By interacting with other characters on the island, users can also complete some side quests along the way such as figuring out how to collect water from a hot spring to complete a construction project or find a missing person. — Screengrab from YouTube
In conjunction with the Tokyo Olympics, Google has unveiled Doodle Champion Island Games on its homepage today (July 23).
The new SNES-style interactive Google Doodle lets users play as Lucky, a ninja cat, who takes on several opponents on the island through seven sports minigames, namely table tennis, skateboarding, archery, rugby, artistic swimming, climbing and marathon.
According to Google, Lucky’s goal is to collect seven sacred scrolls. If players complete a minigame with a high score, Lucky will be rewarded with dangos (a Japanese treat made from rice flour).
By interacting with other characters on the island, users can also complete some side quests along the way such as figuring out how to collect water from a hot spring to complete a construction project, or find a missing person. Users can also figure out how to get coins in the game to purchase some items needed to complete the side quests.
They can join one of the four available teams – Ushi (Blue), Karasu (Red), Inari (Yellow) and Kappa (Green) – and contribute to a real-time global leaderboard.
Google has described the new doodle as its “largest ever interactive Doodle game” in a statement.
The anime-style cutscene and characters for Doodle Champion Island Games was created by Japan-based animation studio Studio 4°C.
In a Q&A posted on the Google Doodle website, the company said they created the characters based on well-known stories and folktales in Japan. Then they had to find a way to connect the characters to the sports events in the game.
The company also said that they hope people will enjoy the game and complete all the challenges. They explained that Lucky aims to bring happiness by presenting flowers and dangos to people.
“Also, only Champions know how hard Lucky worked. In other words, we want to convey that joy can result from the focus and hard work of every one of us, which is not always recognised by others. We’re also hoping for a sanshoku dango (three-coloured dumplings) trend,” the company said.
The Doodle Champion Island Games can be accessed on the Google homepage. Players can use controls on their keyboard, or on the screen if they are using their mobile devices.
