I'm a bit of a rhythm game fanatic, always looking to sink my teeth into a new musical experience. So imagine my surprise when I saw that the latest Google Doodle was, in fact, a rhythm game.
The doodle celebrates swing music and the Savoy Ballroom in Harlem, an iconic venue during the swing era and one of the first public spaces in the United States to be racially inclusive with a no-discrimination policy.
The Savoy ballroom rhythm game chucks in some iconic jazz music like Louis Armstrong's Let's Call The Whole Thing Off, Ella Fitzgerald's Solid As A Rock and the classic Careless Whisper. The game can either be played solo or with a buddy, and actually ramps up in difficulty pretty decently by the time you hit the third level—though my struggle was also compounded by my poor ability to play rhythm games with the D, F, J, and K keys. The end of each level is peppered with some short facts about the ballroom's history too.
You can play the game over on the Google Doodle page. There's also a nice backstory on the ballroom's history and a short documentary about the making of the doodle included.
We've had other pretty cool Google doodles in the past too, like one designed to help teach kids to code and a Halloween-themed multiplayer game.
