Not sure why that would have to be done server side though, couldn’t the server only be used for coordination/maintain state and then submit the current state/positions to the client and the client would render the board?
In his example, there is no client browser. The users are just sending commands into a telegram chat, the app is presumably only able to send API calls based on chat events responses. Its unlikely the app would be sufficiently featured to do the board rendering itself, although I am not really familiar with this space so I'm making assumptions.
As such, the backend would do the heavy lifting of rendering the board, and send the rendered board back into the message group.
I think one’s constrained by the chat application’s functionalities. Telegram doesn’t allow a bot to perform such operations on the client, last time I built one at least.
Of course one might be able to use emoji or text as a representation of said state if the game allows for it.
As such, the backend would do the heavy lifting of rendering the board, and send the rendered board back into the message group.