Mishaal Rahman / Android Authority
TL;DR
- Google is updating Android’s latest Easter egg game, which has you fly a spaceship around, to now plant flags when you land on a planet.
- Amusingly, this update is currently hidden behind a feature flag, meaning it’s a flag for flags.
- Apart from this change, it doesn’t look like Android 15 will change the spaceship Easter egg game much, which was first introduced in Android 14.
Whenever Google launches a new version of the Android operating system, they like to sneak in a fun little Easter egg. These Android Easter eggs usually take the form of a bite-sized game (like the full-on Flappy Bird clone in Android 5.0) or a tool that relates to some major feature of the new OS version (like Cat Controls in Android 11). While the spaceship Easter egg in the upcoming Android 15 update is largely unchanged from the previous release, it does have one tiny change: Your ship now plants a flag on any planets you land on.
If you have a phone or tablet running Android 14, you can play Android’s hidden spaceship game right now. We’ve documented what the Android 14 Easter egg does before if you’re interested, but basically, you pilot a ship while looking for celestial bodies orbiting a star, strewn across the vast expanse of space. You can tap on the screen to control the direction of the ship, or you can tap and drag your finger to change its velocity. Your ship’s position and velocity are overlaid at the bottom left of the screen, while information relating to the closest star is overlaid at the top left.
C. Scott Brown / Android Authority
There’s no way to win at Android 14’s spaceship game, but you can fly around until you find all the celestial bodies orbiting the star at the center (0,0). When you find a celestial body while playing the game on Android 14, the “BODIES” counter in the top left is incremented by 1. However, apart from the green line that shows your ship’s path, there’s nothing on the celestial body itself indicating that you’ve been there, and that’s no fun.
Fortunately, Android 15 will rectify this by planting a yellow flag on any celestial bodies that you’ve landed on. It’s an admittedly tiny change to the spaceship Easter egg, but one that’s delightfully in line with the theme of the game, which is exploration.
Mishaal Rahman / Android Authority
Speaking of which, if you’re wondering why the Android 14 Easter egg is what it is, take a look at Android 14’s logo:
The logo features Android’s iconic droid mascot upside down as if it were a celestial body. This is a homage to the Apollo 14 mission patch, explaining why the Easter egg centers on space.
How do you access the Android 15 Easter egg?
The Android 15 Easter egg is accessed the same way every previous Android Easter egg was accessed. All you need to do is the following:
- Open the Settings app.
- Find the About phone page.
- Tap on Android version
- Repeatedly tap on the Android version field
- After a couple of taps, you should see the Android 15 logo floating through space, as shown below.
- Finally, press and hold on the Android 15 logo for a few seconds until the spaceship game launches. You should see the logo move and feel your phone vibrate as the stars in the background whiz past.
Mishaal Rahman / Android Authority
These steps work for stock Android/Pixel UI. The exact steps to find the “Android version” field will differ on other devices, but the method to launch the Easter egg will be the same.
On the most recent public version of Android 15, ie. Android 15 Beta 2.2, though, landing on a celestial body won’t result in a yellow flag being planted on it. That’s because the ability to plant a flag is … gated behind a feature flag. Yes, Google created a flag for flags, something the company is aware is quite silly. I had to manually enable the flag to showcase the flag being planted in the screenshot from before, but it’s likely this flag will be enabled by default in an upcoming Android 15 beta release.
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