Glover is a game about a four-fingered glove, and that is either the pitch that sells it or the pitch that loses you. The 1998 puzzle-platformer from Interactive Studios has been reissued by Bleem! and Piko Interactive, with the updated Windows port arriving in 2022 and ports for Xbox Series X|S, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch and PC following on February 27, 2025. QUByte Interactive published alongside Piko Interactive.
A Wizard, Seven Crystals, and a Bad Batch of Potions
The story is set in the Crystal Kingdom, a peaceful land where a kindly wizard rules from a castle ringed by six portals. Seven magical crystals sit atop the castle spires and keep the kingdom alive. The wizard is helped in his magic by two sentient gloves, Glover and Glovel.
Then he mixes the wrong batch of potions. The cauldron explodes, the wizard turns into a statue, and the blast throws the gloves in two directions. Glovel lands in the cauldron and is corrupted into Cross-Stitch, a trickster bent on destroying Glover and ruling the kingdom himself. Glover flies out the window.
The crystals fall from the spires. Glover casts a spell that turns them into rubber balls before they shatter, but six of them bounce into the portals, and the kingdom goes dark and foggy. Glover has to go get them.
Rolling, Bouncing, and Slapping a Rubber Ball
The main job in each stage is to move the ball to the goal. Six worlds each hold three stages, a boss stage, and a bonus stage unlocked by collecting all the Garib cards in that world. Clear all of it and a crystal goes back to the castle.
When Glover touches the ball, he can roll it, bounce it, throw it, slap it, dribble it, stand on top of it, and use it as a trampoline. Without it, he can do regular and double jumps, a cartwheel, a fist slam, and can locate the ball and Garibs or grab the ball back. While he is standing on the ball, the controls reverse. On easy difficulty, walking on the ball is automatic while moving across water, but bonus stages are unavailable.
That control reversal is the whole game in miniature. It is a clever idea that is fun for about a stage and a half and then becomes a thing you tolerate.
Four Forms, Four Different Jobs
The ball transforms into four forms, each with its own rules, plus a power ball available by cheat code.
| Form | What it does |
|---|---|
| Rubber ball | Bounces, slaps, throws, and floats on water; the most versatile form |
| Bowling ball | Does not break easily, sinks in deep water, kills enemies when slapped |
| Ballbearing | Precise control, careful throws and slaps, magnetic |
| Crystal | Floats on water and is fragile, but gives double points for each Garib |
| Power ball | Bounces higher and can be slapped and thrown farther than other forms |
The rubber ball is the workhorse and the crystal form is the risk. That is a decent little economy. It gives every stage a reason to change shape mid-run.
Atlantis, a Circus, and Outer Space
The six portals lead to the lost city of Atlantis, a circus park, a pirate’s domain, a horror-themed fortress, a prehistoric era, and outer space. That is a real spread of settings, and it is the best thing the game has going for it.
Cross-Stitch sets traps and creates monsters to stop Glover along the way, though the source material does not detail how those encounters play out. The villain is a good idea — the hero’s other half, corrupted by the same accident that made the hero — and the game does less with it than it should.
Where Glover Holds Up and Where It Does Not
The 1998 Nintendo 64 and Windows versions got generally positive reviews. The 1999 PlayStation version, released under Hasbro Interactive’s Atari Interactive label, got negative ones. A sequel, Glover 2, was planned and then cancelled. That history is worth keeping in mind when you look at the reissue.
The core loop is sound. Rolling a ball through a 3D space with a glove is a specific, physical pleasure, and the four forms give it texture. The reversed controls on the ball are a genuine design idea rather than a gimmick.
The camera is the weak point. This paper’s view is that the third-person camera is the part of the game that has aged worst, and the six worlds are varied in theme without the same variety carrying into the stages themselves.
A Cult Classic With a Real Ceiling
Glover is a 6.8 game and it is a 6.8 game in an honest way. It is not a hidden masterpiece undone by bad marketing, and it is not a nostalgia trap either. It is a competent, odd, occasionally inspired platformer with a strong central idea, a weak camera, and a villain it never uses.
The reissue matters because the game is available again on current hardware. That is a real service. But a port does not fix a camera, and it does not add the Cross-Stitch confrontation the story keeps promising. If you come to Glover for the glove and the ball, you will get exactly that. If you come for the kingdom and the wizard and the war between two halves of the same pair, you will get a premise and a foggy wasteland where the payoff should be.
Worth playing once, worth finishing if the ball physics click for you, and worth remembering mainly as the game that had one very good idea and did not quite know what to do with it.
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