When you think of Google, casual gaming probably isn’t the first thing that comes to mind.
But the search giant just happens to have an outright huge cache of redirects on the Art & Culture site. At your disposal: everything from virtual pottery to travel adventures to music makers and more. Here are five of my favorites.
Cultural Crosswords
Have fun with mankind’s greatest invention, the crossword puzzle, and learn something with Google’s at the same time Cultural Crosswords offer.
There are five categories to choose from, ranging from art, geography, sci-tech, fashion and nature. The puzzles offer a good mix of challenging clues, but aren’t so difficult that you’ll be stuck trying to solve them all morning.
puzzle party
Humanity’s second greatest invention, the jigsaw puzzle, is being digitized and pushed into the 21st century with puzzle party. You have a wide variety of art-themed puzzles to choose from, and easy, medium, and difficult skill options.
Best of all, you can invite other people to work on puzzles with you remotely. It’s all fun puzzling without first sorting, flipping pieces and cleaning up.
Art Coloring Book
Take an existing masterpiece and make it your own: that’s the promise of Art Coloring Book, a Zen-like experience that ensures you always stay within the lines. If you can’t get enough of coloring but you’re going to be offline for a while, there’s a handy 39 page printable version that should keep you busy for quite some time.
Fireworks on July 4th
Like any soulful person, I love a good fireworks show. And with the Fireworks on July 4th game, I can put up a breathtaking screen every day of the year. Part pyrotechnic extravaganza, part rhythm-based timing play, you have to press one of the five buttons at the right time to send a respectable bang into the air.
You can also choose from some very cool locations: New York’s Liberty Island, the Grand Canyon, Mount Rushmore, and a few others.
Guess the line
Who among us doesn’t like to have our drawing skills judged by a cute AI robot? When you play Guess the lineyou get a Pictionary-like clue, which you then have to draw so the robot can guess it.
You have 60 seconds to score as many points as possible. Clues start on the easier side — “draw a TV” — and get progressively more difficult. I failed miserably when I was tasked with drawing an “architectural dress” (whatever that means).
Games galore
As mentioned, these five barely scratch the surface. There is a veritable wealth of diversions about in the Play section from Google’s Arts & Culture site.