When I started building my latest side project, I thought the hardest part would be the game itself.
I was wrong.
The real challenge wasn't networking, animations, or game logic.
It was everything that happened before the game even started.
I realized I wasn't optimizing gameplay.
I was optimizing the time between someone saying:
"Let's play."
and actually playing.
That changed the way I think about product development.
The Problem
If you've ever tried to get a group of friends into a multiplayer mobile game, you've probably seen something like this.
Receive a link ⭢ Open the App Store ⭢ Download the app ⭢ Install ⭢ Create an account ⭢ Verify your email ⭢ Sign in ⭢ Find a room ⭢ Start playing
Every additional step increases the chance that someone simply gives up.
Not because they don't want to play.
Because onboarding has already become work.
What We Wanted Instead
Before writing the first line of code, I defined one simple requirement.
Joining a game should feel almost effortless.
The ideal flow looked like this.
Receive a link ⭢ Tap ⭢ Play
That's it.
No friction.
No unnecessary decisions.
Why Telegram Mini Apps
After exploring different approaches, Telegram Mini Apps turned out to solve most of the onboarding problems automatically.
Users already have:
Telegram installed.
An authenticated identity.
A profile.
A social graph.
A familiar interface.
Instead of asking people to create another account, we simply use the one they already have.
The Result
Our onboarding flow became dramatically shorter.
Receive a link ⭢ Open Telegram ⭢ Start playing
No installation.
No registration.
No passwords.
No email verification.
For first-time users joining a friend's room, the entire process usually takes 5–10 seconds.
Ironically, this became one of the most important performance metrics of the project.
Not FPS.
Not API latency.
Not Lighthouse scores.
Time to first game.
The Most Surprising Part
I expected people to say things like:
"That's a cool Telegram app."
Almost nobody did.
Instead, they said:
"Wait... we're already in?"
That was the moment I realized something important.
Users rarely care about the technology behind your product.
They care about how quickly they reach value.
The best onboarding experience is often the one nobody notices.
It Wasn't Free
Telegram Mini Apps solve many problems, but they also introduce new engineering challenges.
For example:
Working within a mobile WebView.
Optimizing animations for mobile devices.
Handling deep links.
Managing application state.
Designing interfaces for small vertical screens.
Still, every one of those trade-offs felt worthwhile compared to asking users to go through a traditional registration flow.
What This Project Changed for Me
Before this project, I thought great products were built by adding more features.
Now I think the opposite.
Great products often win because they remove more obstacles.
Every extra screen.
Every required field.
Every password.
Every verification step.
Each one is another opportunity for users to leave before experiencing any value.
Final Thoughts
Today, whenever I start building something new, I ask myself a different question.
Not:
"What else can I build?"
But:
"What can I remove before users get their first moment of value?"
For this project, Telegram Mini Apps reduced that journey from roughly two minutes to around ten seconds.
Looking back, that wasn't just an implementation detail.
It was one of the best product decisions I made.
About the project
The ideas described in this article came from building a real-time multiplayer Telegram Mini App. I'll be writing more about its architecture, networking, UI challenges, and product decisions in future posts.
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