building, then you will take turns reciting who is on your team until the set number of members is reached. The person with the strongest team wins. No repeats!
14. Tell the Truth
This is sort of like truth or dare but without the dare part. before you begin you must set a punishment. This can be anything from posting an embarrassing photo to sliding into a celebrity's DMs. So you will ask a player a personal question and if they refuse to answer, then they must do the punishment.
15. Most Likely To
This game is best played in big group chats. One player will ask a most likely too question like "Most likely to date a man in the military". Then, each of the rest of the players will decide who fits that question.
16. Text Strip Trivia
This game is played just like trivia, but with each wrong answer an article of clothing comes off. This is best played over video chat platforms like Snapchat. It's also a great way for people in long-distance relationships to have some spice in their life.
17. Make It Rhyme
For this game, one player will send a word or phrase and then the next players will have to send back random words or phrases that rhyme. This continues until someone cannot come up with a rhyming response.
18. Take a Trip
This game is started by writing out a sentence and filling in the blanks with something that starts with the letter of the alphabet you are on. It starts out with A and you go all the way through Z. The sentence is " “I am going to ____ and I am taking ____.” SO you would fill in the blanks with something that starts with the letter A, B, C, etc. This is a great game to play on a road trip.
19. Where's Your Location?
This game is similar to iSpy but instead of describing an object, your hints will describe a location. You will pick out things that make your location unique. So if you are in a living room, you may say a coffee table, a lamp, and a TV. Then the other players have to guess where you are.
20. Name that Tune
This game is simple. You will text a song lyric to your friends and whoever guesses the song correctly first wins. If no one gets the song by your first lyric you'll keep sending them song lyrics until they do. If you reach the end of the song and no one has guessed you win.
21. Abbreviations
For this game, you will have to pick a category first like flowers, board games, etc. Then one person will send an abbreviation for something in that category and the rest of the players have to guess what the abbreviation means. The person who guesses the most correctly wins!
22. Friendship Tag
This is a good way to figure out how well your partner or friends know you. In this game, you will ask them questions about yourself or your relationship.
23. Gun to Your Head
This is a great way to start a conversation. The point is to ask each other uncomfortable questions with the saying "Gun to your head..." For example: "Gun to your head who what celebrity would you sleep with?"
24. Unpopular Opinions
In this texting game, you and your friends will go around voicing your unpopular opinions. The topics can range from celebrities to restaurants to grocery stores.
25. Ghost
This texting game's goal is to add letters to a word without completing it. Rules can be set like the category the words come from or the length a word must be. Then each player adds a letter until the word is complete. The person who completes the word gets a letter from GHOST. So the first time "G", the second "H", etc. The first player to receive all letters to spell out the word GHOST loses. This is great to play with a group of friends.
26. Guess the Movie
This game can be played in 2 ways.
The first way is to share a gif or photo from the movie you want to present. Then the other players must guess the title of the movie the image or gif is from
The second what to play is by sending a line from the movie and then they have to guess the movie it came from. The first person to get 20 correct answers wins!
27. Hangman
Though you don't visually see the man hanging you can still play this classic game over text. Start by sending your friend a series of underscores to represent each letter in your word. Your friend should respond with a letter they think is in it and you will either send back the underscores with the correct letter filled in or the number of wrong answers they have left. In a typical game of Hangman, you get 6 wrong answers before game over.
28. Story Time
This is a great game for writers to play over the phone. So in this game, you will be creating a story... one sentence at a time. One player will start by sending a sentence. Then the next will continue the story with another sentence. The game continues until the players wish to stop or the story comes to a logical stopping point. The game is also known as "Story Builder".
29. WWYD?
This is a great way to see what your friends or partner would do in different scenarios. Come up with a hypothetical situation and then see how your friend would escape or adapt to it.
30. Emoji Translation
If everyone has access to an emoji keyboard this game is perfect to play. It's pretty simple. You will send an emoji or string of emojis and the other player/players have to interpret what they mean. You can do it with movies, songs, books, or any concept you can think of.
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Deauna Nunes is an associate editor who covers pop culture, lifestyle, love and relationship topics for YourTango. She's been published by Emerson College's literary magazine Generic. Follow her on Twitter and on Instagram.