About
Encounter is a text adventure game released in 1983 by Severn Software for 8-bit computers including the Oric 1 and Atmos, written entirely in BASIC and sold on cassette tape; its authorship is uncertain but is generally credited to Adrian Sheppard. Encounter HD is a near-total rewrite, in C and assembler, of the 1983 Oric text adventure Encounter, built with the OSDK development kit and running natively on real Oric 1/Atmos hardware, now loaded from floppy disk instead of tape with added graphics and sound. It retains the original's core story, its locations, and some of the original text, but is otherwise almost entirely new code. It released on itch.io and Steam on December 20, 2024 as version 1.0.0, reached version 1.2.3 by September 2025 with more graphics and interactions added, and entered maintenance mode as of August 13, 2025.
How it differs from the original
Only the core story, the map of locations, and some original text survive from the 1983 BASIC original — everything else is a ground-up rewrite. It adds a graphical, floppy-loaded presentation in place of the original's tape-loaded, text-only display, an optional point-and-click-style menu control scheme alongside classic typed commands, and a scoring/achievement system with 52 possible achievements, about two-thirds unlocked by completing the game and the rest by finding alternate solutions or ways to fail.
Getting started
The game can be built from source using the free OSDK toolkit, whose included build scripts compile the project and launch it in a bundled Oric emulator, or played directly through the released itch.io and Steam builds, which bundle that same emulator. Commands can be typed in classic text-adventure style, or players can press Space to bring up a menu of available commands and items navigable with the direction keys — controls that also work with joysticks and the Steam Deck. The in-game clock runs for two hours, though a full playthrough typically takes 30 to 45 minutes of real time.
History
Encounter HD grew out of the 'Upgrade Time' YouTube devlog series documenting work on the original BASIC source, before the project restarted from scratch in C and assembler; it was later released commercially on itch.io and Steam in December 2024.
Media
Additional notes
- License
- The engine can be freely copied and reused or modified for other games, but may not be sold for profit (charging only the cost of a physical floppy copy is allowed); contributors who add a localization retain rights to that translation work.