Doodle Champion Island Games

About

Google Doodle Champion Island Games are a set of computer games created by Google to coincide with the 2020 Tokyo Olympics.

History

On July 22nd, 2021, Google^[1] revealed Doodle Champion Island Games, an in-browser video game developed in collaboration with Tokyo-based animation studio STUDIO 4°C. In the game, players play as Lucky, a cat, who arrives on an island to play in the "champion island games," seven activities that are loosely based on Olympic sports. Players can play table tennis, skateboarding, archery, rugby, artistic swimming, climbing, and marathon. They can also join one of four teams and take on "bosses" of each sport. There is also an online leaderboard so players can see how others have done in the various challenges.

Online Presence

Players were surprised at the game's quality. The Verge^[2] wrote, "The whole package seems like a sports RPG in miniature, filtered through the kind of Flash games that would consume my afternoons as a kid… Google calls it an homage to classic Japanese 16-bit games -- and while limited in some ways by living inside web browsers, it definitely seems to capture some of that spirit." In Reddit's /r/Minecraft,^[3] several users expressed how the game far surpassed their expectations.

The game also quickly generated a passionate online following. Gamers quickly began speedrunning the various challenges and the full game, discovering the full game can be completed in less than 9 minutes (examples shown below). On July 23rd, Redditor ExaminationMAssive95 posted that they'd completed a speedrun of the climbing game in 11 seconds, gaining over 590 points.^[4]

On July 26th, 2021, Redditor speedy_nate64 posted a Minecraft recreation of the game's logo, gaining over 10,000 points^[3] (shown below).

Search Interest

External References