Not every game labelled “multiplayer” lets you play against someone you know. For this page we only counted games where we could confirm, in our own test, that two people can play on the same device, either sharing a keyboard or passing a phone back and forth. Online matchmaking was not something we could test reliably, so it is not the reason any game is listed here. The list is short on purpose. We would rather recommend five games we have checked than twenty we haven’t, and we will add more as we test them.
Tic tac toe with AI and multiplayer
Our favourite for two people with one phone. The board, mode buttons and a turn indicator all fit a portrait screen, and there is a human-vs-human mode as well as an AI opponent that replies in under a second.
Classic chess
A clean chess board with a same-device two-player mode and a computer opponent. The full board fitted a 390px screen edge to edge, so passing a phone across a table works fine.
Grid3
A simple tic-tac-toe with a Two Player mode for one screen, plus Easy and Hard modes against the computer. Good for 30-second games between turns of something else.
Volley Lama
One-button volleyball with llamas. It is at its best with a friend on the same keyboard. It needs a landscape screen, as it shrank to a thin strip on a portrait phone.
Stairs Races For 2 Players
One of the few true split-screen racers we found. Each player gets half the screen and races to collect blocks of their colour, one on W/A/S/D and the other on the arrow keys. It needs a laptop or desktop, because on a portrait phone everything was far too small.
Playing together on one device
For keyboard games, agree on who takes which keys before you start, and use a full-size keyboard if you can, since laptop keyboards sometimes ignore several keys pressed at once. For phone games, turn off auto-rotate so the board does not flip when you hand the phone over. Looking for solo games instead? See our best puzzle games for phones.