As if we haven’t already wasted enough time on the internet this month looking for Halloween costumes and figuring out which bars and restaurants have the best specials, Google is now tempting us with a new online game within its latest Doodle. On October 30th, Google shared a new Doodle on its homepage which features a game called The Great Ghoul Duel, and although it’s relatively simple, it’s surprisingly fun to play.
In order to join a match, all you have to do is head to Google.com on your desktop or mobile browser and tap on the colorful Doodle in the middle of the page with the green and purple ghosts. Before being paired up with other players, you will be able to go through a short tutorial that explains how to play.
Once you’re comfortable with the controls, you can join a match to team up with three other players on either the green or the purple team and battle the other team. You win by collecting more spirit flames (which are scattered all over the map) than the other team and returning them to your base. But ghosts on the other team can steal flames you’ve pick up by bumping into your collection before you get back to the base. You can do the same to the other team’s players, and whichever team collects the most flames in two minutes wins.
You can even receive power-ups like speed boosts and night vision by picking up turning in enough spirit flames, and you’ll see just how well you did relative to the other players when the match comes to an end.
“In a Doodle first, players can choose to host a game with up to seven friends and family via a custom invitation link OR just play with randomized players around the globe,” Google says. “The team built several systems to enable this multiplayer gaming, all running on the Google Cloud Platform, including integrating Open Match, a highly-scalable, open source matchmaking framework cofounded by Google Cloud and Unity.”
