Car journey games that survive longer than ten minutes
Every list of car games has the same twelve entries and most of them last a quarter of an hour. These are the ones that stretch, and the reasons they stretch.
The problem with most car games
I Spy dies the moment somebody picks something outside the car, which is immediately. The number plate game collapses when the motorway empties. Twenty Questions is genuinely good and lasts about four rounds before someone picks something impossible out of spite.
The games that last have one thing in common: they carry on generating new material as the road changes. Anything that depends on a fixed set of things inside the car will run out, because the inside of the car does not change and you have four more hours.
Games that stretch
Roughly in order of how young you can start them.
Colour hunt (age 3+)
Call a colour, everyone finds something that colour out of the window, first to spot it calls the next colour. Endless, because the view keeps changing, and a three-year-old can play it as well as anyone.
Spot the specific (age 4+)
Not 'a car' but 'a yellow van', 'a dog in a car', 'a caravan', 'a bridge over the road'. Specificity is what makes it a game. Write the list before you go and it holds for an hour.
The alphabet sign game (age 6+)
Find each letter of the alphabet in order on road signs. Q and Z will ruin your afternoon in a good way. Works because motorway signage is relentless.
Story tennis (age 6+)
One sentence each, building a story. Nobody can say no to somebody else's sentence. It goes somewhere idiotic within four turns and that is the point.
Would you rather, but geographical (age 7+)
Would you rather live in that house or that one. Would you rather own that field or that petrol station. Uses the window and gets surprisingly heated.
The photo hunt (age 4+)
Give each child a list of things to photograph through the window. Harder than it sounds while moving, which is what makes it worth points.
How to make any of them last twice as long
Score it. A game with a running total survives a lull that a game without one does not, because there is a reason to keep playing when the current round is boring.
Put a finish line on it. 'First to twenty' or 'until the next services' both work far better than playing until everyone drifts off, because it gives the game a shape.
Change the difficulty per child rather than picking a middle. A seven-year-old and an eleven-year-old playing the same colour hunt is not a game, it is a formality. Give the older one 'something orange that is not a road sign'.
Let them run it. The single biggest extender is handing over who calls the next round. Children police rules far more aggressively than adults do.
When you want to stop being the entertainment
The honest reason parents reach for a screen on a long drive is not that games do not work. It is that running a game from the driver's seat for three hours is exhausting, and at some point you need to just drive.
This is the gap a photo-hunt app fills on a journey. The list is already there, the app confirms whether a find counts, and the argument about whether a grey van is technically silver happens with the phone rather than with you.
Scavvi works offline for the finding, which matters on a motorway where signal disappears for twenty-minute stretches. Verification catches up when the signal comes back.
Want the version that runs itself?
Scavvi does the list, checks the finds and keeps the score, so you get to just be there. Free on iOS and Android.
Get Scavvi freeQuestions
What car games work for a three-year-old?
Colour spotting and simple 'find me a...' games. Anything requiring turn-taking, counting or reading will not hold at three. Keep rounds under two minutes.
How do you keep older kids interested?
Make the target harder rather than the game different. An eleven-year-old will happily play the same game as their little brother if their version requires actual thinking.
Do these work on trains and planes too?
The window-based ones obviously need a window, and a plane window works better than you would expect above cloud. Story tennis and would-you-rather work anywhere, including a departure lounge.
What about car sickness?
Anything that involves looking down, including photographing on a phone, is a bad idea for a child prone to it. Stick to out-of-the-window spotting games, which help rather than hurt.