Road trips are becoming increasingly popular with American travelers, with 46 percent now hitting the open road for their vacation.
With 3,000 miles coast-to-coast and plenty of unique regions to explore, road trips offer endless possibilities for adventure without the hassle of airport security and finding pet-sitters.
Although, while you might set off with excitement, hours in a cramped car can soon get boring.
Luckily, games to play on car rides have come a long way since all we had was ‘I Spy’ to pass the time. Keep reading to discover the best game apps made for long road trips!
The Best Road Trip Game Apps
For anyone who remembers pre-smartphone life, it can still seem incredible how the answer to almost anything we want to know is right there in our pocket.
But your phone isn’t just for checking USPS postal rates, weather forecasts, and train times. It’s for having fun with too, as you’ll find out if you download these apps for long car rides:
1. Plates Free Family Travel Game
If there’s one thing you’ll see plenty of on a long car journey, it’s license plates. Which is why this game is perfect for your next family road trip.
The game includes all the plates you’ll see from the US, Canada, and Mexico and has one simple aim – to find plates from as many regions and states as possible. The winner is whoever has the highest score by the end of the trip.
A big advantage of this game is that each player’s phone tracks their score, so you don’t need a network connection. This means there’s no danger of using up all your data before you arrive.
2. Psych!
Similar to the bluffing game ‘Fibbage’, the idea behind ‘Psych!’ is to answer trivia questions, but with an added twist. Among the multiple-choice answers, you’ll find incorrect (and often ridiculous) suggestions provided by other players, as well as the actual right answer.
If your fake answer is convincing enough, you get a point if the guesser chooses it. Which, as you can imagine, allows for plenty of jokes and laughs in the car, ensuring that even the most tedious of car journeys fly by.
3. Don’t Starve
Long car rides can be really dull if everyone else is asleep or doing their own thing. But with ‘Don’t Starve’ loaded up on your phone, you’ll have plenty to keep you occupied during a dull road trip.
The idea of this wilderness survival game is to stay alive. While that might sound straight-forward, this game doesn’t come with a tutorial. As such, you have to figure out how to play it as you go along.
And, to make things even more difficult, if you die, the next world your character finds themselves in is often different, with new enemies and methods to learn.
It is a paid game and at $4.99, it’s a little more expensive than most, but it’s worth every cent and works well even without an internet connection.
4. Heads Up
Based on the popular Post-it Note party game, ‘Heads Up’ requires one person to hold their phone up to their forehead while the rest of the car try to act out or describe the word on the screen.
Once they get the answer right, the player tilts the phone to change the word. You can then take it in turns to see how many guesses you get right within a certain time. Or, you can play in teams and work together to give each other clues and make guesses.
5. What If..
This free road trip game is perfect for getting the whole family involved. And, the beauty of it is that only one person needs to run it on their phone for everyone to play.
The game poses inventive and often strange questions that ask you to consider what you’d do in a certain situation. To play as a group, you can either take it in turns to answer or take a majority poll to decide on your collective answer.
Of course, the real fun is seeing whether other players using the app agreed with your answer or not. Sometimes the results can be very surprising!
6. Trivia Crack
For an educational way to pass the time on long car rides, ‘Trivia Crack’ allows you to test your general knowledge against each other.
The game includes questions on topics like geography, history, sports, art, science, and pop culture.
It’s also adjustable for different levels and you can team up with other family members or battle it out as individuals. But however you play, things are sure to get competitive!
7. Family’s Game Travel Pack Lite
If you prefer the idea of playing a networked game with other passengers, this is a great option.
The app includes 50 traditional games like Chess, Crazy Eights, Sudoku, and more. All you need to do to link up your phones is to both install the app and enable either WiFi or Bluetooth.
And, if no one else in the car wants to play, you can also play solo offline against the game’s AI.
Fun Game Apps Made for Long Road Trips
With so many great game apps made for long road trips, spending hours in the car whenever you head off on vacation just got a whole lot more fun.
And, as an added bonus, most of these apps are completely free. All you need to do is remember to charge all your phones before you set off and you’re good to go!
For more ways to get more out of your smartphone, check out our latest posts on apps and games.