Doodle Champion Island Games

Google has a history of releasing cute little games to commemorate holidays, big sporting events, and anniversaries, so the release of Doodle Champion Island Games for the Tokyo Olympics wasn't much of a surprise. However, with the Olympics delayed a full year by the pandemic, I can't help but believe the developers took advantage of their extra window. Where other Google "Doodle" games are just little time wasters that lose my attention after around five minutes, this was almost a full blown RPG that took over an hour for me to beat, and I couldn't get enough!

Playing as a cat named Lucky, you're challenge is to become the champion of a sport-centric island by beating its inhabitants in their preferred Olympic events. There are nine villages to explore, each with their own sport and their own population of characters and creatures straight out of Japanese folklore. You can technically beat the game by quickly running into each village, winning its respective sport minigame, and moving on, but then you'd be missing the bulk of the game. Doodle Champion Island Games is loaded with sidequests and delightful character interactions. Solving the problems of the mythical creatures living throughout the island will always result in some cute dialogue, but it can also earn you access to new areas or harder sports challenges, giving you even more to do! The cameos don't stop at Japanese folklore either, with original Google characters from other apps and Doodles making appearances throughout the island as well.

The production quality for this title is astounding. For a free game that's just meant to be played on an idle Google search screen, I was not expecting fully animated cutscenes, an explorable overworld, or really anything other than some sport-themed minigames. I found myself repeatedly coming back to this one until I had beaten every challenge and solved everyone's problems, and I had a great time doing it. Although this game is meant to tie into the Tokyo Olympics, I think it will be able to stand out for a long time after the competition concludes, assuming Google lets it live that long. Now we just have to hope we get a sequel for next year's Winter Olympics.

The game is available online here (as of 8/3/21): https://www.google.com/doodles/doodle-champion-island-games-begin

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