Tic Tac Toe tops Google’s hidden treasure trove of retro games

The New York Times doesn’t have a monopoly on highly-addictive games like Wordle and Strands. Good old Google is also in on the act, starting with a retro classic, Tic Tac Toe.

Well, it’s actually a Roman classic, having first appeared during the Empire a couple of thousand years ago.

But back to 2024, and people are just discovering Google’s array of wacky games. We’re talking Pac-Man, we’re talking Snake, we’re talking Solitaire and Minesweeper.

Looking for a memory game that’ll bring on a sweat for fear you don’t get past four and look like a complete idiot? They’ve got that too.

Snake fans be warned however. If you grew up playing it on your Nokia 5110, the rules have changed.

No more can you breeze through the edge of the game and reappear on the other side. In Google’s version your snake will cruelly bounce off the wall, squashing her nose and being left seeing stars.

Pac-Man offers a wonderfully retro look and feel, alongside vintage sound effects, while Solitaire’s shuffle sound-effect is weirdly satisfying.

Weirdly the carousel also includes a bunch of animal sounds, which we’re not exactly sure constitutes a game, although they can surely be used to annoy colleagues just as much as shirking all duties to play tic tac toe.

Ditto the memory game, which is audio-based and offers very cutesy but quickly annoying sound-effects. There is a chance it’s really meant for children.

But arguably the best offering is not actually a game – it’s emoji kitchen.

Be prepared to lose hours merging pairs of emojis to create your own mash-up. 

Want to combine a smiley face and a wave? Voilà, here’s a drowning emoji. Want something more gross than the puking smiley? Try a puking poop emoji.

Or fancy playing God and creating some new animals? The power is now all yours. A rainbow panda, octopoodle (octopus crossed with a poodle) or a koala cactus are just two clicks away.

Far and away the best are the shark hybrids, whether it’s a shark with bear arms and legs or a sloth with a fin.

And while you can’t technically add them to your emoji library, you can copy and send them as images in messages – which makes them bigger and, in this case, better.

Enjoy.