15 great car games for kids: screen-free fun to make long journeys fly by
Give the kids a break from the screens and try a classic car game for some road trip family time.
The classic car game is not dead! In the age of Netflix, Angry Birds, Peppa Pig, Spotify and all the rest, getting eyes off screens and ears out of headphones for a bout of I Spy has never been more desirable. That’s why the Auto Express team, veterans of countless mind-numbing car journeys, have chosen their favourite screen-free car games for kids.
Modern technology has transformed the family car journey and we’re not just talking in terms of the cars we drive. Where passing the time on a long road trip with the kids used to be a challenge for parents who needed a Willy Wonka-like arsenal of stories and sweets at their disposal, tablets and smartphones mean youngsters have an internet full of games, movies and other entertainment at their fingertips. Even the cars have built-in video games!
The challenge for the adults in the front has flipped. It’s often more about prising children away from their devices for a screen break than trying to get five blessed minutes of peace amid the squabbling, vomiting and ‘are we there yet?’. These car games are the fall-back options no parent should be without. And best of all, they’re free!
Best car games for kids
Our top 14 car games to keep the kids amused on a long journey, without use of a phone or tablet
I Spy
The absolute emperor of car games, I Spy is an old classic that’s always nice to revisit. The car occupants take turns to look around the interior and the scene visible out of the car’s windows before settling on an object and uttering the immortal words: “I spy with my little eye, something beginning with…”
They reveal the first letter of the thing they have seen, and the rest of the car are invited to guess what it is. Anyone suspected of changing their I Spy item to something else starting with the same letter when it’s guessed (unbelievable, but it has been known) or choosing an obscure object at the roadside that will undoubtedly never be seen again, will be frowned upon, and booed.
20 questions
Another classic car game, 20 questions is a simple premise. Someone thinks of something, anything, and everyone else has 20 questions to establish what it is. The questions can only be answered ‘yes’ or ‘no’ so it takes clever interrogation techniques to narrow down the options in the 20 questions allowed.
The first person to guess correctly gets to think of the next thing and off you go again. If nobody guesses the thing, the player who thought of it gets another turn, but they have to reveal the answer to make sure they responded to all the questions correctly! To make it easier for younger kids, you can stick to categories like animals, places or toys.
Kids quiz
This one can be prepared in advance or done off the top of your head and amounts to a general knowledge quiz. You can invite each of the kids to choose a specialist subject like a favourite programme or a subject they’ve been covering at school and come up with a list of questions in a Mastermind type format, or just throw the questions out there for any of them to shout out the answer. A variation is for the one who gets the answer correct to then ask another question and this can get the whole car involved.
Word link game
A fast paced car game where you simply have to think of a word associated with the one that went before - then shout it out, without pauses or hesitation.
To explain, whoever starts might say ‘apple’ and you go round the car to each occupant in turn. It might go: tree, leaf, green, blue, sky… etc. The chain of associated words breaks when someone umms, errs or can’t think of anything. It’s great fun to see how long you can go on for without messing up and any number can play from two upwards.
Older readers might remember this game from Mallett’s Mallet, an item on 1980’s kids TV where Timmy Mallet would smash the player who messed up the word sequence over the head with a giant foam mallet (those were the days). It added tension but in a car setting with at least one person trying to concentrate, this whacking element is best avoided.
Animal name game
The animal name game requires you to name an animal, as you might expect. The next person must then name another one starting with the last letter of the animal before. So someone might say ‘whale’, then you could say ‘elephant’, ‘tiger, rat… and so it goes on.
There can be no repetition of animals previously mentioned and you keep going until somebody can’t come up with an animal that fits the sequence.
Categories
You start this word game by choosing a category; sea life, countries, movies, toys, something broad that the kids will know about. Then you take turns naming a thing in that category that starts with each letter of the alphabet.
If you choose the category of ‘vegetables’, you could start with asparagus, then the next person could choose broccoli and the next cabbage. When someone can’t answer, they are eliminated and the sequence keeps going until only the winner is left.
Name that tune
A musical car game where someone hums a tune and the rest of the occupants try to guess what it is. For variety, you could try whistling the tune or divide the car into teams so that the front seat occupants recreate the song together while those in the back guess, then swap around. Two people humming usually makes it even harder to guess but you can keep score and make a competition out of it.
Car pool karaoke
Everyone loves a good singalong in the car but did you know you can make a game of it? The front seat passenger controls the car stereo and plays a song everyone knows. Just before a good bit, they hit pause and the kids have to carry on singing. It’s a test of how well they know their favourite tunes and can be hilarious if they don’t know them quite as well as they thought.
Story time
This one is great for families with a creative streak. There are variations on the game but the essential idea is that you build a story between you, one sentence at a time. The first person starts by saying “Once upon a time…” then you go around the car with each passenger in turn adding a sentence. You keep going until your story reaches a satisfactory end.
To prevent it turning into War and Peace you can set a limit on the number of sentences you contribute each before the story must end. Or go for a time limit.
Another variation on the story game is that the first person sets the scenario for the story and you agree that each sentence added after that must alternate between the starting words ‘fortunately’ and ‘unfortunately’. This tends to produce much shorter, sillier stories and is still a lot of fun.
Alphabet game
This is a race through the alphabet using letters that the kids can see on numberplates and road signs outside the windows of the car. They must start with A and only once they’ve seen an A can they start looking for a B, and so on. The first one to get to and spot a Z wins the challenge.
Some letters are obviously easier to bag than others but remember you can get an X from closed lane signs on motorway overhead gantrys and, if you’re feeling generous, a Z from the bendy road warning triangle sign. Failing that, you’d better hope you’re going past Ashby-de-la-Zouch, in Leicestershire or Zurich.
Yellow car game
The yellow car game has been known to run in some households for years. Even by the standards of the games on this list, it’s pretty simple. You see a yellow car and you get a point, the most points at the end of the journey wins.
The variations are endless. You can make-up a system of points for different car colours, perhaps based on the UK’s most and least popular - did you know only 0.5% of the cars registered in 2025 were yellow? Or come up with some noises and gestures that correspond to different car colours. Bark like a dog when you see a brown car, put both hands on your head when you see a purple car, etc.
In the adult version, rather than points, you get the right to punch other participants (gently) on the arm when you see a yellow car. The always-on nature of the game means players never quite know when they’re going to get punched. It could be hours, days or months later and it can be great for family bonding, or cause years of bitter resentment.
Counting animals
A little like the car colour spotting game, you have animal spotting. When you see an animal or bird out of the car window, you make the noise it makes. Only the first person in the car to see each animal and make the noise gets the point. Run the game for a set amount of time and then tally up the points to see who wins.
Pub cricket
Almost any car journey in the UK can amass a pub cricket score of some size but a big road trip could even see you reach your century. The game is simple, you pass a pub and you count the total number of legs involved in its name. That number is then added to your score.
Through this time-honoured scoring system: Anything without any legs, from the Royal Oak to The Bell, is a solid single. The Queen Victoria gets you a two, The White Hart is a nice four and The George and Dragon is a spectacular six.
With some pub names, there has to be creative licence allowed. If you’re in doubt, defer to the pub’s sign which usually has an image to go with the name. If, for example, your particular George and Dragon has a sign that shows George on his horse, that would be a 10! Although, there is always some debate over whether dragons actually have arms at the front and only two legs to the rear - again go by the sign if you can.
The real complications come with the likes of Fox and Hounds where you can really only count the hounds on the sign and add up the legs. Either way, it’s going to be a bumper score that’s almost worth a detour for.
Buzz
Harder than it sounds, buzz involves the whole car counting to 100 with each occupant saying one number on their turn. The difficulty comes in the rule that every number with a five in it must be replaced by the word ‘buzz’. If a player makes a mistake on their turn they are out and you keep going until you reach 100 or there’s only one player left.
To make it harder still, add-in different rules like you have to touch your nose when saying any number that divides by 10.
I went to the supermarket…
This classic memory game will get the old grey matter working for parents as well as kids. Someone goes first and says: “I went to the supermarket and I bought…” Then they name one thing they bought at the supermarket. Now it’s the next person’s turn and they repeat what was just said, adding another item to the end of the imaginary shopping list.
It goes around the car in this way with each person adding to the list and the task of remembering what went before becoming harder and harder. Anyone who makes a mistake is out and the last one left is the winner.
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