Magic Cat Academy - Play Online, HTML

Grab your wand and help fend off a ghostly catastrophe. Press play to swipe spells, save your friends, and help restore the peace at the Magic Cat Academy.
This year’s Halloween Doodle follows freshman feline Momo on her mission to rescue her school of magic. Help her cast out mischievous spirits by swiping in the shape of the symbols above the ghosts’ heads. And you’d better pounce fast—the ghost that stole the master spellbook is getting away!

From the team that created the Magic Cat Academy:
The inspiration for this year’s cat spell-casting game came from a real-life black cat named Momo that belongs to Doodler Juliana Chen. It seemed like a good opportunity for a cat hero, since the winner of last year’s Candy Cup Doodle was Yellow Witch and her black cat.

The original concept for the game involved a magic cat making a soup that was so good, it raised the dead. Connecting soup to Halloween proved too abstract, so the team shifted to the idea of a wizard school. This opened the door to a more robust world filled with interesting characters and paw-some themes..

The game includes five levels set in a school environment: the library, cafeteria, classroom, gym, and the building’s rooftop. We had lots of fun ideas for the resident foe of each level, including a chef ghost, a venn diagram ghost, and a big whistle ghost that summons other spirits.

Doodling for a whole Doodle game was very exciting for us. We had so many ideas for elaborate symbols to draw, like a witch’s hat that would appear on the character’s head after it was drawn! In the end we decided that for a short game against the clock, simple was better. Plans like the “Eiffel Tower spell” were abandoned, and similarly, gag spells didn’t make the cut. Regardless, we loved the process of dreaming up the possibilities.

That’s all for meow. We hope that every human, creature, and ghost has a purrfectly magical day.

Magic Cat Academy is a series of short browser games created as Google Doodles for Halloween which were released every four years. The first game, Magic Cat Academy, also known as Doodle Halloween 2016, was released on October 30, 2016. The second, Magic Cat Academy 2, also known as Doodle Halloween 2020, was released on October 30, 2020. The third, Magic Cat Academy 3, also known as Doodle Halloween 2024, was released on October 30, 2024.

The main gameplay element present in the games is casting spells by clicking and swiping the mouse in certain directions. The game uses technology to identify the shapes that the player draws on their screen as one of the available spells. Ghosts, the antagonists of the game, slowly approach Momo, the protagonist in the center of the screen, and when they touch her, one of five lives is lost. Ghosts are defeated by making these spells, pertaining to the series of symbols atop the ghosts' heads.

The common spells have swiping directions that include a horizontal line, a vertical line, a "v" shape, and a "ʌ" shape. These spells cause the respective foremost spells atop the ghosts' heads to be deleted. A ghost vanishes when all of its spells have been done in order.

There are certain special spells that can only be used when a ghost appears with the spell above them. The swiping directions of these spells look like the following:
A lightning bolt - This causes every ghost on screen to lose one spell by the means of lightning.
A heart - This appears at certain times after Momo is damaged. Making this spell causes the player to regain a life.
A circle - This creates a shield around Momo, and therefore the next time a ghost touches her, a life will not be lost.
A spiral - This is similar to the lightning bolt's function, and additionally causes all ghosts to flow further away from Momo.
An hourglass - This slows down all enemies, giving the player more time to defeat them.

The creation of the game was coordinated amongst four different design groups, relating to art design, engineering, production, and music.[6] The original concept for the game involved Momo making soup that resurrects dead spirits. The game's development involved multiple rejected concepts including elaborate symbols to draw and additional boss enemies.

The characters of Momo and Sugar were based on real-life cats belonging to the game's art designer Juliana Chen.[8] Momo also appears in the animated Google Doodle film for Halloween 2017 and in Google's Doodle Champion Island Games (2021).