SyphonGames

Encore guide: cues, ghosts, the Hook and how to last longer

Updated 1 November 2026

Encore is an arcade survival game staged as an endless play. Each act, you collect every cue on the stage and take your bow. Then the theatre remembers: the path you just took comes back in the next act as a ghost that walks it over and over, and touching it costs you. The longer you last, the more of your own past performances you have to dodge. This guide explains every rule the game does not spell out.

Play Encore

Red velvet curtains opening on Act I, with one small figure standing on a spotlit stage.
Encore on SyphonGames.

Controls

  • Move: W A S D or the arrow keys.
  • Dash: Space, Shift or J. Pip blinks instead of dashing.
  • Ability: E or K (Odile only).
  • Pause: P or Esc.

On a touch screen, drag to move and use the on-screen buttons to dash.

How an act works

  • Glowing cues are spread across the stage, three in the first act and one more every second act, up to seven. Collect them all and the act ends with applause.
  • Each act is recorded. When it ends, a ghost, called a Revenant, rises in the next act and walks your exact path from that act, forwards and then backwards, over and over. Touching one costs a rose. Up to seven are on stage at once; after that the oldest bows out.
  • You have a few roses, which are your lives. Lose them all and the curtain falls on the run. Roses do not come back.
  • From the third act, sandbags drop from the flies. A shadow shows where each will land a little over a second before it falls. Being under one when it lands costs a rose, and it then sits on the stage as an obstacle for about five seconds before it is hauled back up. They fall more often in later acts.

The Hook

The theatre has limited patience. About twenty seconds into the first act, a little less in every act after, never less than eleven, the house grows restless and the Hook comes. You hear a boo, and just over a second later the Hook sweeps across the whole stage from one side. A new one follows every few seconds, from alternating sides, until the act ends.

The Hook covers the full height of the stage, so you cannot step out of its way. Being caught costs a rose and ends the act on the spot: no applause, no bonus, and your messy act still becomes a ghost. To get past one, dash through it as it reaches you; the dash makes you briefly untouchable. Better still, finish the act before it arrives.

Scoring

  • Cues score 70 times the act number. Collecting cues within three seconds of each other builds a streak that multiplies this by up to two. Taking a hit resets the streak.
  • Finishing an act scores 320 times the act number, plus a time bonus if you finish in under 22 seconds: the quicker, the bigger, and it too is multiplied by the act number.
  • Your best score is kept in your browser.

Since everything is multiplied by the act number, later acts are worth far more. Surviving one more act usually beats a faster earlier one.

Outlasting yourself

The trick of Encore is that you write the next act's danger yourself. Every path you take becomes a ghost you will have to avoid later, so plan your route with that in mind:

  • Move with purpose. A tidy path makes a ghost that is easy to read and avoid. Wandering in circles fills the stage with a ghost that is everywhere.
  • Use the edges. A route round the outside of the stage leaves the middle clear for later acts.
  • Short acts make short ghosts. A ghost replays one act's path, up to 24 seconds of it, back and forth. A fast act makes a ghost that covers less ground.
  • Watch where the ghosts are going, not where they are. Each walks a fixed path, so after one pass you know exactly where it will be.
  • Save the dash. Every performer's dash makes you untouchable for a moment, which is how you slip through a ghost or the Hook. It needs time to recharge, so do not spend it on movement you could walk.
  • Cues are placed away from danger. New cues are put as far as possible from each other, from the ghosts' paths and from you, so the route between them is what is risky, not the cues themselves.

The company

Four performers, each played differently:

  • Vesper, the Ingénue: the fastest, with three roses and the quickest dash to recharge. The best choice to learn on.
  • Bram, the Basso: slow and heavy, but with five roses and the longest untouchable window on his dash, so he can barge through ghosts the others have to avoid.
  • Pip, the Harlequin: no dash, a blink that jumps a short distance and passes through anything, but only two roses. High risk.
  • Odile, the Marionette: three roses, and once per act she can cut a ghost's strings (E or K), silencing the nearest one for about five seconds so you can walk through it. Save it for the ghost that blocks the last cue.

Ready to play?

Encore runs in your browser, free, with nothing to install. Play Encore now, or browse the categories for something else.

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