Last year we launched a Bot Platform for Telegram. Free, powerful, and open, it was an instant hit among users and developers. Today we are aiming to push the boundaries further by launching a bot-powered Gaming Platform on Telegram. That’s right: you can now use bots to play games in your chats, complete with graphics and sound.

Ready to Play

Hundreds of games are headed your way, but about 30 are ready to be played on Telegram now, most of them published by @gamee. You can start a game by interacting with their bot directly, or by invoking it from any of your chats. To do that, try typing “@gamee “ in a group and choose a game to start playing with your friends:

Select a game

If you spot a great game on Telegram, you can challenge your friends from other chats by sharing the game with them.

Challenge your friends

Better with Friends

The best part of the Telegram Gaming Platform is the competition across all your existing chats. 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. Every time there’s a new leader in the game, other playing members of the chat are notified that they need to step it up.

In-game high scores

New high score in chat

Easy to Build

Building games for Telegram is easy (check out the API). Here’s MathBattle, a game that took our developer only 3 hours to build. You can launch it from any chat by typing @gamebot and choosing Math Battle:

This is Corsairs, a demo game that took its dev just 5 hours to build and set up. That includes sound, graphics and animations:

While these demos look basic, Telegram games can be anything from simple arcades and puzzles to multiplayer 3D-shooters and real-time strategy games. The underlying technology is HTML5, so games are loaded on-demand as needed, just like ordinary webpages. Games will work on iPhones 4 and newer and on Android 4.4 devices and newer. Note that your friends will need Telegram 3.13 or higher to play.

If you are a developer, take a look at our Introduction to Games. Also, feel free to subscribe to our official @BotNews channel to stay up to date on platform news.

No Added Calories

We know you love Telegram because it’s lean and efficient. This is why the new Gaming Platform requires 0 bytes of disk space and won’t add a single byte to the size of our apps. The only thing we're adding today is countless more fun moments in your chats.

And now let's see how high you can score.

October 3, 2016
The Telegram Team