Secure messaging app Telegram is about to get a lot more fun, with the addition of a bot-powered Gaming Platform.
« That’s right: you can now use bots to play games in your chats, complete with graphics and sound, » the Telegram team wrote in a Monday blog post. At launch, about 30 HTML5 games are ready to be played on Telegram, most of them published by developer Gamee, including arcade titles Mr. Muscle and Karate Kido and sports and racing titles Football Star and Kung Fu Inc.
One of the best parts — this new Gaming Platform doesn’t require any disk space, and won’t add a single byte to the size of the Telegram app since the underlying technology is HTML5 and games are loaded on-demand as needed, just like webpages.
To start a game, just interact with the @gamee bot directly, or invoke it from any of your chats by typing « @gamee » in a group. Then, choose a game and start playing with your friends. When you spot a good game, you can challenge your friends by simply sharing it with them.
You can find other games by typing « @gamebot » in any chat, including the self-explanatory Math Battle and retro pirate title Corsairs.
« The best part of the Telegram Gaming Platform is the competition across all your existing chats, » the team wrote. « We save high scores for every game played in every chat, and you can instantly check out how you and your friends are doing against each other. » When there’s a new leader on the scoreboard, all players will be notified that they need to elevate their game.
Telegram promised « hundreds » of HTML5-based games in the future, and said building them is easy for developers with this API. Math Battle, for instance, took the company’s developer just three hours to build while Corsairs was up and running within five hours, including sound, graphics, and animations.
« Telegram games can be anything from simple arcades and puzzles to multiplayer 3D-shooters and real-time strategy games, » the team wrote.
Note that games will work on iPhones 4 and newer and Android 4.4 devices and newer. You’ll need Telegram 3.13 or higher to play.