Telegram launched a gaming platform for Android and iOS through which bots can be used to play games within chats, “complete with graphics and sound”.

Thirty games are ready to be played, with “hundreds” more in the pipeline. Users can interact with a bot directly to start a game, or “invoke” it from within a chat to play with friends.

Telegram said one of its games, Math Battle, only took three hours to build, while another called Corsairs took five hours.

“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,” the messaging app maker said in a blog.

The gaming platform doesn’t require any disk space and “won’t add a single byte to the size of our apps,” it added.

Earlier in the year Telegram updated its bots platform and said it would give $1 million to developers for creating an “impressive bot” that is fast and useful.