Driving games for long car trips

Driving for a long period of time can be soul-crushingly boring, we’ve all been there. Thankfully the human imagination and thirst for entertainment is limitless, as such there are a lot of games to play to pass the time. In this article, we will provide you with 5 games you can try the next time you and your adult passengers are faced with the prospect of a long, boring journey.

Six degrees of separation

The first game on our list is based on the theory that everyone in the world is separated by six relationships. To start, one person names two film or television stars (it can also just be two celebrities) that have some tenuous link. Everyone else has to find the link between the two in six steps or less. For example Kevin Bacon and Bruce Willis, they are linked by:
Bruce Willis was in Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle with Luke Wilson;
Luke Wilson was in My Dog Skip with Kevin Bacon. This example also leads us onto a more advanced version of this game, Six degrees of Kevin Bacon.

Fictional families/people watching

This is a great one. The aim of the game is to pull up alongside a full car for a few minutes, get a good look at those inside and then to make up a backstory for them as a group/family and individually. It can include the reason for their trip, what they do for a living, their relationships, and anything else you can think of. As you can probably tell, this game has the potential to be the most entertaining part of your journey.

The movie game

This is the perfect game for the movie buffs among us. The person starting names a movie star, the next person answers with a movie the actor/actress was in, the next person has to name another actor/actress that had a part in that movie, this pattern repeats until no-one can think of an answer. If someone incorrectly names an actor/actress or movie they are disqualified until the next round.

The license plate game + the license plate game – alternative
This is technically two games, but they are variations of the same game. In the first version, everyone takes turns interpreting the letters on license plates, for example, TKK could be ‘They Killed Kenny’. The second version involves ‘collecting’ license plates, for example, one from each state.

Explain a film plot badly

This one is fairly self-explanatory. However, for the sake of clarity, we will explain. Each person chooses a movie and then explains the plot of the movie badly, without naming the movie, and then everyone has to take turns guessing the movie. The person who guesses correctly goes next. So it could be something like, ‘an unkempt man roams an office building killing people’ did you manage to guess the movie? It was Die Hard.