Turn your phone into a lightsaber with Google's new 'Lightsaber Escape' game

Kill stormtrooper and swing your phone around madly in Google's latest game

Characters wielding lightsabers take to the stage to promote Star Wars: The Old Republic at E3 in 2009 (David McNew/Getty Images)

Clearly everyone on Google's Experiments team is very excited about the imminent release of the new Star Wars film - because they've gone to the trouble of creating an online game that allows you to take on teams of stormtroopers, using your mobile phone as a lightsaber.

It sounds weird, but it works. After going to the 'Lightsaber Escape' website on their desktop or laptop, players get a prompt to go to a unique webpage on their phone.

Once this mobile page is loaded, the desktop and mobile pair and link up with each other - after 'calibrating' your phone, the screen turns into the handle of a lightsaber and one of the Death Star's signature stormtrooper-filled corridors appears on the desktop screen.

Since the phone and computer are paired, the user can move their phone and have that motion appear on the screen - allowing them to swing their phone around as they try to hit the stormtroopers' laser blasts back at them. Movement is automatic, so all you have to do is focus on killing the enemies.

It's not a long game - this goes on for a couple of stages, before the user gets in to a one-on-one battle with a stormtrooper wielding the mysterious anti-lightsaber weapon from the new film, The Force Awakens.

There's a slight delay between moving your phone and the lightsaber moving, and the motion detection isn't too accurate anyway - so rather than actually trying to deflect individual laser shots as you see them coming, it's easiest just to swing your phone around madly until you kill all the stormtroopers.

There's been reports of it not working too well on some Android and Windows phones, but it's worth giving a go, especially since you don't get too many opportunities to be a Jedi.

The launch of this game, coupled with Chrome's Star Wars customisation options they released a few weeks ago, says a lot about how Google's employees feel about the new movie.

Fortunately, there's not much longer left to wait - the film comes out at midnight on 17 December.