TikTok has quietly added a secret emoji game that you can access in your direct messages. The goal of the game is simple. Use your finger to bounce as high as you can by hopping across alligators. You must avoid the skeleton alligators, and be careful because broken alligators disappear after just one landing, forcing you to quickly bounce to the one above.
If you guide your jump to a floating emoji, you will get a speed boost to help you climb faster. The same boost happens when you land on an alligator with a propeller on it. If you fail to land on an alligator or land on a skeleton, the game is over. The object is to bounce higher than your opponent. As you play, you will see both your score and your opponent’s high score displayed in the top right corner.
TikTok confirmed on Tuesday that the game is available globally and can be accessed in both one-on-one and group chats. You can access the game by sending a single emoji in any chat and then clicking on it to enter. The emoji you click on is the same one that will float across the screen to give you a boost. You can use any emoji you want, but you can only access the game by sending one emoji at a time.
TikTok says it launched this Easter egg to make messaging more fun and to add a playful element of competition to direct messages on the platform. With this launch, TikTok is taking a page out of Instagram’s book. Instagram introduced its own hidden emoji game in direct messages two years ago, and TikTok’s version follows a similar concept. Instagram’s game has players using a paddle to keep an emoji bouncing.
TikTok is not the only social media platform experimenting with games in direct messages. Meta confirmed in January that Threads is exploring games in chats. The company is internally prototyping a basketball game that appears to let users virtually shoot hoops by swiping a finger.