Santa Tracker
Open the game- Brand
- Year
- 2015
- Objective
- Engagement
- Industry
- Tech & Telecom
- Mechanic
- Adventure & Quest
- Platform
- Web
- Agency
- Aranja
- With
- Upperquad
- With
- Plan8
Objective
Google wanted to own the Christmas countdown as a family destination — and keep that attention inside its own ecosystem, from Google Maps to the Android app, Wear watch faces and Chromecast. Coding and geography content also let Google frame the season as educational, with a charity tie-in to groups like the Jane Goodall Institute and The Nature Conservancy.
Solution
Every morning in December, the player opens a hand-drawn snowy village, pans around it, and finds one more house lit up than the day before. Tapping a house leads to a short animated film, a bite of holiday-traditions or map-quiz trivia, or one of a dozen-plus arcade games — steering an elf's jetpack, racing Rudolph, lobbing gifts into a chimney, matching cards. Two houses turn the visit into a coding lesson, where the player drags blocks together to make an elf dance or send Santa moving. On December 24 the village gives way entirely to a live tracker: a world map showing Santa's current position, the distance to the player, a running count of gifts delivered, city-by-city photo stops, and a Santa Cam peeking into the sleigh.
- 1
The player follows a short link to the Santa Tracker site, is greeted with a welcome message, and lands in Santa's Village, a snowy town seen from above.
- 2
The village works as an advent calendar: the player pans and scrolls across dozens of houses, igloos and locations, most locked, and a new one unlocks each December morning, giving a reason to return daily until Christmas Eve.
- 3
The player explores by wandering rather than through a menu, tapping any open house to get one of three kinds of content: a short animated film to watch, an educational activity to learn from, or a mini-game to play.
- 4
Two houses teach coding through block-based puzzles: in Code Boogie the player first copies an elf's dance by dragging move blocks into a sequence, then switches to composing an original dance for the elf to perform; in Code Lab the player assembles a block program to steer Santa through a puzzle.
- 5
A set of arcade houses each hold a short skill-based round with its own controls — steering elves to drop presents down chimneys, tilting the device to roll gumballs, racing or slinging gifts, matching cards, picking a difficulty on a geography quiz, or spotting Santa hidden in a crowded scene.
- 6
Other houses are for browsing rather than scoring: Translations plays back a chosen holiday phrase in another language, Holiday Traditions steps through how Christmas is celebrated around the world via next/previous cards, and Season of Giving profiles charities such as the Jane Goodall Institute.
- 7
Maker houses let the player produce and share something: dressing up Santa in a selfie, building and sending a postcard, receiving a call from Santa, or contributing photos of a featured location.
- 8
Short watchable story scenes — Mrs. Claus' Briefing, Mission Control, North Pole Airport — tie the village together with the elves' flight preparations.
- 9
The experience extends beyond the browser: an Android app covering phones, tablets and TV, a Santa watch face for Android Wear, and a Chromecast version that runs as a countdown screensaver out of season.
- 10
On Christmas Eve the village hands over to Track Santa, a live Google Maps view of the sleigh moving between cities with a Santa Cam, city imagery at each stop, and a dashboard of gifts delivered and distance from the viewer.
