Stellar Explorer: The Drosi Encounter is a single-player, keyboard controlled adventure/exploration game. The player takes the role of the captain of a space ship. A Drosi ship is trapped in a decaying orbit and your mission is initially to rescue the crippled spacecraft. However there is a much more to the story than that. The Drosi have been known for some time, they even speak a form of English, but they broke off all contact some time ago. As the story unfolds the reasons for this, the secret of the Drosi will be revealed.

The game is played from a top-down point of view. The player is a brown circle, crew members are green circles and so on. Movement is done via the numeric keypad. NUM LOCK must be on, all other commands displayed on screen and are single letters. For example to talk to someone the player presses 'C' for Converse. They then use the numeric keypad to target the being they wish to talk to and press 'C' again. If they have anything to say it pops up in a dialogue box. Scanning, 'S', and shooting, 'T' for Target, are handled in the same way.