If you happen by Google’s home page, you may be greeted by a grainy black and white animation of an alien ship in what seems to be distress. Click on the play button and find Google’s point and click adventure. This game, let’s call it Google, follows the solitary alien struggling to reclaim the pieces of its ship after crash landing on a farm. Surprisingly, it’s a solid game, if only an extremely short one.
It’s admirable that there are no tutorials — a noble omission that arguably all games should strive for. The only guide that the game gives you is a thought bubble that appears over the alien’s head depicting the pieces of its ship that it obviously needs. Other than that, the player is left to his/her own devices, encouraging exploration.
As short as this game is, Google is divided into four sections, all with various environmental puzzles to solve. These puzzles range in difficulty which the game does a good job in ramping up, making the progression smooth and satisfying. If anything, even the more difficult puzzles are made easier by the game’s presentation.
It turns out, Google‘s minamlistic, black and white grainy art style is a double edged sword. On the one hand, it provides an emphatic mood of isolation and anxiety ala Limbo. At the same time, there is only so much environment. Even when stuck on a section, it will only take a matter of several clicks before something happens.
Overall, this short title (it took me a little under 10 minutes of play my first time through) delivers a point and click experience that cannot be discounted. Even though it was developed by a company known for search, YouTube, and Glass, it bears all the quality expected of a veteran game studio.
