Sensual games for couples: 12 erotic games for two, with every step spelled out

You have sex in the dark, in about fifteen minutes, in an order you both know by heart, with one ear on the hallway. It works, and that's exactly the problem: it works so well that nothing about it surprises you anymore.

An erotic game exists to break that order, without asking for anything spectacular. But somebody has to tell you how to play it. "Try a blindfold", "give each other a massage", "take your time": most lists stop there, and advice that fits in four words doesn't survive a Tuesday night. What's missing is the how: who goes first, what's allowed, what isn't, and when it ends.

So here are twelve sensual games for couples, sorted by sense: touch, sight, voice, taste and smell, then slowness. None of them has a score or a loser. Each comes with what you need, how long it takes and every step in order, and nearly all of them use things you already have at home. At the end you'll find a table to pick one for the evening ahead, and answers to the questions people ask before they try.

What is an erotic game, exactly? One constraint, two roles, a time limit

An erotic game isn't a game you win. It's one simple rule that makes you do things differently from usual, for a set length of time. Three things hold it up, and you'll find them in all twelve games on this page.

• A constraint: no hands, seven words allowed and not one more, lights off except for a single circle of skin. The constraint does the work. Take it away and what's left is a touch like any other, given the way you've been giving it for ten years.
• Two roles: one gives, the other receives, then you swap. Whoever is receiving owes nothing back during their turn, and that's often the hardest part to accept, because you've got used to doing everything at once.
• A time limit: a timer, a song, the time it takes a square of chocolate to melt. Knowing when it ends is what lets you give in without wondering how much longer you have to hold out.

That's what separates them from games with a score, where dice pick an instruction and the loser takes something off. Those are fast and funny, and they have their own page, with fifteen sex games for couples and their full rules. Here, you slow down.

Before you start: three things to set up in two minutes

Nothing solemn here. Just three things to settle before the first game, because they're very hard to settle once it's under way.

• The phone: it's the timer, the flashlight and the speaker in several of these games. Put it in airplane mode first, or the class group chat will be setting the pace.
• Who gives first: whoever suggested the game. Giving first turns the suggestion into a gift, while receiving first turns it into a request.
• The word that stops everything: several games forbid the one receiving to move, touch or speak. Pick a safe word together that has no business in a bedroom, "radiator" or "pineapple", and that ends the game the moment it's said, no explanation needed.

Touch: three sensual games to relearn each other's skin

After a few years, hands go straight to what works and stop visiting anywhere else. These three games make them take the long way round.

1. The three-round massage: back, front, then genitals

You need: massage oil or, failing that, the sweet almond or coconut oil from the bathroom, a big towel spread over the bed, and your phone's timer. Time: half an hour.

Massage is the erotic game everyone mentions and nobody explains. Here's a version in three rounds, where the timer decides when you move from one to the next, never the impatience of whoever is giving it.

1. Round one, ten minutes. The one receiving lies face down. You massage the whole back of the body, from the nape of the neck to the heels, with the flat of your hands, buttocks included, never going between the thighs.
2. Round two, ten minutes. They turn over. You massage the front: shoulders, breasts or chest, stomach, then the inner thighs, as high as you like. You go around the genitals, as close as you dare.
3. Round three, no timer. You massage the genitals, by hand, with as much oil and at the same speed as everything else. This round lasts until the one receiving comes, or asks for something else.

Two rules turn this massage into a game. The one receiving gives nothing back: no stroking, no kissing, arms by their sides for all three rounds. And there's no return match the same night. A massage you have to pay back straight away stops being a gift and becomes a debt, and the one receiving spends the half hour adding up what they owe. The return match happens on another evening that week.

One practical note to finish: oil weakens latex condoms. If you use them, switch to a water-based lubricant for round three.

2. Words written on skin: asking without saying anything

You need: nothing, or a makeup brush if you have one. Time: fifteen minutes.

You played this as a kid, on a friend's back. The grown-up version keeps the idea and changes the words. The one receiving lies face down, top off, eyes closed. The other writes on their back with a fingertip, in capitals, one letter at a time, two words: an action, then a place. "KISS", then "NECK". "BITE", then "SHOULDER". "LICK", then "NIPPLES".

If both words are read out loud correctly, the one who wrote them does it, for one minute. If there's a mistake, nobody gets punished: the same words are written again one step lower. From the back to the small of the back, from there to the buttocks, from the buttocks to the back of the thighs. Three messages each, then swap, and you'll soon work out that misreading sometimes pays.

The game has two effects you won't see coming. First, a back is a poor reader: making out a single letter takes your whole attention, and ten minutes spent thinking about nothing but the tip of a finger is enough to get you out of your day. Second, writing down what you want is far easier than saying it. By the third message, you'll probably be tracing what you would never have said out loud.

3. The one-way shower: one washes, the other does nothing

You need: the shower, shower gel, two towels. Time: ten to fifteen minutes.

This is the weeknight game, for one very simple reason: the bathroom is often the only room in the house with a door that locks, and running water covers everything else.

Get in the shower together. One of you washes, the other puts both hands flat on the tiles and is no longer allowed to do anything: no helping, no turning round unprompted, no touching. The one washing works in order and skips nothing: shoulders and back, arms, chest and stomach, legs from the ankles up, and the genitals last, by hand. Rinse your hands before you get there, shower gel stings. The game doesn't end when the water does: the one who did the washing dries the other with the towel, as slowly as they soaped them.

Swap straight away if the hot water lasts, or the next night. This game costs you no time you don't have: you were going to take that shower anyway, one after the other.

Sight: two games for couples who always turn the light off

Plenty of couples haven't looked at each other naked in full light for years, apart from a glimpse between the shower and the wardrobe. These two games put looking back at the center, the first in the dark, the second with the lamp on.

4. The flashlight: where the light lands, the mouth follows

You need: your phone's flashlight, and a bedroom in complete darkness, blinds down. Time: five minutes each, twice.

You start in your underwear, in the dark, and from now on nobody speaks: the light is the only instruction in this game.

• First pass: whoever holds the light shines it on the other's body. Whatever is lit has to be uncovered, and has to stay in the light for as long as the light stays there. After five minutes, the phone changes hands.
• Second pass: whoever holds the light turns it on their own body. Where the light lands, the other's mouth follows, and it stays for as long as the beam doesn't move. When the beam moves, the mouth moves with it.

One thing is off limits: the face, because a phone flashlight is blinding and the game stops dead. If it looks too harsh on skin, a tissue folded in two and held on with a hair tie softens it nicely.

This game suits people who find full light intimidating. In the dark you only ever see a circle of skin the size of a dinner plate, and the one holding the light chooses which. On the second pass they ask for exactly what they want without saying a word, which is often easier than saying it.

5. Sit on your hands: watching without touching

You need: a chair at the foot of the bed, the bedside lamp on, two songs and your phone's timer. Time: twenty minutes.

The one watching sits on their hands, literally, palms tucked under their thighs, and keeps them there. It sounds like a detail and it's the whole game: a ban you can feel in your wrists works far better than a ban you simply agree to respect.

Round one lasts one song. The other undresses in front of the chair, close enough to be touched if those hands were free. Then you change places, for a second song. Round two lasts five minutes on the timer: the other lies on the bed, facing the chair, and masturbates the way they do when they're alone, same movements, same rhythm, without trying to put on a show. The one watching looks wherever they like and says nothing. You change places again, and when the second alarm goes, hands are free.

Whoever suggested the game goes first in each round, because you don't ask of your partner what you haven't done yourself. You'll get more out of it than tension. Watching someone masturbate teaches you the exact spot, the pressure and the speed that work for them, more precisely than any explanation could. It's information you don't always have, even after fifteen years.

Voice: two games you play in a whisper

You have sex in silence when the kids are asleep on the other side of the wall, and silence ends up becoming a habit. These two games are played in a whisper, which takes care of the wall.

6. The seven words: steering your partner without a full sentence

You need: nothing. Time: ten minutes each.

The one receiving lies down and closes their eyes. The other starts wherever they like, with a hand or with their mouth. From then on, the one receiving is allowed seven words and no others: "up", "down", "harder", "softer", "faster", "slower" and "there".

The first six are corrections. The one giving obeys at once, by one notch only, and waits for the next word. The seventh means "don't change a thing", and it holds until further notice. The one giving, meanwhile, gets no words at all: no commentary, and above all no "is that good?", the question that forces your partner out of what they're feeling in order to reassure you. After ten minutes, swap.

Saying "I'd like you to go a bit slower", ten years in, sounds like a complaint about the ten years. "Slower" sounds like nothing at all: it's one word, barely a breath, and it's part of the game. That's the whole difference, and nothing stops you keeping those seven words afterwards, on the nights when you aren't playing anything.

If you find out along the way that you like being in charge, what comes next has its own guide in our piece on domination and submission games for couples.

7. The whispered memory: telling the time you never forgot

You need: nothing but a dark bedroom. Time: fifteen minutes.

You have one advantage over new couples that you never use: years of shared memories you've never compared. Lying in the dark, mouth against your partner's ear, you take turns telling one time you had sex together that you still remember. Each story lasts two or three minutes and has to include three things: where it was, one detail the other may have forgotten, and the exact moment that stayed with you.

The one listening has their hands free. They're not allowed to interrupt, let alone correct: "no, that was after your sister's wedding" ends the game faster than a door opening. The one telling has to get to the end of the memory, whatever the other's hands are doing.

If the first memory won't come, start from one of these:

• "The time we nearly got caught."
• "The first time at your place."
• "The time you were the one who started it."
• "One time away on a trip, a long way from home."
• "The time you don't know I remember."

On the third turn the rule changes: each of you tells, in the same way and with the same three details, a time that hasn't happened yet. Told as a memory, something you want is much easier to say than when it comes out as a request.

Taste and smell: three games played with your mouth and nose

These are the two senses people forget in bed, and the easiest to wake up with what's in the kitchen and on the bathroom shelf.

8. The chocolate kiss: kissing for as long as one square takes to melt

You need: a bar of dark chocolate. Time: three squares, so ten to fifteen minutes.

When did you last kiss for more than ten seconds in a row? This game puts kissing back where it belongs, with a timer nobody can cheat. One of you puts a square of chocolate on their tongue, and you kiss. The square goes from one mouth to the other, nobody bites, and the kiss only ends when there's nothing left. Allow a few minutes per square, longer if the bar is a thick one.

Each square moves the line for your hands. During the first, they stay above the shoulders: face, neck, hair. During the second, they go down as far as the waist, and under clothes if they want. During the third, they go wherever they like. If dark chocolate isn't your thing, an ice cube does the same job, colder and quicker.

9. The drop of perfume: finding it with your eyes closed

You need: the perfume or cologne you normally wear, and a scarf if you'd rather use a blindfold. Time: five minutes each.

While your partner waits in the hallway, you put one drop of perfume somewhere on your body, and definitely not where you put it in the morning. The back of the knee, the hip, the small of the back, the underside of a breast and the inside of the arm all make very good hiding places. Avoid the genitals and freshly shaved skin: perfume contains alcohol, and it burns. Then lie down, naked or in your underwear.

Your partner comes back in, closes their eyes, clasps their hands behind their back and searches. They get their nose and their lips, nothing else, and they have to go everywhere, since they don't know where to look. You help the way you'd help a child hunting for a hidden toy: "colder", "warmer", "boiling". When they've found it, they stay there for a full minute, with their mouth, before you swap.

The second-round variation: two drops instead of one. The first is found quickly. The second is hidden where you'd like the search to end, on the inner thigh or in the crease of the groin. Nobody asked for anything, and everybody understood.

10. Hot and cold: a mug of tea, a bowl of ice

You need: a mug of tea, a bowl of ice cubes, a towel. Time: ten minutes each.

The tea should be hot without burning: if you can hold a mouthful without wincing, the temperature is right. The one receiving lies on the towel and closes their eyes. The one giving alternates. They hold a mouthful of tea for a few seconds, swallow it, and put a warm mouth on skin. Then they hold an ice cube between their lips for just as long, drop it back in the bowl, and come back with a cold mouth, in the same place or somewhere else.

Start at the neck, work down by the breasts and the stomach to the inner thighs, and finish on the genitals. Oral sex where the mouth changes temperature every thirty seconds is nothing like what you usually do. The one receiving never knows what's coming. In their ten minutes they get three requests only, "hot" or "cold", and they quickly learn not to waste them.

Slowness: two games where time is in charge

Everything above already slows things down. These last two do nothing else: they take away your right to go at your own speed.

11. One song, one item of clothing: six songs to undress

You need: a playlist of six slow songs, three to four minutes each, and five items of clothing on each of you. Time: a little over twenty minutes.

Build the playlist beforehand, ideally from songs you were listening to the year you met. Count your clothes so the numbers work: five each, even if that means adding a cardigan or taking your socks off in advance. Start the music, put the phone out of reach and leave it there, because nobody skips a song.

1. The first song is for dancing, fully dressed, the way you slow-danced at fifteen: hands on shoulders and on waists, nowhere else.
2. From the second to the sixth, each of you takes one item off the other as the song starts, just one, whichever you like. Until the song ends, hands and mouths are only allowed on the skin that has just been uncovered.
3. When the sixth one stops, you're both naked and the game is over. What happens next isn't on the playlist.

Four minutes spent on a shoulder, then four on a stomach: you probably haven't done that since your first months together. Music has one advantage over a timer, which is that you can't negotiate with a song, and you always know roughly how far through it you are.

12. One breath, one movement: sex in slow motion

You need: your phone's timer, set for ten minutes. Time: ten minutes, then as long as you like.

This game starts where the others stop. Pick a position where you're facing each other, missionary, her on top, or sitting in each other's lap, and start the timer at the moment of penetration. The rule fits in one line: one stroke per breath, no more.

For the first five minutes, her breathing sets the pace and he follows. For the next five, it's the other way round. The moment one of you speeds up, the other lays a hand flat on their chest: you both stop, completely, for three breaths, without pulling apart, then carry on. When the timer goes, the rule is gone and you do what you like.

Normally you reach the rhythm you'll finish at within two minutes. Here you spend ten minutes at a speed where there's time to feel everything and to look at each other. The three-breath stops are by far the best part of the game, and you'll catch yourself speeding up on purpose to cause one.

Which sensual game should you pick tonight?

The right game depends on how much time you have, what state you're in, and which habit you want to dislodge. Here's where to start.

Your evening	The game	Why that one
A Tuesday, twenty minutes, kids in the next room	The one-way shower (no. 3)	The door locks and the water covers the noise
You only kiss to say hello and goodbye	The chocolate kiss (no. 8)	Three squares, three real kisses, nothing else to decide
You always turn the light off	The flashlight (no. 4)	You only ever show one circle of skin at a time
One of you has never managed to say what they like	The seven words (no. 6) or words written on skin (no. 2)	One word, or two traced with a finger, never a sentence
One of you is too tired to do anything at all	The three-round massage (no. 1)	The one receiving has nothing to do, and nothing to give back
You feel like you've stopped looking at each other	Sit on your hands (no. 5)	Twenty minutes when looking is the only thing allowed
You'd like to find what you were at the start	The whispered memory (no. 7)	Your best nights, told by the other one
Kids at their grandparents', the whole evening ahead	One song, one item of clothing (no. 11), then one breath, one movement (no. 12)	Twenty minutes to undress, ten to not go too fast

The table settles which game, not who referees. In all twelve, one of you has to restart the timer, remember what comes next and call the end, and whoever has that job is never fully in the game. That's the work couples' games you play together on one phone do for you: the card gives the instruction, the timer runs on screen when the card is timed, and the phone goes from hand to hand.

Your questions about sensual games for couples

What's the difference between an erotic game and a sex game?

The line is thin, and the two terms are often used for the same thing. Here's how we draw it: a sex game has rules and stakes, meaning dice, cards, a loser who takes something off or does a dare. An erotic game has no score and no loser. It rests on a constraint that slows things down and brings your attention back to one sense at a time. The two go very well together in one evening: a game with a score to laugh and get undressed, a sensual game for what comes after.

What sensual games can you play with no props?

Words written on skin, the seven words, the whispered memory and one breath, one movement need nothing at all, apart from a phone for the timer. The flashlight and one song, one item of clothing make do with that same phone. For the rest, everything is already in an ordinary home: some oil, a bar of chocolate, a bottle of perfume, ice cubes and a mug of tea. You can play all twelve without ordering anything.

Which sensual game should we start with if we're shy?

One that's played in the dark or with eyes closed, and where you keep your clothes on to begin with: the chocolate kiss, the whispered memory or the flashlight. Shyness nearly always comes from being looked at and from the fear of seeming ridiculous, and those three either remove the looking or shrink it to a circle of light. Save sit on your hands and one breath, one movement for your third or fourth evening. And if even that first step feels too big, start by talking: a round of yes or no questions for couples doesn't require touching anyone.

How do I suggest an erotic game to my partner?

By suggesting one specific game, for one specific evening, and by taking the giving role yourself: "Saturday, I'm giving you a three-round massage, you don't have to do a thing" is hard to turn down. Don't bring it up in bed, where a no turns into a rejection, and steer clear of "we should try some stuff", which suggests nothing. The words, the timing and what to say if the answer is no are all in our piece on how to suggest a naughty game to your partner.

What if one of us bursts out laughing?

Laugh, then pick up exactly where you left off. The giggles often arrive in the first game, usually at the moment one of you sits on their hands or goes looking for a drop of perfume nose first, and they say nothing bad about the evening. What breaks a game isn't laughing, it's apologizing for it for five minutes. That's another thing the constraints are for: they tell you what to do in the second when you no longer know.

Can we play several games in one evening?

Yes, as long as you go from most dressed to least dressed: the chocolate kiss, then one song, one item of clothing, then one breath, one movement make a complete evening in about three quarters of an hour. Don't string together more than that, because past three you spend more time remembering rules than playing. If what you want is a single instruction to slip in between two games, there are forty of them in our spicy challenges for couples. And to get the evening going long before the bedroom, at dinner or in front of the TV, see our date night games at home, from dinner to bed. And if you want games that follow on from each other in an order that builds desire without skipping steps, our foreplay ideas arranged in five levels give you the full route.