Glove

About the game

Glove is a top-down action game for the Arduboy, made as a small homage to the arcade dungeon shooters of the 1980s. You are a lone explorer dropped into a room full of walls, monsters and loot, and the only way forward is an exit somewhere on the map. Each exit leads to another room, and there are thirty of them, from bunkers and forests to courtyards, hedge mazes, treasuries and a tower.

Your health is also your clock. The counter in the corner starts at 1000 and keeps ticking down while you play, and every monster that touches you takes a bite out of it. Reach zero and the game is over, so you can't dawdle: shoot your way through, pick up what helps and get to the exit.

Playing it here

This is a homebrew game made for the Arduboy, the open, credit-card-sized handheld with a tiny black-and-white screen: a new game by an independent developer, not a commercial release. It runs here in Ardens, an Arduboy emulator. Click Play, then press X on the title screen.

The very first time, the game drops you straight into the first room. After that, the main menu offers Continue, New Game, Records and Options. Your progress, the list of rooms you have cleared and the records table are stored in the emulated memory of the Arduboy, which is kept in this browser automatically. F2 saves the complete state of the game at any moment and F4 brings it back. A gamepad works too.

Controls

What you find in the rooms

• Monsters chase you and hurt you on contact. One shot takes them out.
• Spawners keep producing new monsters until you destroy them, which takes a few shots and is worth 100 points.
• Chalices are worth 600 points and gold 1000.
• Lemons give back 300 health.
• The poo wipes out every monster in the room at once.
• Keys make certain walls disappear and open the way.
• Exits all look the same, but each leads somewhere different. Some routes are harder, some pay better.

Tips

Keep moving. Health drains even when nothing is touching you, so the quickest route to an exit is often the safest one.

Shoot the spawners first. Clearing monsters while a spawner keeps working is a losing game; take out the source and the room calms down.

Save the poo for a crowd. It clears everything on screen, so it is most useful when you are cornered.

Try every exit. The title screen shows how many of the thirty rooms you have cleared. Clear them all and Options unlocks a Random mode, where every exit throws you into a random room.

Starting over. Options has a Reset Game Data entry that erases the progress and the records.