If you’re wondering how to make a game for Telegram go viral, we’ve got you covered. This guide offers a selection of recommendations and explanations for the unique characteristics of messenger games.
Highlights:
- Telegram is growing as a gaming platform alongside it’s rising popularity as a messenger;
- The platform’s versatility and openness to innovation offers multiple opportunities for creating a viral game for Telegram;
- The social component is Telegram’s biggest advantage you can use on the road to your game’s success.
The world is changing rapidly and keeping up with these changes is important not only when you want to look progressive or survive in a competitive tech market. Sometimes, taking advantage of certain changes means saving costs and launching game titles that go viral very quickly with little investment and effort.
That is especially true when we're talking about Telegram messenger games.
Telegram is often associated with a secure messaging app or a hub for interest-based communities. But it's actually much more than that: underneath its chat-first surface lies a highly flexible, developer-friendly environment for interactive experiences, games included. That (and many more) currently makes Telegram the third most popular messenger worldwide.
So, the platform is popular, big, and full of curious users. Why not take advantage of it and test these new tech waters by launching viral Telegram games? If you're curious, too, read on.
We have published a general article about how to make a game for Telegram before. In this follow-up feature, we summarize the perks of this platform and the best marketing strategies for game launches to make everything easier for you. And if you’re looking for a partner who can build a Telegram game for you — drop us a line.
A bit of general introduction first, and then we’ll jump right into the main issue.
Why Telegram is a great platform for games
Telegram's built-in gaming capabilities are diverse and offer a variety of developer tools to explore. Below we introduce some of them.
Telegram bots
These are automated programs that interact with users. Such bots can serve as the main interface for a game, handling user inputs, storing scores, managing game states, and even delivering custom visuals or story elements in real-time.
HTML5 and Unity Telegram game integration
One of many perks of Telegram is that it supports HTML5 games. This means that a web game developer can build dynamic and visually engaging mini-games that open inside the app. Your players won't have to download anything, and a game will launch instantly within a chat window or via a game message. Therefore, the gaming experience will be as simple and frictionless as it is generally possible, with less hustle for you and more enjoyment for players.
At the same time, if you have in mind something more complex than HTML5 games, there’s also an option to integrate a game made in Unity, with the help of Unity WebGL — a special framework for Unity games made for browsers.
Bot API
Telegram uses powerful APIs that allow developers to work with inline keyboards, callback queries, custom commands, and real-time updates. This allows you to build literally anything, from trivia and word puzzles to complex turn-based multiplayer games.
Easy group and channel integration
Telegram is created for group settings and thrives in them. This means that your game can be played collaboratively or competitively inside group chats or promoted directly in channels for an additional built-in viral loop.
However, the tools aren't the only benefit of using Telegram for game development. The other perks are:
- Easy onboarding. Players don't need to look for your app in the app store, download it, register or create an account, and deal with device compatibility or updates. Everything happens within the Telegram app, and the barrier to entry is virtually zero. This makes it much easier for your game to gain its initial player base and retain those players.
- Quick built-in sharing. Users playing your game on Telegram can share it by sending bot links to friends, posting their results or scores in group chats, or using inline buttons to invite new players. Furthermore, such sharing happens within trusted spaces (like friend groups), which also positively impacts click-through rates.
- A massive user base that is already within your reach. As of 2025, Telegram has surpassed 1 billion monthly active users. Many of them are tech-savvy, highly engaged, and interested in niche communities. This is a dream demographic for game creators, especially those focusing on crypto-savvy audiences, education and productivity niches, lifestyle and wellness sectors, and fans of minimalist or chat-based gaming experiences.
Faster deployment due to fewer regulations
Telegram gaming platform has a lot simpler deployment and launch processes, and as long as your game doesn’t break the Telegram Terms of Service and Privacy Policy, you can see your game go live real fast. In contrast, the approval process for App Store or Google Play Store can take up to several weeks.
As you can see, using Telegram messenger as your platform of choice for game creation has numerous benefits. But creating a great game is only half the battle, the half that can be done by a dedicated game development partner. Another half is getting it into the hands of engaged users and, ultimately and hopefully, making it viral. This is where marketing strategies come in. So let’s talk about them.
Marketing strategies for a viral game on Telegram
Telegram offers unique, cost-effective marketing opportunities that go beyond traditional app store promotion. Here's how you can use them to maximize your game's reach, retention, and virality.
#1 Promote your game using Telegram channels and groups
Telegram has a large ecosystem of public and private channels and groups, and that is one of the most powerful distribution tools you can use. Here's how to promote your Telegram game with their help.
You can:
- Start your own branded channel and use it to promote your game, share updates, players' tips, community achievements, and announcements. A good extra tip is to make the most of pinned messages and polls to keep engagement high.
- Target existing communities that can be potentially interested in your game. For instance, you can reach out to group admins in your niche and offer them early access or custom perks in exchange for featuring your game. And you can make the most out of the genre as well: for instance, if your game is trivia-based, consider pitching it to education or general knowledge groups.
#2 Collaborate with Telegram influencers and thought leaders
Telegram has its own class of micro-influencers. These could be channel admins, content creators, and thought leaders. The platform is especially ripe with the ones well-known and respected within tech, crypto, and gaming circles.
Here's how you can engage those leaders and influencers, encouraging them to promote your product:
- Offer them exclusive access or a certain level of customization: for instance, a new level preview, a custom avatar, or something like that.
- Collaborate with them to run challenges or contests. This could be challenges like "A person who has a top score this week gets free access to premium mode".
- Sponsor Telegram channel content. If Telegram channels relevant to your game offer paid promotion packages, you can purchase them to raise awareness about your title. This can be not only more affordable than ads on YouTube or Instagram but also more targeted.
#3 Encourage players to invite users to your game
Happy players are your best and most loyal marketing asset. They can leave positive reviews, retain engagement, and, most importantly, bring their friends to play your game. You, in turn, can encourage them to invite others by using one of the following strategies (or combining several of them):
- Offer bonuses for referral. For example, in-game currency, premium access, or cosmetic upgrades.
- Set up specific milestones (levels, storylines, or power-ups) to players after they invite a certain number of friends.
- If your game has multiplayer functionality, encourage people to play with their friends by introducing team-based goals. This, for instance, could be a reward given to a Telegram group when collective goals are reached.
#4 Encourage retention by introducing events, rewards, and challenges
Even if your game is lucky to become viral soon after launch, this doesn't necessarily guarantee its success in the long run. The thing that turns curious players into loyal gaming base is retention. Here's how you can drive it using Telegram.
| Growth tips for Telegram games: How to increase player retention | |
|---|---|
| Daily rewards and streaks | Most mobile games have them, so why should your Telegram title be an exception? While this strategy is quite simple and obvious, this doesn't make it any less effective. Users would gladly check in every day to get bonuses. You can also use countdown timers to add urgency. |
| Limited-time events | Like seasonal content or flash challenges. They aren't a thing for anyone but can encourage adventurous users to spend more time in your game. |
| Leaderboard resets and weekly tournaments | You can create a cycle of competition that resets often enough to keep new players excited and give everyone a fresh chance to win. |
| Exclusive content | Your title's channel or chat can be a separate tool for promotion. You can encourage people to join it by offering behind-the-scenes content, bonus story arcs, or early access to new features to members only. |
To sum it up, we recommend mixing FOMO with rewarding progression loops. This can encourage players to not only return, but bring others along with them.
Case studies: Successful Telegram games
One of the best ways to figure out what makes a Telegram game truly viral is by learning from real experience and examples. The following case studies illustrate what's possible on Telegram, and which factors contribute to that success.
Hamster Kombat
The Hamster Kombat game launched in 2024 and quickly became viral, reaching millions of users within weeks. Even Telegram's CEO called it "the fastest-growing digital service in the world." The game is based on blending idle-clicker mechanics with crypto-themed progression.
Why exactly did it go viral? Here’s our 5 points to answer that:
- The game is simple yet addictive. Hamster Kombat uses basic "tap-to-earn" mechanics and allows users to build their virtual business empire with the help of rapid taps and upgrades.
- It has a crypto narrative. This isn't only a modern, up-to-date concept. It also helps the game appeal to both casual users and Web3 enthusiasts.
- It encourages daily check-ins by offering escalating rewards, limited-time deals, and special tasks.
- Its marketing strategy helped it spread like wildfire via Telegram chats and channels — players were posting screenshots of their earnings everywhere and inviting others.
- Hamster Kombat had gamified referrals. In return for inviting friends, players earned boosts that they could use in the game.
Overall, Hamster Kombat nailed the "snackable game + viral loop + cultural hook" formula. Its success included a combination of addictive UX and community-powered growth.
Catizen
Catizen is another Telegram-based and animal-centric game. It used to be a cat merging game, but now the concept changed quite a lot, and it gave the game a huge boost in popularity. In today’s Catizen, users adopt, raise, and care for virtual cats. Basically, it is a blend of a pet simulator (like good-old Tamagotchi) and gamified community engagement.
Here are 4 reasons players love it:
- It is emotionally engaging. You can name your cat, feed them, and watch them grow, which helps form an emotional bond, creates high retention, and is simply cute.
- It has a charming visual design. What can be better than cats? Cute-looking cats and related collectibles (like outfits and accessories). This encouraged players to share the in-game visuals.
- It has a fun and engaging community. Players can collaborate with others to unlock achievements, post photos of their pets, and participate in seasonal events.
- It offers sweet referral rewards. Inviting friends allows gamers to unlock exclusive cats or decorations.
Catizen's success formula includes emotional investment, community interaction, and lifestyle branding (and cute cats, of course). It turned casual play into a ritual.
Rocky Rabbit
This one is an arcade-style game. In it, players help a rabbit jump through obstacles and collect rewards. Its real-time action is built using HTML5 and offers a more dynamic experience than text-based Telegram bots.
Here's what helped Rocky Rabbit go viral:
- Its gameplay is simple and skill-based. Despite the straightforward dynamics, Rocky Rabbit relies on user skill rather than just clicking. That's why people keep returning: to improve their skills.
- It offers instant gratification, which many of us love. Players get ranked immediately after each session. This motivates them and keeps the competition going.
- It uses FOMO to its advantage. The title frequently launches limited-time challenges with rare rewards and offers streak bonuses.
- It encourages collaboration. Players can invite their friends and form teams to beat score milestones.
- It made the most out of cross-promotion. The game partnered with niche Telegram channels in gaming and crypto spaces for promotion and launch boosts.
Rocky Rabbit thrived because of its high replay value, competitive elements, and time-limited events. All of these are excellent strategies when you want to keep your users hooked and engaged.
What can you learn from these three cases? Well, mostly, that none of them relied on luck. Instead, they kept user psychology, viral loops, and platform-native growth in mind.
Growth tips to maximize reach and engagement
As you can see, success is never accidental, especially in the case of Telegram games. It comes from combining strong gameplay mechanics with smart community marketing. Virality can be planned and engineered, if you focus on growth tips for Telegram games and plan group-based interaction, rewards, and emotional engagement for your title.
Last but not least, a lean MVP approach works well on Telegram as this platform allows you to launch fast, iterate based on real user feedback, and scale organically.
Want more tips to maximize the reach and engagement of your future title? You ask, and we deliver.
Encourage social sharing and challenges among users
Telegram games thrive through peer-to-peer interaction. The more your players share the title organically, the faster your user base will grow.
You can achieve this by adding inline buttons that let users easily share the game with friends or invite others to play in group chats. Or you can let users share their scores, wins, or badges easily with a single tap. This will turn every game session into a promotion opportunity.
Allowing players to challenge others is another great strategy. They can send their friends messages like "Can you beat my score in under 3 minutes?” with clickable game links embedded in them. This drives motivation and makes access to your game as easy as it can be. And weekly competitions with sweet rewards for the most active players will invite said players to post and share their achievements in group chats or Telegram channels.
Basically, it's all about giving your players' base not only a reason but also simple mechanisms for sharing. Doing so allows you to tap into Telegram's natural viral loops.
Optimize your gameplay for virality
With each title, you need to keep the specifics of its gaming platform in mind, and Telegram isn't the platform that would encourage long and complex gaming sessions. You can see it from the viral games' case studies: all the top-performing titles feature bite-sized, rewarding, and easy to restart gaming sessions.
So, what would the optimal Telegram gameplay be?
✅ Short, with gameplay sessions lasting 1–3 minutes on average. Sounds too quick and therefore boring? Not at all. In fact, fast gameplay increases completion rates and makes it easier for the users to jump back in anytime they want. It also makes such games more appealing to those who dislike complex forms of entertainment.
✅ Simple. Onboarding, especially a long one, is definitely a good decision for AAA titles. But do Telegram games need it? Not really. The quicker the players can start playing your title, the more successful it can get.
✅ Quickly rewarding. It's important to build excitement not only by offering rewards but by making them frequent, even if small. Things like unlockable items, streak bonuses, progress bars, or badge collections can actually motivate your players a lot and promote retention.
✅ Easy to repeat. Put a "Play Again" button front and center, and throw in some random elements or alternate outcomes for different rounds to make them more diverse and, therefore, more enjoyable.
Remember: Telegram is a messenger first and foremost, so gaming there is built for attention-short moments. Telegram games should be like memes — easy to consume, hard to ignore, and quick to pass along.
Use analytics for user behavior tracking
Data-driven approach isn't a trend — it's a necessity. In this highly competitive market, you need to track how users behave inside your game to refine its mechanics, double down on what works and get rid of what doesn't.
Here's what you can monitor:
- Daily Active Users (DAU)
- Session length and frequency
- Drop-off points
- Referral conversions
- Leaderboard participation
A/B testing can also help you gain valuable insights about the main features. For instance, you can experiment with different reward structures, UI layouts, or challenges. Sometimes, even the smallest changes have a massive impact on virality and retention. And don't forget to collect user feedback and ratings, as they’re one of the most valuable sources of insights and data to support the numbers.
Wrapping up
Telegram has evolved far beyond a secure messaging platform. Now, it's a massive and thriving ecosystem for social interaction, content distribution, and, what's important in our case, gaming. Telegram can be an efficient platform of choice for developers and entrepreneurs to build and scale viral games quickly.
Case studies only prove it further. Telegram games like Hamster Kombat, Catizen, and Rocky Rabbit can reach millions of players quickly by simply combining addictive mechanics, emotional hooks, and smart marketing. And the best part? You don't need a massive budget to get started. A sharp idea, a lean MVP, and a growth strategy would be enough to kick off.
Now is the perfect time to innovate, engage, and go viral on Telegram.
Ready to build your Telegram game? We at Mind Studios Games can help you bring your next title to life. With 8+ years in the software and game development market, we have the knowledge and experience to craft games that engage, retain, and grow on various platforms, Telegram included.
Contact us today to turn your fresh ideas into the next Telegram success story.
