While there is an app for everything, you don't need to download any apps to play games with your friends. Text-based games can provide hours of fun, and all you need is SMS text messaging or a chat app such as WhatsApp or iMessage.
While there are plenty of free mobile games without ads or in-app purchases, you may want to play something even simpler. The uncomplicated games listed below can be played over text or chat without the need to download and install yet another app on your phone.
If you play these in a messaging app, you're also not limited to just two participants. Suggest playing one of these in a group chat with family or friends, and you suddenly have a multiplayer option open to you.
As a writer, I tell stories for fun. But even non-writers who aren't used to creating worlds, characters, and plots by themselves could gain enjoyment from this simple-yet-effective game.
With Story Builder, one of you begins the story by messaging an opening sentence to the other person. The other person then messages the second sentence in the story back to the first person. Slowly but surely, the two of you build a story over the course of several texts or a messaging thread.
Variations of this game include sentences containing a certain number of words or characters, or sentences with exactly 160 characters in them (which, as quaint as it sounds these days, is how many characters a single SMS text message can handle).
This is the classic 20 Questions that originated in the US and spawned various radio and television shows. The concept of this game is simple, and yet it requires a degree of intelligence to succeed.
One of you thinks of an object or a person, while the other fires questions at them via text or messages. Your "Yes/No" responses help the guesser narrow down the possibilities until they can make an educated guess as to exactly what it is you were thinking of.
Variations include limiting the object being thought of to a particular genre. Or, you can increase/decrease the number of questions the guesser can ask. Feel free to experiment, and take the game in new and interesting ways.
This is the classic I Spy, a game that has been a favorite of families for generations. Surely we have all whiled away a long car journey as a child doing this. And the version played via text or a chat app is just as much fun.
Begin by telling your opponent where you are to at least give them a fighting chance of succeeding. Then look around your environment until your eye fixes on something in particular. Your opponent then has to guess what thing you have spied, with only the first letter of the object to guess from.
Variations of I Spy include giving clues after each negative response to a wrong guess or limiting the number of guesses allowed.
Assuming you're not exclusively interested in instrumental music, you should know certain lines from certain songs. Whether because of an emotional attachment or simply because they sound good together, most people have been affected by song lyrics in some way.
The Song Lyrics game plays on that by having one person quote lines from a song to the other via text or in a messaging thread. The other person then has to guess the song the lyrics are from. It helps if this is played with someone you're close to or with whom you share similar music tastes. Because if you choose a metal song, your classical music-loving mother is unlikely to ever guess correctly.
Variations include quoting classic lines from movies or plots from games instead of lyrics from songs. Failure to guess correctly could mean having to phone up and sing the chorus of the song to your opponent. A fate all but the biggest reality TV wannabe would surely want to avoid.
Abbreviations are everywhere, as you can see from our list of internet acronyms you need to know. It's even possible to abbreviate your entire life by describing what you are up to with just the first letters of each word in that description.
To play Abbreviations, one of you abbreviates the activity you're currently engaged in. For example: "In a coffee shop in town" becomes "IACSIT", and the other person sets about trying to un-abbreviate your short sentence back to its original form. Be prepared for some rude replies and some long message threads.
Variations include giving more than just the first letter of each word, and abbreviating something other than your current activity. Such as what you truly think of the person you are playing against. Whatever variant you play, the key is to steer the guesser in the right direction.
We all make lists of some kind. They detail everything from our chores for the day to our overall aims in life; from what groceries we need to the gadgets we want to buy in the future. When turned into a game, making lists can be a lot of fun; especially in a message thread.
List Builder is a competitive game in which each player takes a turn to name something belonging to a particular genre. This could include capital cities, actors from a certain series of movies, or anything else your mind can conjure up. The winner is the last person to successfully add an item to the list. Once someone taps out because they can't think of anything, the game ends.
Variations include going through the alphabet one letter at a time, or requiring the next answer to start with the same letter the last answer ended with.
The reason we all carry smartphones with us everywhere we go is that we're not always at home. This makes this game perfect for playing on your mobile device.
With Where Am I?, each player takes it, in turn, to describe one feature of their surroundings, while the other tries to guess where they are. You can make this game as easy or as hard as you like by varying the level of detail you give to your opponent.
Variations of the game include limiting your surroundings to a house, with the room you're in being the correct answer, or asking which shop in town you are in. You could also change it to Who Am I With? by describing the person or people who are there with you instead.
You may know of Kiss, Marry, Kill as something else. The "Kiss," for instance, may be a word implying something more than just a peck on the cheek. However, the basic concept is the same, and it is fun as long as no offense is taken by the answers given.
One person names three people, be they celebrities or individuals you both know, and asks, "Kiss, Marry, Kill?" The other person then has to determine which of the three they would kiss, which they would marry, and which they would kill. All in jest, you understand. None of the three are actually going to happen.
Variations include dropping certain names into the mix you know will upset your friend. Or changing the question entirely. As long as there are three choices and three names in the mix, the sky's the limit with this one.
If you're prone to daydreaming (which, let's face it, we all are), you should be familiar with the concept of What If? Once one of these scenarios pops into your brain, you can spend several minutes working out which option you would choose in that scenario. This is perfect fodder for a texting game.
One of you messages the other a What If? scenario and asks what they would do in that situation. There are no correct or incorrect answers here. It's not only fun to see the responses given, it can also give you an insight into your friend or family member's outlook on life.
Variations include leaving the question open-ended with any answer possible, or giving multiple-choice answers and forcing the other person to choose from one of those.
Quizzes of any kind can be fun, even if they're supposedly testing your IQ level. And they don't have to be long, drawn-out affairs with a quiz master asking difficult questions and enjoying watching you struggle to find the answers.
In the form of a texting game you can play on a chat app, Simple Quiz requires one of you to message the other a general knowledge question. The other person then has to try to give the correct answer, or, if they don't know, the funniest joke answer imaginable.
Variations include switching this to a test of web browsing skills as they try to find the answer online in the shortest time possible.
These games range from the simple to the more complex. But they're all supremely playable between any two (or more) people with mobile phones to hand. And remember that while most people will use a messaging app such as Messenger or Telegram, they're even playable using old-school SMS text messages.
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