Google may be just now dipping its toes into the waters of the gaming industry on a larger scale thanks to the upcoming Stadia service, but it’s offered games in some form for quite some time. The infamous Chrome browser game when you’re not connected to the internet, complete with a cute little dino that you have to make jump over things as he runs has been around for years.
Beyond that Google tends to release other little hidden gems that you can usually access through the main Search website, and its latest is a simple tennis game to celebrate the Wimbledon games that are currently happening. Accessing it is really very easy and because it’s a simple game when it comes to mechanics it’s easy to lose track of time playing it.
To find the hidden tennis game first you need to open up your Chrome browser, either on your smartphone or on your desktop as it can be played in both spots. Once you have the browser open, go to Google and type Wimbledon scores into the search bar and grab the results.
Once the results pop up, you can either swipe the bar that holds the different tabs all the way to the left to reveal the rightmost button you can tap, or you can click the tabs if you’re on desktop until you get to the rightmost button, both of which will be a tiny little tennis ball.
Tapping or clicking on this will open up the game, and if you’re on your Android smartphone you’ll see a little Android robot holding a tennis racket sitting just below a play button you can tap to begin, and during the game you’ll be playing a tiny computer with a screen. If you’re on desktop you’ll be greeted with what looks like two little dogs. These characters can change too so what you get seems to be random.
If you’re playing on your phone then controls are probably obvious here. You have two arrows, one for left and one for right, and you tape the side of the screen that’s closes to the direction you want to go. On desktop you might think you would click on the left and right arrows, but you don’t. Instead what you do is use the arrow keys on your keyboard to move left and right.
The goal of the game is simple. Move your character to start the match and hit the ball at your opponent, who will then hit it back at you and your aim is to move the character to catch the ball in time and smack it back again with your racket. That’s pretty much it. This can end quickly or it can turn into an endless back and forth depending on how good you are. Each time you hit it you gain one point, and each time you miss your opponent gains one point.
The game is pretty easy to play but getting a higher score might be just a little more challenging than you might think. In the end it will really just take some practice and you should be hitting balls back at your opponent in no time with ease, but don’t let your guard down as you can lose just as easily if you’re not paying attention. If you’ve got a little bit of downtime today before you head into the weekend, this is a great way to kill some of that time.