HOW TO PLAY INTRUDER


Written by Daniel Flathagen, the main man behind Intruder


This file will learn you how to play the adventure game Intruder by Entrance. The latest version of the file can be found at the Intruder website: www.intruder.xrs.net.

The language
Conversations
Fights
Music
Saving and loading
Being stuck
Useless stuff
Selling objects
Buying back objects


THE LANGUAGE

The game can only understand a very simple language. Let's say you're standing by a house. You want to know more about the house, how it looks etc. Should you type "TAKE A LOOK AT THE HOUSE"? No. In Intruder most commands contains only two words. Therefore; "LOOK HOUSE" ought to do it. Below you can see a list of things to do, and what you can write to do it.
NOTE! These are not all the commands you can type! Use your imagination!

No. What you want to do What to write
1. Go in a certain direction "Go north", "Go up", "Go east" etc.
2. Take something (e.g. a book) "Take book", "Get book"
3. Talk with someone (e.g. a man) "Talk", "Talk with man", "Talk man"
4. Look at something (e.g. a house) "Look house", "Examine house", "X house"
5. Look around "Look", "L"
6. Get a list of what you're carrying "Inventory", "List", "I"
7. Open something (e.g. a door) "Open door"
8. Close something (e.g. a door) "Close door"
9. Press something (e.g. a button) "Press button", "Push button"
10. Pull something (e.g a drawer) "Pull drawer"
11. Climb up something (e.g. a tree) "Climb tree", "Climb"
12. Kill somebody (e.g. a woman) "Kill woman", "Kill"
13. Replace something (e.g. a bulb) "Replace bulb"
14. Remove something (e.g. a door) "Remove door"
15. Fix or repair something (e.g. a broken PC) "Repair PC", "Fix PC"
16. Use something (X) in another way not described "Use X" ought to do it
17. Give something to someone No command can perform this, so if you for example want to give a book to a man you meet, TALK to him, and if giving him the book is never an alternative, then there is no point in giving him the book
XX. Quit the game "Quit"


When you're typing in where you want to go, you can cut down on the writing. So instead of writing "GO NORTH", you can also type "NORTH", or just "N".

CONVERSATIONS

Holding a conversation in Intruder is very simple, if you just do it right. If there's a person at the place you are that you want to talk with, simply type "TALK".

The people you might meet in the game doesn't necessarily want to talk with you all the time, but for someone it might help if you are carrying a specific object. So if a person refuses you, it might just help you further if you try to talk to a "refuser" again later in the game when you seem to be stuck.

If the person wants to talk to you, you'll get some choices of what you can say to the person. E.g:

1 = Who are you?
2 = How old are you?

If you want to ask the first question, type "1" in the text box. Then press Enter, and your choice will be performed.

When you want to stop talking before the conversation is over, type "STOP TALKING" and the conversation is immediate over.


FIGHTS

Sometimes you might get into fights. It can be dangerous if you don't have any weapon and your enemy is strong. Therefore you should take good care of anything you might use as a weapon.

When you get into a fight, you'll get a list over what "weapons" you have to defend yourself with.

Example:

Choose what you want to fight with:
Hands
Knife

In the example above you have to things to defend yourself with; your bare hands and your knife. It shouldn't be hard to understand that the knife is a better choice than to fight with your hands.

To choose a weapon, e.g. the knife, just write the name of it, in this case "Knife", and then press Enter. You'll now get your choice confirmed, and it's time to fight!

Fighting is extremely simple. Intruder is not a fighting game, and we have not layed stress on the fightings, so all you have to do, is write "Kill" and press Enter.

You'll now get to know if you have been hit, and if you have missed your enemy or not. Keep an eye on the health information at the bottom of the screen. When you're getting less health, the health indicator might change color. If the health indicator turns red, you're in big trouble. One miss and you might die..

The fight isn't over 'til one of you have died, which happens when that person gets 0% in health. The other one, that survives, is probably damaged, and can have a health of everything from 10% to 90%.

As you probably understand, you can't go around with 10% health for a very long time. You might meet another monster. Therefore, you should as soon as possible get healed. But how do you do that? Well, here's a hint: It might be wise to visit a certain house in Sandora Village..


MUSIC

You can have music playing in the background, and it's up to you to choose what music. Intruder can play all modules; that is music files with the following extensions: mod, xm and s3m.

To start playing music, choose Options/Music from the menu. Browse through your hard drives, floppy discs, CD-ROM's, DVD ROMs, whatever, until you find a module you like, then press "OK". The song will now loop forever. Whenever you want to change song, do the same, just select another. If you want to stop the music from playing, type "Stop music" in the text box where you usually type the game commands.

Even though you can select any modules you like, there are some modules that are "Official Intruder Tracks." Some of these came with Intruder when downloaded, but there are many more great Intruder tracks out there, waiting for being played. You can download these from The Official Intruder Website: www.intruder.xrs.net.


SAVING AND LOADING

Saving and loading game files is ectremely simple, but it might be a little tricky in the beginning, if you haven't read this help, that is.

You can save in 9 positions. If you downloaded the game yourself, there should be no saving files within the game. Therefore, no games can be loaded. When you start saving, you must save your games chronologically. You can for example not save a game at position number 7 if there is no games saved at position 6. When you've filled up all the positions from 1 to 9, you can overwrite any number you'd feel like.

To save, simply write "SAVE " + position, e.g. "SAVE 4".
To load, type "LOAD " + position, e.g. "LOAD 4".

If you, caused by an accident or your IQ, load a game that doesn't exit, the game will (for some reason) often put you into a fight where you're already dead. You'll then have to use normal procedure for such occations, typing "Start Intruder" and load an existing game.

If you want to hack the saving files, I have to disappoint you. Hacking is even more hopeless than it was with "The Warrior", with Intruder it's actually impossible. Sorry, but that's the way it is.


BEING STUCK

Can you get stuck in Intruder? Why yes, you can. Of course, many times, it seems like there's nothing you can do, and that it's all over. That's rarely right. There are some hints hiding inside the game, and if you haven't found them, some of your Intruder-playing friends probably have. If they for some reason are not playing Intruder, pass them a copy and maybe they'll help you further.

Then we have these silly walkthroughs. There are probably already someone out there that has nothing else to do, and has used his/hers sparetime to make a walkthrough for Intruder. Most of the walkthrough makers make'm mostly to brag indirectly about that he/she has completed the game. Anyway, if you're stuck, it might help you to log on to the Internet and make a search for "Intruder +walkthrough". You'll probably find something. The stupid thing about the walkthrough's, is that you lose almost all the joy of the game, not to mention the relief it is to complete it all by yourself. Second of all, many of the walkthroughs are incomplete, halfway wrong or does not contain the hidden places (oops, did I really mention them?) because the author haven't found them. But hey, it's your choice. D'you wanna ruin the fun, fine with me.

This was a little off topic. Back to the real "stuckiness" of Intruder. You can get serios stuck, for example you can have to bad health to jump over something and can't continue. Well, if you're a compulsive Intruder player, you should know what to do. There's always someone there for you, as long as you've got the money. And the money, that's the second way to get stuck..

Say, you've got to buy something to complete some of the game. But ouch, you're out of money. Or maybe you have money, just not enough. There are some hidden places inside the world of Intruder, where only experienced Intruder players have a chance to get access. With experienced, I mean that you "understand" the game, you know what to write to do stuff and you're good to find the hints. You also explore every little hole-and-corner place of the game. In these hidden places there are usually a lot of money. There's also another opportunity, described in the Selling section.


USELESS STUFF

In most adventure games, you get use for every single item you find. Everything has its place in the huge adventure puzzle. Well, we don't follow. If you complete Intruder, you may have left some items that you never had any use for, so-called useless items (dah!). These are made just for the confusion part. But we don't stop at items, there are actually a couple of useless places as well, where nothing can be done! Of course, you can do something, but not anything that affects the game helping you further. Why? Just to confuse you. So if you're at a place thinking "What the [beep] is the point of this place?", always have in mind the opportunity that the place maybe doesn't have a point at all..


SELLING OBJECTS

After you've played a while, you'll probably discover the fact that you can't carry an endless amount of objects. You have to get rid of them somehow. In many other text-based adventure games, there's a "drop" command, letting you drop some of your inventory everywhere. Entrance has made a new twist, instead of throwing away your stuff and not getting anything in return, we have made the opportunity to sell your objects. This section will teach you just that.

Inside the village of Sandora there's a pawnshop. This is the place where you can sell your stuff. But remember, don't sell an object just after you've got it, they are almost everybody useful. A smart advice is to only sell what you have already used, as most all of them will be used once. Sometimes you might find out that you never should have sold the object. In that case, read the Buying back section.

For instance, we can pretend that you are going to sell a book. All you do, is to type "SELL BOOK" while you're inside the pawnshop. The pawnbroker (Johnny) will usually make an offer (I say usually, 'cause he won't buy every twisted things you're bringing into his shop), and then you either type "ACCEPT" or "REFUSE". That's it.


BUYING BACK OBJECTS FROM THE PAWNBROKER

If you've sold something by a mistake, you have the chance to buy it back, as long as you remember what it was. If you regretted selling the book, type "BUY BOOK" and Johnny will tell you an amount of money that he wants for it. Same procedure here, with "ACCEPT" or "REFUSE". You might experience that Johnny usually sells it for more than what he gave for it, but hey, he's a human. Of course he has to make a profit. He probably has a family to support! :)