We’ve all found ourselves waiting to get a reply back from a friend after sending them a Direct Message on Instagram. But what if we told you that Instagram has quietly introduced a game right within your DMs that you can play while you wait for a response?

How to Play Instagram’s Emoji Game

If you’ve ever played a game of ping-pong or table tennis—think of Instagram’s emoji game as a virtual version of those games. Luckily, there’s no need to adjust any settings or install extra applications to try out Instagram’s emoji game.

All you need to do is follow the steps below:

1. Locate the account you’d like to message on Instagram by heading to your Direct Messages.
2. Type in an emoji of your choice and hit the Send button. You can also check for an existing emoji in your chat.
3. Tap the emoji once and you’ll automatically be redirected to Instagram’s emoji game. This won’t work if you use the emojis in Instagram Reactions, however.
4. You’ll notice a paddle at the bottom of the screen, along with the emoji you sent moving across your device’s screen.
5. Move the paddle to bounce your emoji off of it. You’ll lose the game once you fail to do this.

Rather than sending your friends a random emoji out of nowhere, you can let them know about the new mini-game feature. Some might not have the feature yet though.

Keep in mind that the game gets harder as you accumulate points—the speed at which the emoji moves across the screen will gradually increase. If you’d like to play the game again after you lose, tap the Play Again button. If you’d like to return to your Direct Messages, tap Go Back instead.

Emojis We Recommend Trying Out

Although any emoji will activate the ping-pong game, certain emojis add an extra flair to the experience. Here are a few emojis we recommend using to play Instagram’s emoji game:

• Egg: As you play the game, a baby chick will begin to hatch from the egg.
• Caterpillar: The caterpillar will turn into a butterfly as you play the game.
• Pizza: You’ll notice cheese slices being dropped around every time the pizza emoji touches the paddle.
• Devil: If you’re up for a challenge, you should definitely play the game with the devil emoji—try to catch it if you can!

Unfortunately, you can’t play the game with your friends just yet, even if you’re both present in the chat at the same time. However, it’s possible that a multiplayer mode will be added in the future.

The feature is also being rolled out to users gradually, with some Android users reporting not to have received the feature yet. So, if you’ve updated the Instagram app on your Android or iOS device already and haven’t received the feature, hold on tight!