Producer: Severn Software
Memory Required: 48K
Retail Price: £5.95
Language: BASIC

Encounter is a classic-style adventure with text only. Your task is to find a young girl kidnapped by thugs, and as the short instructions suggest, 'everything you need is here, but you may have to manufacture some items.' On top of that, it might help if the investigator has some knowledge of chemistry (clue).

Most commands are of the verb followed by noun form. Ominously, you are warned that once the alarm goes off you have only 20 minutes before you are caught. As there are an overall 500 moves to complete your mission of mercy, a map would obviously help. The game starts out from a deserted market square.

COMMENTS

Response: reasonably fast despite BASIC
Graphics: text only, blue text on bright yellow background plus tally of moves made

Quick response times on this adventure ensure a rapid exploration of the locations. I found myself whizzing down alleys into forests, past abandoned cars, into gardens, into a multi-roomed mansion - where I suppose the kidnapped girl was hidden - and all without much sense of purpose. This despite the many Items littered along the way, ranging from knives, ladders and assorted coloured dusts and powders which (hint, hint) were no doubt meant to be mixed into some infernal explosive device or other to effect an heroic rescue! But unfortunately the whole place seemed so bereft of life - apart from a dangerously growling dog - that I lost interest rather quickly.

This looked like it should be a good adventure, but somehow the location descriptions are so bare, and in so many all you are told is that you can see nothing of interest, that in the end I thought it felt like a landscape in search of a script

You start in a deserted market square and start exploring. There are lots of unusual things such as coloured powders, hose pipes and fishing nets. The powders must be to make a bomb with, because it is easy to break into the program and in the listing are several references to bombs and bangs. Then you meet up with a dog who eventually kills you. What I couldn't figure out, was how to kill the dog. I typed in "kill dog" and the computer replied, "Good idea," but I never killed him.