Games
Games where you’re the passenger.
Some of the best games hand the controls to someone else and leave you with only your voice. Here are the ones worth a seat, from rally co-drivers to bomb manuals, and why it works.
Most games give you the wheel. A few, and some of the most memorable, give it to somebody else and leave you with the one thing a passenger always has: your voice.
This is a list of those games, the ones where you ride along, read the notes, share the seat or talk someone through it. They’re very different, but they all sit somewhere on the same line, between doing it yourself and only being able to say it.
- DiRT Rally
- Double Dash!!
- Lovers in a Dangerous Spacetime
- Spaceteam
- Road 96
- Operation: Tango
- We Were Here
- Hitchhiker
- Keep Talking
- I Know a Shortcut
The co-driver in your ear
You drive, but somebody else does the reading. Rally games put the navigator in the seat beside you, and you learn to trust a voice.
01
DiRT Rally and the WRC games
Codemasters and others · 2015
Rally games have always had a passenger: the co-driver reading pace notes, calling each corner’s direction and severity before you can see it. You hold the wheel, but you drive on their word, and a clean stage feels like a duet.
The second seat
One vehicle, two people, two jobs. Somebody steers; somebody else does everything the steering hand can’t.
02
Mario Kart: Double Dash!!
Nintendo · 2003
Two riders to a kart: one drives, the one hanging off the back handles the items. In co-op two players share a kart and can swap places mid-race, which is a fine way to learn when to say “now”.
03
Lovers in a Dangerous Spacetime
Asteroid Base · 2015
A couch co-op shooter set inside one round, neon ship. Each station does one job (steering, a turret, the shield, the map) and you can work only one at a time, so someone flies while everyone else runs about shouting about the thing behind you.
Along for the ride
Somebody else drives. You talk, listen, look out of the window and find out who they are.
04
Road 96
DigixArt · 2021
A road-trip adventure about teenagers trying to reach a border, largely by hitchhiking. Each run is stitched together from rides with strangers, and what you say in the car shapes where you end up. Now and then you get the wheel.
05
Hitchhiker – A Mystery Game
Mad About Pandas
A short mystery told over a handful of rides. You sit in the passenger seat, talk to whoever stopped for you and piece together who you are from what they say. Its makers set out to make a passenger game rather than a driving game, and it is exactly that.
Talk them through it
Asymmetric co-op: one of you can see the problem, the other has the answer, and the only bridge between you is what you say.
06
Spaceteam
Sleeping Beast Games · 2012
A party game for phones and tablets in the same room. Your screen shows orders meant for someone else’s control panel, so the only way to keep the ship flying is to shout them across the table. It’s loud. That’s the point.
07
Operation: Tango
Clever Plays · 2021
A two-player spy game played online: one of you is the agent on the ground, the other the hacker inside the system. Neither sees what the other sees, so every lock and laser grid comes down to describing things well.
08
We Were Here
Total Mayhem Games · 2017
Two players, split up in a frozen castle, with only a walkie-talkie between them. One can see the puzzle; the other can see the clue. The series has grown several sequels, all built on the same idea: say what you see.
09
Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes
Steel Crate Games · 2015
One person has the bomb; everyone else has the manual and can’t see the bomb. The defuser describes, the experts decode, and the clock does the rest. The purest “you can only use words” game there is, and the one most people mean.
Which one should you play?
- For a party in one room: Spaceteam, or Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes with the manual passed round.
- For two people, apart: We Were Here or Operation: Tango, both played online with a voice line between you.
- For the sofa: Mario Kart: Double Dash!! or Lovers in a Dangerous Spacetime, where sharing one vehicle is the whole joke.
- For a quiet evening on your own: Hitchhiker or Road 96, where the drive is the backdrop and the conversation is the game.
- To learn to trust a voice: any rally game with the co-driver turned up.
The navigator was a job before it was a game
The person in the passenger seat with the plan has been part of driving for as long as there has been anywhere to get lost. Games are just the latest place they’ve turned up.
Rallying
The co-driver and the pace notes
Rally crews drive each stage slowly before the event, writing down every bend, crest and hazard in a shorthand of numbers and words. On the day the co-driver reads them aloud, a beat ahead of the road, while the driver goes as fast as the notes allow.
It’s the clearest proof there is that a passenger can be half the team. The driver can’t see round the corner. The co-driver can read it.
From the 1930s
The passenger with the A–Z
For most of the last century, the navigator was whoever sat in the front with the map book open on their knees, finding the page, losing the page, and turning it round so the road ran the way the car did.
Everything in the giving directions guide comes from this seat: call it early, name something they can see, and never say “left here”.
From the 2000s
The sat-nav on the windscreen
Then the navigator moved onto the dashboard. Sat-navs took the passenger’s job and turned it into a pattern (warn early, confirm, then call it at the junction) with a calm voice that never sighed.
It works brilliantly. It also took one of the most human jobs in the car and made it silent, which is exactly what made it interesting to put back.
Now
The navigator as the player
Games kept finding the passenger seat anyway: the co-driver in rally games, the friend reading the bomb manual, the hitchhiker making conversation. Each one asks you to do something with your voice that matters more than what your hands are doing.
Take the hands away completely, give the driver no idea where they’re going, and you have the navigator as the whole game.
Why being the passenger works as a game
On paper it shouldn’t. Games are meant to be about control, and these take most of it away. In practice the passenger seat keeps producing some of the best moments in games, for three reasons.
Agency through words
You change what happens without touching anything. Every outcome traces back to something you said.
Constraint creates comedy
When you can only ask, the gap between what you meant and what happened is where the stories come from.
Trust and timing
Too early and they forget; too late and they can’t. The skill is the moment, and the person you said it to.
Agency through words
When the only thing you can do is say something, everything you say counts. A defused bomb, a solved door or a found turning is yours because you described it well, even though somebody else’s hands did the work. It’s a quieter kind of control, and it feels surprisingly big.
Constraint creates comedy
Every one of these games lives in the gap between what you meant and what happened. You said “the red wire”; there were two. You said “left”; they took the car park. The constraint isn’t a limitation on the fun. It is the fun, and it’s why people tell stories about these games long after they’ve forgotten the ones where they did everything themselves.
Trust and timing
A rally co-driver reads the next note a beat before the corner, not as it arrives. A good navigator calls a turn while there’s still time to take it. When the other person is a friend, the game becomes about trusting each other; when it’s a character, it becomes about learning them: how much notice they need, what they’ll misunderstand, when they’ll just go straight on.
The far end of the line: I Know a Shortcut
We made I Know a Shortcut because we wanted to see what happens at the very end of that line. You’re the passenger. You can’t steer, brake or touch the pedals. The driver doesn’t know the way and won’t guess, so the only way to the destination is to call it: left, right, change lane, turn round, overtake that bus.
Call too late and they sail past. Call too early and they take the wrong one. Most of the time they do their best, and the town, built from real London streets, does the rest. Try a small version here:
Try a call
They'll go straight on until you say otherwise.
That's the whole game. Your driver only turns when you ask, and only at the next junction. Get them to the beacon. Use A and D, or the buttons.
Arrivals 0
Where are we going, then?
No call: straight on
Questions
Quick answers
What are some games where you don’t drive?
Hitchhiker – A Mystery Game and Road 96 put you in the passenger seat with strangers. Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes, We Were Here, Operation: Tango and Spaceteam are co-op games where you talk someone else through it. Rally games such as DiRT Rally give you a co-driver reading pace notes, and Mario Kart: Double Dash!! lets one player drive while the other handles items. In I Know a Shortcut you never drive at all: you call the turns.
What is a navigator game?
A game where your job is to guide rather than to act: you can see the map, the manual or the road ahead, and someone else does the doing. Asymmetric co-op games like Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes work this way between players; I Know a Shortcut makes the driver a character and the player the navigator.
What are good co-op games where one person gives the instructions?
Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes (one defuses, the others read the manual), We Were Here (two players split up with walkie-talkies), Operation: Tango (an agent and a hacker who never see the same screen) and Spaceteam (everyone shouts orders meant for someone else’s panel).
Is I Know a Shortcut a cosy driving game?
It’s a driving game where you never touch the wheel. You sit in the passenger seat across London and call the turns; the driver does their best. The pressure comes from the clock and the traffic, not from your reflexes, and it’s coming soon to Steam on PC.
In the game
Now try it with someone who doesn’t know the way.
In I Know a Shortcut you’re the passenger. You can’t steer or brake; you can only call it, and your driver does their best. The Long Way Home runs 3.4 km to Granville Park home, with 9 turns to call and a gold medal at 15:10.