Glider

Glider is John Calhoun's classic Macintosh action game, first released as shareware in 1988 under the Soft Dorothy Software label. The player pilots a paper airplane through the rooms of a suburban house, riding heating-vent updrafts and dodging household hazards from level to level.

Gameplay

Each room is a side-on slice of an interior, drawn in crisp black and white. Floor vents push the glider upward, ceiling fans drag it sideways, and obstacles such as candles, drips, and electrical outlets destroy the fragile craft on contact. Doorways at the edges connect rooms into a longer house-spanning route.

Versions and lineage

Glider evolved through several shareware revisions. Version 3.0 added sound effects in 1990, and the 3.x line ran through 3.1.2 and 3.14, the last build compatible with the Macintosh Plus. Casady and Greene later published the colorized Glider 4.0 (1991) with a level editor, then the substantially expanded Glider PRO in 1994.

Distribution and legacy

From version 3.0 through 3.1.2, registered users could pay an additional fee to receive the source code. After Casady and Greene's 2003 bankruptcy the rights reverted to Calhoun, who has periodically released the games as freeware and open source via the softdorothy GitHub.