Conjuring Charms and Challenges: GOOGLE Celebrates Halloween with a Bewitching Doodle Game

As everyone gets into the spooky spirit in the leadup to Halloween, GOOGLE has prepared a treat: a magical new game on the Google Doodle, which celebrates the holiday with both heart and magic. For its fourth Halloween celebration in a row, the tech giant has brought back Momo, a black magic-wielding cat, in the latest installment of the Magic Cat Academy series. This year’s Doodle game, titled ‘Momo’s Magical Flight’, will let players join Momo on her wintry flight, enabling them to concoct conifer-inspired magic spells and explore all of Halloween’s delights and challenges.

The Enchanting World of Momo

Ever since she first appeared in the 2016 Halloween Doodle to battle witches, Momo has become a darling of those who play Google Doodle games. The bright young cat “attended” a Harry Potter-style school and her pumpkin-carving antics charmed Doodle fans of all ages. Now she’s back, riding the winds using her broom as a paw, to face spooky sky-high wraiths.

A Game of Magic and Mastery

In its broad strokes, the Magic Cat Academy Google Doodle of 2024 adhered to previous editions: you kill evil ghosts by rapidly sketching the logograms that float above their heads. The one-to-one correspondence between avatar and player (the cat and the human) is not a given. But this deceptively simple conceit takes on a new level of challenge and interest when multiple, distinct enemies crop up – each of which requires a string of different signs to be killed – and the screen starts to fill with hordes of ghosts.

Swirling Symbols and Spirited Spectres

The Magic Cat Academy game’s appeal is twofold: it is both intuitive and not. The basic concept is easy enough for children (and adults) to pick up, but it requires deftness and split-second timing to successfully complete each level, making it a satisfying challenge. Like many of Google’s past Halloween Doodles, the Magic Cat Academy is available on the Google homepage for a 48-hour run, delightfully distracting those who are waiting for trick-or-treaters or just trying to get into the spooky holiday spirit.

Discover the Magic of Past Celebrations

For anyone still under Momo’s spell, there’s much more magic to discover – a collection of past Google Halloween celebrations can be found via the Google Doodle library. All of Momo’s adventures are here, as are the multitude of doodle ghosts that have haunted all Halloweens Doodle past. If one word was to describe this archive (besides ‘doodle’), it would be ‘participatory’ – evidence of a company using its medium to celebrate cultural moments in a way that is innovative and delightful.

Momo’s Magical Flight: A Tradition of Creativity

The Magic Cat Academy series has demonstrated Google’s increasing creativity in its ability to weave together creativity, culture and technology into compelling and arresting experiences – each successive year building on the lore of Halloween and the possibilities of what can be done in an interactive Doodle. Momo’s adventures might be framed around the theme of ghostbusting, but the underlying themes that are played out are those of bravery, resilience and the delight of discovery – all of which is as true of the values driving Google as it is of the adventures of its amiable black-pawed feline protagonist.

The Magic Behind GOOGLE

We also see that, beyond the game, the Google Doodle is a story; it’s an interactive narrative to which Google is inviting every user in the world to contribute. Google has consistently used its homepage to consumerise cultural moments, educate users through themes relevant to the historic calendar, and, through creative and inclusive storytelling, enchant the world with a little magic. From magical black cats to astronauts, Google’s strategy of engagement through creativity is one of its greatest strengths.

And again, the feeling of what Steve Jobs set out to achieve with Apple’s ‘Thinking Different’ ad in 1997 – embracing the essence of what makes Google’s Doodles a delightful experience, by allowing everyone, regardless of time, location or comprehension, to feel a sense of togetherness, playfulness and wonder. Yet, on Halloween, it is Momo’s magical knack that helps us overlook the boundaries of language, to immerse ourselves instead in the ability of creative gestures and playful experiences to transform the routine into something extraordinary, by simply involving ourselves in a gesture of celebration. The symbol is drawn, and the dragon unleashes a stunning display of fireworks. Take Momo’s magical flight with us this Halloween, let’s all shake those symbols, and take a moment to remember what creativity can do to the ordinary. Happy Halloween, and happy doodling!