Have you ever watched the hope drain from another person’s eyes? No? Then you’ve probably never played a round of Exploding Kittens before. Or perhaps you’ve only ever played the game of detonating felines online through Netflix’s suite of mobile games – giving your opponent the chance to hide their shame of suffering yet another loss. But that doesn’t have to be the case anymore. Facebook has announced it is bringing online multiplayer games to its Messenger video calls.
You can always blame the WiFi
The news comes from Facebook Gaming, which recently saw its dedicated gaming app shuttered only a few months ago. It doesn’t seem to have slowed down Facebook’s gaming ambitions, with the company ‘borrowing’ a page from Netflix’s playbook.
Of course, one of the games available at launch is Exploding Kittens – joined by thirteen other titles like Words With Friends, Card Wars and Mini Golf FRVR. Pickings are slim but it’s still more than Netflix had to offer when it launched its service. In the time since, however, Netflix has massively expanded upon its launch titles – leaving Facebook to play catch up.
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The company confirmed that more titles would be coming later down the line, though it didn’t say what they would be or when we could expect them to turn up.
Each of the available games has been built to run in Messenger, with unique UIs and leaderboards that make use of your Facebook profile. To get going, start a video call with a friend on Messenger, click the group mode button and then “Play”. A list of titles will appear, to choose from at your leisure.