Easy-to-play games that liven up your drive
A fun road trip or a drive on the way to hang out.
At first you’re excited about the destination, but as the time in the car gets longer, you start to get bored, right?
In this article, we’ll introduce fun games you can enjoy during long drives.
They’re perfect for keeping kids entertained and for getting closer with friends or your partner!
These games are easy and convenient for anyone—from adults to children—so be sure to try them out the next time you’re in the car!
Easy-to-play games that make your drive more exciting (1–10)
Sea turtle soup
Are you familiar with the puzzle called “Umigame no Soup” (Turtle Soup)? This type of puzzle is known as a lateral thinking quiz, where you uncover the truth based on a scenario presented by the quizmaster.
You may ask the quizmaster questions, and they will answer with yes, no, or irrelevant.
Using those answers, you get closer to the core of the mystery.
These quizzes have been compiled into books you can buy, and you can also find several of this type online by searching.
Relax your mind and enjoy the ride.
riddle
If you want a game you can enjoy casually while driving, riddles are a top pick.
In the past, if you couldn’t think of any questions, you probably had to have a book on hand to look them up.
But now it’s great that you can easily check them on YouTube and the like.
In the worst case, you don’t need any preparation at all! It’s fun to make them up yourself, and it’s also fine to pick out your favorites from a bunch of questions.
Cleverly twisted answers double as brain training, and while you’re thinking, time flies—two birds with one stone!
A game to match answers
This is a game recommended for larger groups.
You often see it on TV: given a prompt, if there are four players, each person answers one character in order to form a four-character word they all imagine.
If the four are in sync, it comes together as a perfect single answer; if not, the mismatched answers can be hilariously all over the place.
Whether you get it right or not, it’s sure to make your drive full of laughter.
Give it a try and have fun—if you play long enough, you might start to get in sync.
Country Name Sharing Game
How many country names do you know? In the Country Name Split Game, one person says the beginning of a country name, and the next person quickly completes it in rhythm.
For example, if someone says “Ame,” the next might say “rica” to make “America.” If they say just “A,” you could think of “America,” “Africa,” or “Argentina,” and so on.
The people who have the advantage are those who know lots of obscure country names! If you have a wealth of knowledge about country names, why not spice things up by throwing in tricky prompts to challenge everyone and liven up the game?
31 game
A game for two or more players: the 31 Game.
The rules are simple—within each turn, a player can say up to three consecutive numbers, and whoever says 31 loses.
For example, the first person says “1, 2,” the second person says “3, 4, 5,” the third person says “6,” and so on until someone reaches 31.
It’s simple, but when you try it, it’s surprisingly brainy.
By the way, while it can be played by two or more players, in a one-on-one match the first player has a guaranteed winning strategy.
So it might be better to play with three or more people.
Intro Quiz
These days, everyone can enjoy games together using YouTube.
One of them is this intro quiz.
There are videos that compile only the intros of famous songs, so let’s play a buzzer quiz while playing those.
It’ll probably be more exciting if you choose songs that all members are familiar with.
Alternatively, it could be fun for the quizmaster to play just the opening parts of songs they have on their phone, based on their own taste.
You can find prompts for quizzes anywhere.
Voiced and semi-voiced sound prohibition game
It’s a game that bans voiced and semi-voiced sounds, putting both the speaker’s and listener’s attention to the test! During conversations while driving, anyone who uses voiced sounds like “da, ji, zu, de, do” or semi-voiced sounds like “pa, pi, pu, pe, po” gets a penalty.
It’s also a great rule to add on top of other games.
Since almost no one normally speaks while consciously thinking “this word contains a voiced sound,” this game can be quite challenging! Through the game, you might even become aware of what you usually do unconsciously.
Acrostic using the hiragana on license plates
Arrange an acrostic game into a drive version! Jot down the hiragana from oncoming cars’ license plates and use each as the initial letter to create sentences in order.
In a normal acrostic, you’d take the initials from a set word or phrase like “omotenashi,” but in the driving version, what letters you get depends entirely on the oncoming cars! You might get the same letter repeatedly, or a string of letters that are hard to turn into sentences, resulting in a story that doesn’t come together at all.
Even the suspense of waiting to see which hiragana you’ll get can be part of the fun.
X seconds guessing game
The X-second guessing game is a simple game where you try to stop exactly on a target number of seconds.
Using your smartphone’s stopwatch, close your eyes and stop it when you think 10 seconds have passed.
The winner is the person who stops it exactly at 10 seconds or the closest to it.
You might think, “I can feel what 10 seconds is,” but people often stop way too early without realizing it.
The longer the time, the harder it gets to stop accurately.
If everyone’s pretty accurate at 10 seconds, try increasing the difficulty to 30 seconds or 1 minute!
A quiz to guess the song title from the lyrics
If you know lots of quizzes and games that get family and friends excited during a drive, the car can become a really fun place for recreation.
There’s the game where you play only the intro of a song and guess the title, but how about a game where you read only the lyrics—without the melody—and guess what song it is? You don’t need any props, and it’s not a difficult game, so everyone can enjoy it.
The key to presenting is to read the lyrics clearly.
Without the melody, it’s surprisingly hard to tell what song it is.
If you’re the reader, be careful not to let the melody influence you—just read the lyrics.
