The short version: iMessage games live inside the App Store drawer next to your keyboard, they only work when both people are on iPhone with iMessage turned on, and one app called GamePigeon covers almost everything worth playing. Skip the rest of the iMessage App Store. It's mostly abandoned.
What "iMessage games" means
When people say "games on iMessage" they usually mean one of two things: mini games that live inside your Messages app, sent back and forth like a message bubble, or a separate app you download that plugs into the iMessage App Store (that little grey App Store icon that sits to the left of the text box, next to the camera and the App Store icon in the row of app icons).
These aren't full console games. They're small, turn-based or quick-round games: eight ball, word games, basketball shots, tic-tac-toe style boards. You play a turn, it sends as a message, the other person taps it, plays their turn, sends it back. No separate app to open on their end if they already have the same app installed, which is the whole point.
What you need before you start
- An iPhone running iOS 12 or later (most iMessage games work fine from iOS 14 onward, and if you're reading this in 2026 you're almost certainly on a much newer version anyway)
- iMessage switched on: Settings, Messages, toggle "iMessage" to on
- The person you're playing with also needs an iPhone with iMessage on. This is the part most guides gloss over and I'll come back to it, because it breaks more setups than anything else
- Enough free storage for the game app itself. GamePigeon, the main one, sits around 150-250MB depending on version, which is small by app standards but still worth knowing before you're mid-download on a train with two bars of signal
How to set up games in iMessage: step by step
- Open Messages and start or open a conversation with someone
- Tap the App Store icon (the grey circle with the letter A, sitting in the row of icons left of the text field)
- This opens the "App Drawer." If you've never used it before, you'll see a small selection of default apps and, at the far right, a plus sign or a basket-shaped icon labelled "More"
- Tap "More" or the plus sign, which opens the full iMessage App Store
- Search for "GamePigeon"
- Tap Get, then confirm with Face ID, Touch ID, or your Apple ID password
- Once it's installed, go back to your conversation, tap the App Store icon again, and GamePigeon should now show as an icon in your app drawer
- Tap it, pick a game (8 Ball, Basketball, Word Hunt, whatever you fancy), and it sends an invite to the other person as a message bubble they can tap to accept
That's eight steps and roughly ninety seconds if your connection is decent. The other person doesn't need to do any of this themselves in advance, they just need iMessage on and a tap to accept when the invite arrives. If they don't have GamePigeon installed, tapping the invite prompts them to download it too. That's the clever bit: you only need one person to have found the app.
The best free games to download first
GamePigeon is free to download and includes over 30 games in one app, which is the whole answer to "what should I download." Individually the standouts are:
- 8 Ball: pool, one shot per turn, works well as a slow-burn game across a whole afternoon
- Basketball: flick to shoot, high score wins, good for quick five-minute sessions
- Word Hunt: a Boggle-style word grid, timed, competitive if you're both quick with words
- Anagrams: unscramble letters against the clock, works well for two people who like puzzles rather than reflexes
- Sea Battle: a Battleship clone, turn-based, no rush, ideal for playing across a whole day between meetings
- Four in a Row: Connect 4, simple, quick, good for kids or anyone who wants zero learning curve
- Cup Pong: beer-pong-style flicking game, popular with teenagers, fine for anyone really
- Tanks: artillery-style, aim and fire, more skill involved than it looks
Beyond GamePigeon, a handful of standalone iMessage apps are worth naming even though most of the category is thin: Words With Friends has an iMessage extension that lets you send moves directly in a thread rather than switching apps, and Bump'd (a small dice/card style app) shows up regularly in App Store charts for iMessage extras. Neither is essential. GamePigeon covers 90 percent of what people want.
A worked example
Say you run a small team of four who work remotely and have a group chat that's mostly logistics: who's covering what, when the invoice went out, that sort of thing. It's Friday afternoon, the work's done, and someone drops a GamePigeon 8 Ball invite into the group instead of a "have a good weekend" message. One person taps it, plays a shot, the game bubble updates in the thread for everyone to see, and within ten minutes three of the four have had a go. Nobody downloaded a separate app on purpose. Nobody scheduled anything. It happened because the invite arrived as a normal message and the barrier to trying it was one tap.
That's the actual value of these games: not that they're brilliant (some are quite basic), but that the friction to start playing is close to zero once GamePigeon is installed once, by anyone, in the thread.
The bit most guides skip
Apple has not meaningfully updated or promoted the iMessage App Store since around 2019. Go and browse it now and you'll find dozens of listed games that haven't been updated in five or six years, some that crash on tap, and a "featured" section that barely changes month to month. Developers stopped investing in this category once it became clear Apple wasn't going to push it the way it pushed the main App Store. GamePigeon survived because it built a large enough user base early and kept minimal maintenance going. Almost nothing else in that store did.
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The other thing worth being blunt about: none of this works if either of you is on Android. iMessage games rely entirely on iMessage's rich bubble format. If your conversation shows green bubbles instead of blue, you're on SMS or RCS, not iMessage, and the game invite will either fail silently or show up as a broken link with no way to open it. This trips up more people than any setup step, because the failure looks like a bug rather than what it is: a platform mismatch. If your friend, partner, or team is a mix of iPhone and Android, iMessage games simply aren't the right tool, and no setting change fixes that.
Troubleshooting the common problems
- "The game icon isn't showing up": close Messages fully (swipe up and away on iPhone) and reopen it, this refreshes the app drawer
- "My invite won't send": check you both have iMessage on under Settings, Messages, and that neither of you has Data Saver or Low Data Mode restricting background app refresh
- "The other person can't see the game": they need to update to the latest iOS if they're several versions behind, and they need GamePigeon installed (tapping your invite should prompt this automatically)
- "It's using up storage": GamePigeon caches game states, and if storage is tight, deleting old game threads (not the whole conversation, just old game invites) frees up space without losing your messages
For the rest of the series, see the Free Games to Play Offline and Online: Every Guide in One Place (2026).
Related: developers: guidelines and how to pitch.
Frequently asked questions
Do both people need an iPhone to play iMessage games?
Yes. iMessage games only work over iMessage itself, so both people need iPhones with iMessage switched on; if either person is on Android the conversation defaults to SMS or RCS and the games won't open.
Is GamePigeon free?
The app itself is free to download and includes over 30 games with no paywall for the core titles, though it does show occasional ads and has some optional paid extras within a handful of the games.
Can I play iMessage games in a group chat, not just one-to-one?
Yes, most GamePigeon games work in group threads, though some (like turn-based board games) are built for two players at a time even within a bigger group chat.
Why did my iMessage game invite stop working after I updated iOS?
This is usually a temporary app cache issue rather than a real bug: force-close Messages, reopen it, and if the game still won't load, delete and reinstall GamePigeon, which resolves the vast majority of post-update glitches.
