If you are running the game on a real Oric, you can skip directly to the next section!
If you are playing on PC the game comes bundled with an Emulator, but to make things easier it also comes with a Game Launcher.
Technically the launcher is not required, but it makes it easier to change things like the game appearance or language.
Additionally, on Steam the Launcher will ensure that whatever Achievement you unlocked in the game will also be unlocked in Steam1!
Whatever you select will be stored to the disk, so make sure it is not write protected2.
Here is a list of what the options do:
Just click the Launch game button to launch the emulator with all the selected options and start playing.
The game starts with a jingle sequence showing the Severn Software and Defence Force logos.
At the bottom you will see a small menu allowing you to change a few options:
Press the space bar when you are done changing the options.
As the name implies, the next sequence is designed to attract people!
This sequence will go through multiple screens, including a short summary of how to play the game.
In order to not make the sequence too boring, they move automatically to the next sequence after a short amount of time, but as indicated on the first image you can use the left and right arrows to navigate backward and forward between the screens.
Press the space bar when you are ready to play.
Just to ensure that you know what you are supposed to do, the game shows a brief sequence about the events entered on a typewriter.
You can press the space bar at any time to skip the sequence.
The game itself starts by a small sequence showing where you are, and how much time you have (If you have already seen it you can just press space to skip it).
You should finally at this point see the following on your screen:
The concept is relatively simple:
Each of these elements will be detailed, but just to exhaust the whole game we need to talk about the credits first.
When you have encountered one of the many game over conditions you will reach the outro screen.
A summary of what you did will be displayed and your final score will be computed (the remaining time is added as bonus point when you win the game).
If your score is high enough to enter the high score table you will be asked to enter your name.
The sequence will then show the credits for the game as well as some greetings.
You can press the space bar at any time to skip the rest of the sequence and go back to the attract mode sequence.
Time to look at the game in more details.
The illustrations are mostly there to help figuring out where you are in the world, but technically they are just images, sometimes with some animations, but they don't really impact the gameplay at all.
Most location contains things you can investigate or pick-up, and any item you would drop at a specific location would still be there later when you come back.
As shown earlier, the game uses a directional cross that indicates which directions can be taken.
As you can see on this animated sequence, there are actually six different directions: NORTH, SOUTH, EAST, WEST plus UP and DOWN.
You can navigate either by entering the initial of each direction, like "N" for NORTH or "U" for UP, but you can also just press any of the direction arrows on your keyboard.
For moving UP or DOWN press the CTRL key and the up or down arrow.
If you happen to have a joystick, you can also use it to navigate like you would use the arrow keys.
Using the diagonal movements will allow you to move UP and DOWN.
The score is simply a numerical value that increases when you do something interesting like for example:
The time has two purposes:
Time in the game passes in real time: If you stay in one place doing nothing, time will pass second by second.
But since in the game it takes almost no time to move from a place to another or to perform operations, the time speeds up during the image transitions so in practice the game will time out way before two hours have passed in the real world.
When that happens you will see this game over screen:
Items and other interactive elements are core parts of the game.
At the top of the blue area are all the things you can interact with at the location you are presently at, and they can be items you can take with you, points of interest you can investigate but also fixed elements you can interact with.
At the bottom of the screen are the items you are currently have in your own personal inventory and follow you when you move around the locations in the game.
Some items have long or compound names (e.g. 'a medicine cabinet'), but the game will only accept a specific keyword for it (e.g. 'cabinet'). If you have doubts on what the important word is, just press the SHIFT key to highlight all the relevant keywords.
Most of the action commands in the game are related to items:
Some of the items are difficult to transport and require some fitting container. For example a liquid would need to be transported in a bottle, cup, bucket, etc... but would probably not work well with a cardboard box or a net.
When trying to TAKE one such object, the game will prompt you for the name of the container you want to use to transport it in.
Your inventory is limited to 8 items (4 rows with 2 entries each), and containers count as items and will be shown as "container:item" in the inventory when they contain something.
Since the display area for the scene items is relatively limited, it may happen that there are more items where you are than can be possibly be shown. If that happen you can use SHIFT+UP or DOWN arrow to scroll the item view.
Unlike many 80s adventure games that tried to develop increasingly advanced parsers to understand player instructions (ex: "Pick-up the sword then give the map to gandalf and ask him to open the door with the key"), for Encounter it was decided to use a much simpler system only involving a single action VERB optionally followed by one or two item NAMES.
The vocabulary is thus relatively limited, so here is the complete list of what the game will accept as an input:
Quite a few of these words are synonyms and were added for the sake of variation, so TAKE and GET do the same thing, so do LOOK and EXAMINE.
Here is the list of keywords and what they do:
Commands which take no additional parameter:
Commands which take one additional parameter:
Command which take two additional parameters:
If typing text using the keyboard is a problem for you, you can use the alternative control system that only use the four directions and a single action button.
The way it works is simple: When you reach the command prompt, either type as you would normally do, or just press SPACE (or the fire button of your joystick) to bring a selection menu showing all the possible options.
Then just use the arrows (or the joystick) to move the selection around, and then select it. If the command requires additional parameters (like an item to select) a second list will appear.
Using this system you can easily play Encounter on an Oric just using the four arrow keys and the space bar, a joystick, or devices like the Steam Deck who come with plenty of input buttons but have no keyboard.
The illustrations are only that: Images, no need to try to INSPECT or USE something you see on the image if it does not appear in the list of interactable elements.
Don't stress about the time: You will probably fail on your first attempt, and that's perfectly fine. You might even earn an achievement for it! Just try things, experiment, discover, take notes.
Remember to take a look at the directions indicator: Some of your actions (open a door, use a ladder, ...) may unlock new directions toward new places to explore.
Lethality is not mandatory: Some of the obstacles can be solved using literal brute force, but there are a couple non lethal options for these as well... and you get bonus points for creativity!
Atari Demos