Phone things for couples in a long distance relationship?

November 20, 2022 11:27 AM

The title says it all and we both have iPhones. What sort of games, Apps or whatever can a couple use to spend time together while they're physically apart?

Looked into Amazon Watch Parties, which will work for some things, but if we have to buy or rent something to watch, then we both have to buy or rent it to do a watch party. Which is fine for a movie, but not for entire seasons of tv shows. Is there some some service or app that will allow us to a single buy in those situations?

Games? Card games via app that can do 2-4 players?

What else is possible? We Facetime every day if that helps.

posted by Brandon Blatcher to Computers & Internet (11 answers total)

We enjoyed doing NYT Sunday crosswords over the phone. They won't sync between phones, so you have to communicate a lot, which is part of the fun.

We had monthly movie nights: We'd each get pizza and beer and then watch the same movie together while videochatting. We have long since moved in together, but we still continue the tradition, and we remember our long-distance movie nights fondly.

We got cheap two-player Steam games like Ibb and Obb to play together remotely. That was a lot of fun.
posted by aquamvidam at 12:04 PM on November 20, 2022 [1 favorite]

Catan Universe is so fun for this but is having challenges lately. If it resolves over the next few weeks, I’d try that.
posted by studioaudience at 12:08 PM on November 20, 2022

I like apps that have widgets for your home screen for you to send pictures to each other that display on your home screen. It's nice! We do a new selfie every day we are apart :)

We use one called livein but I bet there's another one that's a little less annoying to use.
posted by bbqturtle at 12:13 PM on November 20, 2022

If you like Phase 10 (it's a card game somewhat like rummy), you can play together using the unofficial version, "Phase Card Game." You can play with friends or solo games. I believe it's only 'together', not asynchronous.

I haven't tried it, but Teleparty might be helpful for watching stuff together. But yet, I believe you'd each have to have to rent the movie.
posted by hydra77 at 12:36 PM on November 20, 2022

Game Pigeon lets you play turn-based games over iMessage. The nice part is that you play your turn when you want, it doesn't have to be in real time.
posted by JoeZydeco at 12:44 PM on November 20, 2022 [2 favorites]

WaPo crosswords do allow you to work simultaneously on the same puzzle, which can be fun.
posted by Night_owl at 1:32 PM on November 20, 2022 [2 favorites]

We carried on our in-person scrabble tradition with Wordfeud - much more usable and less annoying than the alternatives (I’m looking at you, Words with Friends…).
posted by exutima at 1:36 PM on November 20, 2022

My wife and I used to read to each other over Skype when we were long-distance for a couple months at a time while she was doing fieldwork.
posted by number9dream at 5:55 AM on November 21, 2022

My boyfriend and I played Bloons TD 6 in co op mode while on the phone. There’s an Apple Arcade version, too. It’s a cute tower defense game that has lots to unlock and explore and only gets as difficult as you want it to be.
posted by itesser at 7:24 AM on November 21, 2022

I'm on Android, so I haven't tried this particular app, but I've used similar ones to allow for shared streaming of video. There are likely other apps/solutions out there for iPhones, so you might find something better.

https://apps.apple.com/us/app/rave-watch-party-together/id929775122
posted by 1367 at 2:58 PM on November 21, 2022

We have a whole group of relatives who send their scores for both the Wordle and Factle puzzles to a group SMS daily. And there are many other Wordle-likes out there. These are more asynchronous and I'm sure you're looking for synchronous, but I mention it because we've kept it up for months, even though some in the group are tech-averse. That's some staying power. Might be worth finding a way to do them while on the phone.
posted by commander_fancypants at 9:33 PM on November 21, 2022