Decoding That Bizarre Google 16-Bit Olympic Video Game

The Olympics are officially here and Google is celebrating by releasing “Doodle Champions Island Games,” a Doodle game that feels like a throwback to 16-bit Japanese gaming, a fitting tribute to the actual games taking place in Tokyo.

The game is bizarre in an awesome way, as you play as a calico cat named Lucky who arrives on Champions Island with the goal of collecting the seven sacred scrolls. But you can only get the scrolls by winning seven mini-games on the island. But before you do that, you have to win a game of table tennis as a warm-up to prove you are ready to compete (don’t worry, it’s super easy).

Once you are able to win the game of table tennis, you are given the chance to join a team while competing. There are four teams and each has a designated color and mascot: the Red Team (represented by a crow named Karasu), the Blue Team (represented by a bull named Ushi), the Yellow Team (represented by a trickster named Inari), and the Green Team (represented by a bird of some kind who only knows how to say “Kappa”).

After choosing your team (or not choosing a team at all), you play the seven mini-games, which include climbing, rugby, archery, artistic swimming, table tennis, skateboarding, and marathon. The games are all simple and easy to win and there are even other hidden challenges you can do if you really want to explore Champions Island. And if you end up not being able to finish all the games in one sitting, Google will save your progress so you can finish it later.

Google CEO Sundar Pichai described “Doodle Champions Island Games” as “the most complex [game] we’ve ever created” and said that there are over four hours of gameplay that people can enjoy.