The Doctor Who 50th Anniversary Doodle is a multi-level adventure game released on November 23, 2013, celebrating 50 years of the legendary BBC science fiction series. Nicknamed the “Whodle” by the team at Google, it’s one of the largest and most ambitious Doodles ever created — a full 8-bit style game where you play as any of the first eleven Doctors to recover the stolen Google letters from across time and space.
The premise is pure Doctor Who: those dastardly Daleks have stolen the letters G-O-O-G-L-E and scattered them throughout the universe. You pick your favourite Doctor (from William Hartnell’s First Doctor all the way to Matt Smith’s Eleventh) and pilot the TARDIS through six levels packed with iconic enemies. The game features Daleks shouting “EXTERMINATE!”, Cybermen declaring “You will be deleted!”, and the terrifying Weeping Angels who move impossibly fast when you’re not looking.
The Doodle was created by Matthew Cruickshank and a small team of Google engineers, with the BBC providing authentic sound effects from the show. What started as a request from a massive Doctor Who fan at Google became a months-long project. The BBC initially expected a simple animated doodle, but the team pushed for something more ambitious — a multi-level platform game that captured the spirit of time travel and adventure.
Each level represents a different era. You’ll navigate an industrial Dalek base, leap across moving platforms in prehistoric times while avoiding a pterodactyl, sneak past Cybermen near Tower Bridge in London, survive a rainy graveyard where a Weeping Angel hunts you, and finally navigate a spaceship with deadly electrified floor panels. If you get caught, your Doctor regenerates into the next incarnation (with a time penalty), cycling through all eleven faces.
How To Play Doctor Who 50th Anniversary
Click the play button and choose your favourite Doctor from the selection screen showing all eleven incarnations.
Use arrow keys or click on tiles to move the Doctor around each level. You can click multiple spaces ahead rather than moving one square at a time.
Flip switches to activate platforms, lower bridges, and open pathways. Each level requires solving simple puzzles while avoiding patrolling enemies.
Collect the letter in each level, then return safely to the TARDIS to travel to the next adventure.
Watch out for Weeping Angels in the graveyard — keep moving or they’ll corner you. In the final level, carefully time your movements through the electrified floor grid to avoid instant death.