The Google Scoville Game is an interactive Doodle released on January 22, 2016, to celebrate the 151st birthday of Wilbur Scoville — the American pharmacist who invented the Scoville Scale for measuring a pepper’s heat. It’s a surprisingly addictive mini fighting game where you play as an ice cream cone battling increasingly fiery chilli peppers.
Wilbur Scoville developed his Scoville Organoleptic Test in 1912, creating the first reliable method to measure the spiciness of peppers. The scale starts at zero for bell peppers and climbs all the way to 16 million Scoville Heat Units (SHU) for pure capsaicin. His discovery that milk products neutralise pepper heat inspired the game’s core mechanic: throwing ice cream to defeat angry peppers.
The Doodle was designed and illustrated by Google artist Olivia Huynh, who wanted to turn the universal experience of eating something too spicy into a playful fighting game. Between each round, you watch an animated Scoville sample a pepper, react with comical expressions — sweating, breathing fire — then cool down with ice cream before your battle begins.
You’ll face five increasingly dangerous opponents. It starts easy with a harmless bell pepper (0 SHU), then escalates through jalapeño (around 5,000 SHU), cayenne (50,000 SHU), the infamous Bhut Jolokia or ghost pepper (over 1 million SHU — the first pepper to break that barrier), and finally the fearsome Trinidad Moruga Scorpion (around 2 million SHU). Each pepper gets faster and requires more precise timing to defeat.
How To Play Google Scoville Game
Watch the animated intro showing Scoville eating a pepper and cooling down with ice cream. This sets up your next opponent.
A sliding meter appears at the bottom of the screen. Click when the indicator is in the centre sweet spot to launch your ice cream at the pepper.
Hit the pepper accurately to freeze it in an ice cube. You have three ice cream shots per round — miss all three and the pepper wins.
Each level increases the difficulty. The meter moves faster and the timing window gets tighter as you face hotter peppers.
Defeat all five peppers to complete the game. The final boss, the Trinidad Moruga Scorpion, requires quick reflexes and precise timing to overcome.