Google Doodles; we’re all familiar with the cute drawings that show up on the popular search engine. Everyone loves the seasonal changes and holiday celebrations within the logo, so what better way to celebrate Halloween than to take a look at every Halloween Google Doodle?
Google started celebrating Halloween with its logos in 1999—over two decades ago. Every year since then, a new celebratory drawing has appeared. Some were drawn by guest illustrators, while others have small animations or games. We ranked every one of these in a tier list, and here are our results!
Overall, the best Doodle was the original Great Ghoul Duel released in 2018, where players travel throughout the map collecting blue spirit flames to gain power-ups and points. In fact, the game was such a hit that Google redid it four years later, adding new maps, powerups, and cosmetics.
The other S-Tier games were the two Magic Cat Academy games, in which the protagonist, a black cat named Momo, casts spells to free her school of ghosts. The original Magic Cat Academy was released in 2016, and the reboot, released four years later, seemingly in the same universe, only underwater. The fifth S-Tier game deserves a special shoutout. While not being a full game, 2014’s Halloween Doodle features not one but six animations made by three guest artists. This, combined with the sheer effort it must have taken to make, lands it solidly in S-Tier.
As you can see from the list, the interactive Doodles generally ranked higher than the non-interactive ones, and most of the non-moving Doodles ranked the lowest of all. There are a few exceptions to these rules, including the 2014 Doodle mentioned earlier and 2000’s animated Doodle, which was a huge disappointment considering that it was just a redraw of the year before. Another pattern-breaking doodle was 2017, which was a short film of Pixar quality depicting a lonely ghost on Halloween night. The other video took the place of 2011’s Halloween Doodle and shows what is assumed to be the Google Doodle team carving their own pumpkins.
There were two more outliers in B-Tier worth mentioning. The first is 2012’s interactive Doodle, which ranked the lowest out of the interactives due to its simplicity. Not without reason, though: it was the very first of that type. The second B-Tier outlier was 2010, ranking highest out of the still Doodles due to its detail and callbacks to the other Doodles.
Lastly, we have the disappointment that was 2009’s still Doodle. For the tenth anniversary Doodle, it should have been much more elaborate, especially with 2008 and 2007’s Doodles being so intricate. The candy taking the place of the ‘e’ isn’t even very e-shaped, either.
Google seems to be on a roll recently with their games and game remakes, and it doesn’t look like they’ll be stopping anytime soon. We look forward to seeing future Halloween Doodles!
