Google has enhanced its search homepage today with a ‘Doodle’ in honour of the 50th anniversary of cult-British sci-fi TV show Dr Who. It’s one of the best crafted Doodle games I have seen from Google and will probably result in a Friday afternoon with even further reduced productivity for many office workers.
The Doodle is activated by pressing the pulsing triangular ‘play’ button in place of the second ‘O’ in the GOOGLE text. Following your click a Dalek appears and shrink-rays the logo to bring you to a character selection screen where you can choose which of the 11 incarnations of The Doctor you wish to play. It doesn’t seem to matter which character you choose to the game level which appears next. You character must go to collect a letter from the Google logo using levers to move platforms whilst avoiding a patrolling Dalek which will happily exterminate you. The game is timed and finished when you have collected all six letters to assemble the Google Logo.
Google’s Dr Who Doddle is greatly enhanced by using sound effects from the Dr Who shows. In my quick play of the game I very quickly heard the terrifying Dalek mantra of “exterminate”.
The Guardian fills in a bit of background information on this new Google distraction. The Dr Who Doodle feature is apparently known as the ‘Whodle’ in Google’s offices and has been worked on for the last four months or so. Five people worked on it, led by Matthew Cruickshank, a Brit who designed the game and graphics in a team including four others.
