We Love It's Guide to…

Encounter: The Lost Cards

The unhinged roguelike for the tactically obsessed. Forget maps—your journey is a deck of Tarot cards you build on the fly. Manage a tight inventory, chain questionable combos, and watch your gear shatter. Got unlucky? The virtuous can resurrect; the sinful, however...

81%
of 73 reviews
$10.39
$12.99
-20%
Released: Jan 26, 2026  •  Developer: Salvatore Grosso  •  Publisher: Encounter GG

The Developer Says...

As fate would have it, you’ve stumbled upon this game. Might as well give it a try. Who knows what you might encounter… ayyy. Get it? Encounter is the name of the game. When I said, “who knows what you might encounter,” it was a play on words.

Encounter: The Lost Cards is a solo, turn-based roguelike where Tarot cards drive the journey. Each card represents an event—an enemy, a stranger, a blessing, a curse—and your run becomes a chain of choices that shape how far you make it.

There’s no traditional world map. Instead, you travel through a deck of encounters, learning how to read risks, build momentum, and survive whatever fate deals next.

Your adventure starts with a single crate. What’s inside? Something useful… or something that forces a painful tradeoff. Either way, you’ll meet oddballs, outlaws, and outright disasters—sometimes in the worst possible order.

A run is a sequence of cards. Every draw is a situation to solve: fight, bargain, gamble, retreat, or take a hit now to avoid something worse later.

Turn-based combat with action economy. Every move consumes energy or other resources. Winning isn’t about spamming attacks—it’s about timing, sequencing, and using your gear intelligently.

Adapt or die. The same card can be helpful early and lethal later on. Build your stats, equipment, and deck so you can turn bad draws into survivable outcomes.

Resource management is the real boss. Everything is limited: rare items break, inventory space is tight, and food runs out. Each pickup is a commitment—taking one thing usually means giving up another.

Managing resources is only the beginning; chaining actions together for strong combos is where the deeper strategy shows up.

If you like roguelikes, inventory management, a touch of deck-building, turn-based RPG combat, and nostalgic pixel graphics, you’ll feel right at home in Encounter.

250+ unique and powerful items

100+ adaptive encounters

Inventory management

Deck manipulation

Action sequencing

Deep, flexible builds

Encounter rewards patience, experimentation, and flexible planning. Fate will sometimes hit you with the worst possible timing—but if you learn the systems and make smart tradeoffs, you’ll start to feel the moment where “random” turns into something you can actually control.

It’s big-brain if you want it to be, but easy to pick up and play. Either way, your fate is in your hands… mostly.

Back of the Box Details

Steam Deck

Verified

DLC

None

DRM/EULA Notices

Requires agreement to a 3rd-party EULA Encounter EULA

Achievements

None

Ratings

None

Metacritic

None

Content Notices

None

Controller Support

None

Reviews

81%

Very Positive

Based on 73 reviews


Individual reviews are not available yet.