Google's new Star Wars game turns your phone into a lightsaber

Google joins with the rest of the world in celebrating the upcoming release of Star Wars: The Force Awakens to theaters with a new, and very cool, Chrome web browser experience for both PC and smartphones. It's called Lightsaber Escape and it basically turns your smartphone into a lightsaber so you can fight off First Order stormtroopers on your PC monitor.

Here's how it works. First, surf on your PC to the Lightsaber Escape website, then use your smartphone's browser to go to a separate URL The phone should then turn into a virtual lightsaber that links to your PC browser. After you calibrate it, the fun really begins as you experience an on-rails action game, with you holding the phone/lightsaber to fight off the stormtroopers on the big screen.

Google says:

The experience was developed in collaboration with Disney, Lucasfilm and Industrial Light & Magic. The rich 3D graphics were built with WebGL, enabling beautiful, high fidelity 3D renders within the browser. We're also using WebRTC and WebSockets to enable high accuracy, real-time communication between your mobile and desktop devices, reducing latency and improving interactivity. Plus, building with web standards means the experience works across browsers, and without plug-ins.

We've played with Lightsaber Escape for a bit and it's definitely a very cool experience and highly recommended, even if you are not a Star Wars fan.

Source: Google

John Callaham

I have been writing professionally about technology and gaming news for 14 years.

8 Comments
  • Maybe not.
  • It's worth noting that this works on some other browsers as well as Chrome. Worked in Safari for me (albeit the Intel HD 4000 isn't quite up to the task)
  • Actually works better in Safari for me (rMBP, i5 2.6GHz, Iris 5100).
  • ummm, no. endless tail chasing of going to one site, and having it say go to a different site on the phone, then it wont connect, go to THIS site on the PC, nope, go to THIS site on the phone, nope, go to THIS site on the PC.. etc...
  • Clicked one link, typed in the other. Done. Don't know what you were doing.
  • Does Rene know that you're writing positive stuff about Google? ;)
  • It worked the first time (macbook & iphone).
    Impressed with the tech! :).
  • "Impressive."