Encounter

About

Encounter is a Commodore 64 game in which the player pilots a probe vehicle across a plain covered in cylindrical obelisks, using a radar and warning-light instrument panel to detect and fight off alien saucers and homing missiles across eight levels. encounter is a from-scratch WebGL remake of the Commodore 64 game Encounter, built by a single developer and playable directly in the browser. The active codebase has been modernized to ES6 modules, while the original pre-ES6 code is preserved separately as a legacy version reachable through its own page. It supports keyboard (WSAD or arrow keys) and a custom hand-built mobile touchscreen d-pad for controls.

How it differs from the original

Several areas are explicitly incomplete relative to the original, per the project's own feature-status tracking: accurate sound and perfect collisions are each about half-implemented, and additional enemy AI is about 40% done. Some of the reproduced sound frequencies were reverse-engineered directly from the Commodore 64 original's memory using a C64 audio analysis tool.

Getting started

Play in the browser at the project's hosted build — press Space to start, move with WSAD, arrow keys, or the on-screen mobile d-pad, shoot with Space or Z (or the mobile fire button), and pause with P.

Additional notes

Design note

The obelisk-covered playfield is, per the project's own notes, infinite in all directions.