There was a time when the 3D platformer was one of the most creative genres out there. Driven by the delight that people had for Mario 64, Banjo Kazooie, and others, developers fell over themselves to try to carve out their own niche with quirky, different ideas. Most of those games are pretty niche now – I’m pretty sure I’m the only one who still remembers Chameleon Twist, for example. One of those obscure titles is getting a new lease on life, however, courtesy of Brazil’s QUByte Interactive: Glover!
In Glover, you play as a glove (bet you never would have guessed). This glove is sentient because it belonged to a wizard. Unfortunately, the wizard had a fall and Glover was thrown off his hand and out of his castle via a window. Even more unfortunately, the other glove fell into a cauldron of evil magic (making the wizard… evil, I guess) and has emerged as an evil glove. So now Glover needs to collect crystals and clear levels to make it back into the castle and defeat his other half.
These days we’re pretty spoiled and it’s easy to forget a time when a game might open with a three-minute cut scene to explain why you’re in a hub world with levels all around you, and then forget about the story afterwards, but that’s Glover for you. Once you’re introduced to your hand-less handwarmer, you’re basically just pointed at levels and told to go clear them. Those levels are exactly what you’d expect for the N64 era of the genre, testing you to collect items, find ways to navigate up and down a level, and avoid or destroy enemies.
The big quirk that Glover had was not the narrative, level design, or general gameplay. Rather it was the fact that you needed to work with a ball to get around. Glover’s abilities by himself are relatively limited. However he has a ball companion, which he can use to bounce on, toss around, flick switches and float on water with. It’s also essential that the ball survive to clear a level, and that’s a bit of a problem because the ball can be destroyed.
There are actually multiple forms that the ball can take, helping its utility further. The bowling ball is heavy and does more damage. The crystal is fragile, but if you want a high score it’s essential as you’ll get more points while using it. That’s basically everything that you need to know about Glover, and you’ll be doing this ball bouncing/rolling/guiding action across 18 stages, six worlds, and some bonus stages for playing well.
Glover is pretty fondly remembered. While it never did the numbers to get a sequel (one was in production, but ultimately got canned), it scored around 70% in most of the gaming publications (on the Nintendo 64, at least, with the PlayStation port being low quality). Because Nintendo managed the game in Europe there are forums out there with the hope that the little guy would land in Smash. There is still hope that the sequel might finally be finished as well, now that it has a new publisher (although that was announced back in 2018 and we’ve seen nothing since).
Unfortunately, any fondness you feel for Glover is most likely more down to nostalgia than the game being a particularly sparkling example of the genre. The world of Glover is particularly bland, with generally dull and featurless level design. Glover himself looks like he should have a fun personality, but he just isn’t that much to play with, and the game’s controls are retro-frustrating at the best of times. It’s particularly infuriating when Glover uses the ball as a flotation device. To move you need to reverse the controls. I really don’t like it when games do that.
Some of the puzzles in Glover are fun, and this is the only 3D platformer (that I know of), that made a bouncy ball the central mechanic, so by default this game provided players with a different kind of experience. That’s probably why it stood out over some of the other platformers that didn’t do enough to spin away from Nintendo’s own projects. But in 2025 there isn’t the same novelty to it and without that it’s just a… relic.
If you do remember having good times with Glover back when it was a quirky alternative, then you may well have fun blasting through it again. Anyone else picking it up today for the first time is going to see nothing but a very B-tier platformer that lacks the charisma and creativity that once helped to elevate it over so many of its peers.
Iggy’s Reckin’ Balls might technically count as another entry in the 3D Ball-Em-Up genre. Also, arguably, the Super Monkey Ball Games (or at least some of them…)