A call between a child and a grandparent is a lovely thing and a fragile one. The child loses interest after ten minutes, and the grandparent may be wrestling with a tablet. Games to play on FaceTime that suit this situation are short, forgiving and easy to explain in one breath. This guide covers games with no equipment, then a few shared games with settings that keep the pace calm. It is written for the adult in the middle who sets the call up.
Start with the call, not the game
Settle three things before anyone suggests a game. Who holds the device? Prop it up if you can, so small arms are free. Does the grandparent need a link? Apple's support page says anyone can join a FaceTime call from a web browser, including on Android or Windows, so a relative without an iPhone is not locked out. And is there a quiet room? A game fails fast when the grandparent cannot hear the child.
Games that need only voices
These work even when the picture freezes:
- I spy, with colours rather than letters for the youngest.
- Animal sounds, where one person makes a noise and the other names the animal.
- A story told one sentence each, which the child usually steers somewhere surprising.
- Twenty questions, shortened to ten for small children.
Which shared games suit a young child and an older relative?
Choose games with no hurry and no reading race.
Snakes and Ladders has 2 to 8 seats and lasts 10 to 25 minutes. Each turn is one throw of the dice, so a five-year-old and an eighty-year-old have the same chances. The host can pick the Ladder Garden board, which has more ladders and so fewer sad slides.
Draw and Guess has up to twelve seats. The child draws and the grandparent guesses, or the other way round. Set the hints to three and the time to 120 seconds, the longest option, and nobody will feel rushed. At the end it shows every drawing from the game, which makes a nice thing to talk about afterwards.
Ludo has a Quick setting: two pieces each and a game of around five minutes. Trivia Tavern races by default, which can hurry a slow reader, but the gentler pace is one tap away.
Where can the family play these together?
That helps a grandparent. Send the link ahead of time in a message so it is waiting when the call starts. Think of it as a small family game night held over a video call, with free online games and no download to slow anyone down.
How long should the call last?
Ten to twenty minutes of a game, then back to ordinary talk. End while the child still wants more. A call that finishes on a high gets repeated, and a call that drags becomes a chore.
What if the grandparent is not confident with technology?
Do a trial run the day before, with just the two adults. Write the steps in short lines: open the message, tap the link, type your name. Keep one voice-only game ready as a fallback, so a failed link does not end the visit.
A weekly habit
Pick the same day and hour each week. Children handle routine well, and grandparents look forward to it. Over a few weeks the games to play on FaceTime stop being an effort and become simply how the two of them spend Sunday.
A last word on patience
Expect pauses, wrong buttons and a game that ends early. None of it matters. The aim is time together, and the game only gives it a shape.
Ahmed Moaz builds Boardit, a free browser game site.
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