Google brings back its coding game archives amid Coronavirus lockdown

• Google is relaunching its Doodle archives to kill boredom under the ‘Stay and Play at home’ tagline.
  
• Starting today, Google will launch a coding game from the past doodles everyday.
  
• Today, it launched an interactive game that dates back to 2017, which was launched to celebrate 50 years of kids coding.
  
• This is based on the scratch programming language for kids aged between 8 to 16 years. The idea is to make coding a fun learning experience for kids.

As millions of people across the globe stay confined to their homes in the wake of Coronavirus, Google is relaunching its Doodle archives to kill boredom under the ‘Stay and Play at home’ tagline.

Starting today, Google will launch a coding game from its old doodles, everyday. “As COVID-19 continues to impact communities around the world, people and families everywhere are spending more time at home. In light of this, we’re launching a throwback Doodle series looking back at some of our popular interactive Google Doodle games,” the company said.

Today, it launched an interactive game from 2017, which was launched to celebrate 50 years of kids coding. This was to observe the Computer Science Education week.

The doodle features a carrot eating rabbit. To win the game, the mammal has to collect all the carrots following the instructions given by the player using command tiles. This is based on the scratch programming language for kids aged between 8 to 16 years.

The interactive language was developed by Google Doodle team, Google Blockly team, and MIT Scratch. The idea is to make coding a fun learning experience for kids. Scratch allows the kids to drag and drop blocks as per instructions rather than getting them into complex coding.

"In the interactive Doodle, you program and help a furry friend across 6 levels in a quest to gather its favorite food by snapping together coding blocks based on the Scratch programming language for kids," said Champika Fernando, a MIT Scratch Team-member.

The most recent doodles launched by Google have been in line with the initiatives around the global pandemic. It launched doodles to honour Hungarian physician Ignaz Semmelweis, who first discovered the benefits of handwashing and a doodle series to thank Coronavirus helpers who are the frontline of this battle — including healthcare professionals and packaging workers.

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