Last year, Facebook introduced the Messenger Platform which enables developers to develop apps and games to be used within the Messenger. Messenger is a formidable platform on its own where it has 800 million monthly active users which is almost as huge as its sister chatting app, WhatsApp.
Thanks to this initiative, we have seen interesting apps being developed for the Messenger platform like the Uber Integration, various GIF keyboards, Spotify integration and many more. One such game that you can play within Messenger is a basketball game that you launch rather oddly.
It might be odd to launch it but it is rather simple. Just go to Messenger, start a conversational thread with someone, send the basketball emoji to the recipient, tap the basketball emoji and you are good to go. This is how the interface looks like after tapping and launching the game:
The interface is rather simple really. You have the board and the rim at the centre and the animated basketball at the centre. You only need to do a swiping gesture to shoot the ball to the rim. Emojis are used to describe the nature of the shot: If you miss, you get the sad emoji ? and if you make a shot (either a swish or a lucky one) you will be shown the ? emoji and it is not limited to these emojis.
It is a rather addictive game that can take most of your leisure time if you indulge as you try to show your inner Steph Curry. This is one of the measures Facebook has put in place to make sure people are actively engaged on the platform and it is clearly working. If you want to see the gameplay in action, click here.
