Google launches game to commemorate Olympics

Top search engine, Google, has launched a doodle game to commemorate the 2020 Olympic Games as it  kicks off in Tokyo, Japan.

The Verge reported that the google doodle game called ‘Doodle Champion Island Games’ is in celebration of sports in general and Japanese culture specifically.

The Google game features art from Japanese animation house, Studio 4°C and is a series of 16-bit mini games. The series of games include several Olympic events such as skateboarding, climbing, marathon running, swimming and table tennis.

The studio stated,

“First, we identified stories and folktales from all over the country with characters that are highly recognized.’

“Next, we connected those folktales and characters with each of the sport events included in the game. In the design process, each event champion was selected from those unique stories.

The Olympic themed game is designed in so that users can play and contribute to the scores of four teams. However, Google will track these scores on a global leaderboard.

The game character known as Lucky the Calico Ninja Cat, is the character players will represent.  They can then choose to join any of the four teams available. Ushi (a cow)represents the Blue team. The Red, by Karasu (a crow), Yellow, Inari (a fox) or Green teams, Kappa (a Japanese turtle-like water spirit).

“The team mascots and the characters in the city such as Kappa, Yatagarasu, lion dance, were also chosen as they are very well known across Japan. Each character’s design was based on their original story image, but then adapted for the game,” the studio supplied.

During every game, players contend with a ‘Legendary Champion’ from the Japanese history and folklore.

Users can go on Google app or Google Chrome browser home page to play the game. All they have to do is click on the game logo and start playing the google doodle game.