FunMobility, a mobile social entertainment company, announced the launch of FunChat, a cross-platform smartphone application that blends chat, multiplayer HTML5 games, FunGold virtual currency, rewards, and achievements into one free application.

With these social tools, the free app allows iPhone (News – Alert), iPod Touch, and Android users to play and interact together in real time.

An innovative feature of FunChat is a mobile “pranking engine” that lets users push audio pranks to smartphones even if the phone is in standby mode. Pranks range from wolf whistles to Bronx cheers, and angry pigs to rubber duckies. Users can send pranks to unsuspecting friends’ phones even if the FunChat isn’t running.

The Chattitude, another innovative feature of FunChat, allows users to personalize their chat experience with neo-anime avatars, distinctive chat bubbles, and a catalog of virtual goods suited for every personality, mood or occasion – either in a public party room or with friends in private.

The cross-platform HTML5 multiplayer gaming allows for a broad variety of multiplayer arcade games including concentration, carnival duck shooting, match-3, racing, and more. These are built in HTML5 and optimized for iPhone and Android (News – Alert) devices.

FunGold virtual currency, virtual goods, rewards and achievements allow FunChat users to earn FunGold virtual currency for every action taken. They can redeem the currency for virtual goods and prizes such as avatars, advanced chat bubbles, in-game items and pranks.

“A key ingredient to the ‘secret sauce’ behind FunChat lies in our HTML5 multiplayer game engine that enables high-quality games to be played concurrently between native iOS and Android clients and browsers,” said Adam Lavine, CEO of FunMobility, in a statement.

“This proprietary game engine is part of our extensible FunChat Mobile Engagement platform which allows developers to easily make open-standard HTML5 games that run on both the iOS and Android platforms, offering consumers new ways to share, discover, and play together in real-time,” Lavine added.

FunChat is available as a free download on the Apple App Store and the Google (News – Alert) Android Market, company officials said.

By combining chatting and texting with social gaming and gameplay mechanics, FunChat addresses the needs of customers for mobile messaging and entertainment.

Back in May FunMobility announced it is hiring interactive entertainment industry veteran, Daniel Pfeiffer as vice president of marketing. Pfeiffer is responsible for the overall leadership and direction of corporate and product marketing and public relations efforts.