Since it was founded 20 years ago, Alphabet’s Google has dressed up the company name and main search page using themed “Doodles,” including interactive Doodle Games. Though the company doesn’t post the interactive games with great frequency, older Doodle games remain popular and can be accessed trough the Google Doodle archive.
Classic Google Doodle Games include Pac-Man and the interactive Hip Hop Doodle, which can help you hone your DJ skills, and a Rubik’s Cube people can play via clicks. In 2018, the team added several more Doodle Games, and several other themed Doodles worth noting.
Here are all of the Doodle Games that (GOOG) Google released in 2018.
Game of the Year
Much like a Doodle game that lets you play to win, Google’s Game of the Year is an interactive quiz that tests your knowledge of all that happened in 2018. Perhaps not surprisingly, the game is based on search engine data, such as which topics or words were searched for most frequently.
Playful Halloween
It only took two decades for Google to make it possible to trick-or-treat without leaving your laptop. For Halloween 2018, Google released its first-ever interactive, multiplayer game. In the charmingly-named, four-player Great Ghoul Duel, individual players join a two-person team and compete with players from around the world to collect the most points, or “spirit flames,” as they’re known in the game. Get scary good at it, and you can unlock special bonuses.
Gnome Games
Another popular Google Doodle Game from 2018 featured what must be Germany’s best known, most whimsical garden feature: the garden gnome. Players use a catapult to launch the tiny statues into the farthest corners of the virtual garden, planting flowers as they fly through the air. The more flowers you plant, the more points you earn.
Snow Games
In honor of the 2018 Winter Olympics in PyeongChang, South Korea; Google released a series of so-called Snow Games Doodles that users of the search engine can enjoy at home, no athletic ability required. Google released one Snow Games Doodle for every day of the winter games, bringing the grand total to 17 in all.
Because the year’s Winter Olympics overlapped with Valentine’s Day, one of the Snow Games Doodles featured two figure-skating grebes, which, while not an interactive game, sure are sweet. Another holiday that overlapped with the Games, the Lunar New Year, was also given its own Google Doodle.
Civic Duty
Technically not a Google game—and certainly, democracy is no game either—the 2018 National Voter Registration Day Doodle nevertheless served an important purpose: reminding any eligible U.S. citizen to be sure to register to vote in the midterm elections.