Glubada Pond

Glubada Pond is a game that surely nobody remembers from the nineties. And it has good reason. This is one of those cases where you ask yourself: why did this thing get written to my disk?

It's a puzzler or logic game stylized around an environment with round creatures — the Glubadas — and a small pond. The goal is simple: somewhere pairs of these beings connect, reflect transparently, or split in half. It involves clicking, waiting, and mounting frustration. Your patience determines whether you even understand what the dev team wanted. A manual? None, or so unclear it would be better off silent.

The graphics are basic, with no aesthetic ambitions. A monochrome background, a few repeating animation loops. The sound I don't remember — maybe it wasn't there at all, or was so quiet I'm not ashamed to forget it. The controls work, no failures there, but they're no joy either. You click on a creature, wait to see if something interesting happens. Usually it doesn't.

The game is called a puzzle, but lacks that convincing design flair. Rather it looks like someone jotted down an idea on a Friday and by Wednesday it had to ship on disks. There's a fundamental missing ingredient — fun. Whether this was meant as official competition for Bubble Bobble or an attempt at its own path, nobody knows. What matters is the path leads nowhere.

Glubada Pond exists today only as a curiosity in archives. You can play it in a browser via DOS emulator if you want to convince yourself why nobody remembers it. It's an experience less painful than wasted time, but still just out of curiosity. Not bad enough to deserve cult status — just forgotten.