SINGAPORE — WeChat has made its next step in becoming more than just another chat app: The latest version 5.1 comes with the launch of WeChat games, a social games platform that leverages WeChat’s social capabilities to integrate gaming with your chat app.

“The introduction of WeChat Games (provides) greater social interaction and sharing with friends,” said Mr Louis Song, Country Manager, Singapore and Malaysia, International Business Group at Tencent, the company behind WeChat.

Five games in total will be launched for now: Wreckless Racer, a racing game; Gunz Dash, an endless running game; Craz3 Match, a match-3 game and 2Day’s Match, where you pair up tiles to proceed; and Pencil Pilot.

Users will be able to challenge their friends on these games, similar to how some games use the Facebook platform to challenge each other on their smartphones, and users can also find challengers nearby using WeChat’s location based service.

WeChat version 5.1 also comes with a slew of other improvements, such as Favourite Messages — no more scrolling through days and weeks of chat history to find something — new stickers, the ability to host up to 100 friends in a single chat, and registration for the WeChat service without a phone number.

WeChat 5.1 was released Dec 20, and the games, except Wreckless Racer, are available now.