7 Drawing Games for Kids to Play Together (In Person or Online)

By The PaintPal Team · 2026-05-20

Drawing is even more fun with two. The moment a second person joins in, a blank page turns into a game — full of surprises, laughter, and "wait, what are you drawing?!" These drawing games have entertained kids for generations, and they work just as well on paper as they do on a shared digital canvas when friends are apart.

Here are seven of our favorites, from quick warm-ups to longer collaborative projects. Most work for kids as young as four, and several are genuinely fun for adults too.

1. The Squiggle Game

One player draws a random squiggle — a loop, a zigzag, a wavy line. The other player has to turn that squiggle into a real drawing of something. A loop becomes a snail's shell, a zigzag becomes a dinosaur's back. Then you switch. It's the perfect warm-up because there's no wrong answer, and little kids love watching a meaningless scribble become a creature.

2. Exquisite Corpse (the fold-over monster game)

This old surrealist game is a kid favorite. One person draws a head at the top of the page, then folds the paper so only the bottom of the neck shows. The next person draws the body without seeing the head, folds again, and the last person draws the legs. Unfold it and you've got a hilarious mismatched creature. On a shared digital canvas, you can play a looser version where each person draws one section in turn.

3. Collaborative Drawing (build one picture together)

Instead of competing, work on the same drawing as a team. One kid draws a house, the other adds a garden, the first adds a sun and clouds, and so on. The picture grows into a whole world. This is where real-time collaborative apps shine — two kids on different devices can build the same scene at the same time and watch each other's additions appear instantly.

4. Drawing Telephone

A mashup of the squiggle game and the telephone game. The first player draws something simple. The next player looks at it for a few seconds, then redraws it from memory. The next person copies that drawing, and so on. By the end, a cat has slowly morphed into a blobby potato, and everyone cracks up comparing the first and last versions.

5. Speed Doodle Challenge

Set a timer for 60 seconds and call out a prompt — "a rocket ship," "the grumpiest cat," "a pizza with ten toppings." Everyone draws as fast as they can before time runs out, then shares their masterpiece. The time pressure makes even reluctant drawers loosen up, because there's no time to worry about it looking perfect.

6. Finish My Drawing

One player starts a drawing but stops halfway — half a face, a body with no head, a car with no wheels. The other player has to finish it however they like. The fun is in the surprise: you draw a careful princess and your friend gives her robot arms and a jetpack.

7. Color the Same Page Together

Not every drawing game needs a blank canvas. Grab a coloring book page and have two kids color it together, each taking different sections. It's calmer than the other games — great for winding down — and surprisingly collaborative as kids negotiate who colors what. In PaintPal, kids can pick a coloring book page from the built-in gallery and color it together in real time, swapping to a new page whenever they want.

Playing these games when friends are apart

Every game on this list was invented for two kids at the same table. The good news is they all translate to a shared digital canvas, so distance is no longer a dealbreaker. PaintPal was built exactly for this: one kid opens a room, shares the link, and both draw on the same canvas in real time with built-in video chat — so they can play the squiggle game, build a collaborative scene, or color a page together even when one is at grandma's house and the other is across town.

It's free, has no ads, and uses private rooms so kids only ever draw with people you've invited. Kids can save their finished creations straight to the camera roll, which means all those silly squiggle-monsters become fridge-worthy keepsakes.

Grab some crayons (or a tablet) and start playing

You don't need anything fancy to play these games — paper and crayons work great, and that's always worth encouraging. But when a friend can't come over, a shared canvas keeps the games going. Try PaintPal free on the App Store or at paintpal.fun, pick a game from this list, and see how long it takes before someone is laughing too hard to draw.