Celebrating the spirit of Olympics with Google Doodle Championship

The Tokyo Olympics opened on July 23, 2021 after being postponed for more than a year. No spectators are allowed, and the athletes, including 120 from India, are playing to empty galleries. But a group of artists at Tokyo based company STUDIO4°C, believed in bringing the spirit of sports alive in the virtual world, even when there are restrictions in the real one. Ahead of the opening ceremony of the Tokyo Olympics, Google teamed up with them to launch the innovative and animated Doodle Champion Island Games. 

How does the game operate? 
Once we click on the familiar Google doodle, a window pops up with a short animation. It shows ‘(c)athletic calico Lucky’, as Google calls her sailing through the sea on a boat. The adorable cat reaches an island and through a fantasy landscape to reach the gaming arena. Here the user can actually start playing a game as part of the four colour teams on a real-time global leaderboard. The 7 carefully chosen games include table tennis, skateboarding, archery, rugby, swimming, climbing and marathon. On winning each game, Lucky gets a sacred scroll. She keeps decorating the trophy room in the middle of the island with her achievements. She will finally win flowers and a choice of coloured dumplings as a champion. To make it exciting, there are secrets to be uncovered, side quests and lots of adventures. The best part is that the entire game can be played only with arrow keys and the space bar.  

From where did these characters come?   
Japanese folktales were researched to create the characters, scenarios and artwork details. STUDIO4°C worked only with Japanese animation artists, who wanted people to enjoy the game and also get interested in Japanese history, art and culture through the attractive animation characters. 

Fun trivia: The lead character was originally a fox. The animation team noticed that the fox is a trickster in all folktales. So they replaced him with Lucky. Calico cats are very common in Japan and Lucky is modeled on actual paintings of cats in ancient Japanese scrolls.