Google's latest web game lets you use phone as a lightsaber

As we march ever closer to the theatrical release of Star Wars: the Force Awakens we continue to be inundated with various Star Wars themed commercials, apps, and products. The mobile world isn’t immune either, as we’ve seen several new Star Wars games recently, as well as a SW-themed version of Google Cardboard and some cool Star Wars wallpapers from Verizon. And now comes Google’s latest Star Wars promotional tie-in, Lightsaber Escape.

Lightsaber Escape is another one of the many Chrome-optimized web games that Google has released over the years (originally known as Chrome Experiments). In this latest game, you pair up your computer and phone to create an “immersive experience”. Your phone, of course, acts as a lightsaber with your computer simply displaying the action on-screen. While a nifty collaboration, the idea here honestly sounds a little cooler than it actually is, at least in my opinion.

After visiting the site with your desktop, you’ll be given a link that will let you “calibrate your lightsaber” (phone). You then hold your lightsaber and then you must deal with an onslaught of stormtroopers in order to escape. The problem here is that you aren’t actually attacking them with the lightsaber (which would have been cool) but merely deflecting their blasts and bouncing them back at them to defeat them. It’s fun, but could be better. Than again, it’s not meant to be a full game, more of a “fun experience”, and you still get to control a lightsaber – hard to complain about that, right?