Teatime, a mobile gaming company setup by the founders of social trivia app QuizUp, has launched a face-to-face mobile gaming platform that enables players to communicate with each other via video chat while playing.

The first game to launch on the Teatime Live platform – and the first game out of Teatime in general – is called Hyperspeed, which is a space race game. In the game, the top part of the screen is reserved for faces of the player and their opponent, featuring all the augmented reality (AR) frills we’ve come to expect from video-focused apps through the app’s ‘Gamefaces’. The remainder of the screen is dedicated to the game itself, where players go head-to-head racing their starships.

Concerns around any platforms that host live video are well-known and, to address this, Teatime has put measures in place to make sure people don’t take advantage of the live video elements of its games.

In order to play, users must use a Facebook, Gmail, or phone number login, and facial recognition technology has been implemented. As such, when no face is detected, Teatime blurs the picture of that user.

“Everyone at Teatime is incredibly excited to launch a new way to play mobile games, and we hope to see other games studios building interactive experiences on the platform. Hyperspeed is one example of a game using Teatime Live that we’ve created, but we expect to work with other game studios on many different genres,” said Thor Fridriksson, co-founder and CEO of Teatime Games. “Our games are made to emphasise the social aspect of being able to play together. It will allow the players to communicate through shared experience, the way we used to. Technology has the capability to both entertain us and connect us, and we see no reason why it shouldn’t do both.”

Since being founded, Teatime has raised $9m in funding from a combination of Index Ventures and Atomico, as well as investment from Tencent’s chief exploration officer, David Wallerstein, and Unity Technologies founder David Helgason.