The Black Cauldron
Main game
2.85 average rating based on 13 ratings
- Developers
- Sierra
- Publishers
- Sierra
- Franchises
- Disney, The Chronicles of Prydain
- Platforms
- Amiga, Apple II, Apple IIGS, Atari ST/STE, DOS
- Genres
- Adventure, Point-and-click
- Themes
- Fantasy
Release Dates
User Stats
How Long Is The Black Cauldron?
giopep's review of The Black Cauldron
This time, the semplification of the King’s Quest model for a kids game doesn’t work well, certanly not as well as with the Hi-Res adventures for kids. The interface is clunky and the game includes sudden deaths and shitty labyrinths that feel out of context. Still, the visuals are quite nice, there’s some fun cutscenes, a certain degree of freedom in how to tackle some puzzles and an experimental vibe in how it tries to reproduce some parts of the movie. Overall I had fun but I still think it’s not a good game.
Irritating Intro Song And Sluggish Gameplay Make For A Disappointing King's Quest-Style Adventure
Preliminary: Wow, some hideous title screen music and then starting gameplay music. Let's hope the fact it's a King's Quest style adventure game with interesting, seemingly simple controls will save it heh.
And what a chore it was to get this game to play right and with the (seemingly) right colors. Looks soooo much prettier the way I got it to play, rather than the SVGA graphics card I originally was trying. I really didn't think I'd stick to this game, despite the nice colorful Look and King's Quest-esque gameplay and relatively smooth Function Key controls--it's slow (like, you literally move slow), seems like there isn't a lot of "meat" and excitement to it, and I don't have a connection with the Black Cauldron plot (plus, I see you get hungry and thirsty periodically blergh... and it looks long).
Ironically it was how smooth the save and load function are, with great director navigation, that convinced me I will give this an earnest try after all this travail ha. Here goes nothing
Look: 7/10
Lol cute 
Sound: God awful
Play: 6/10 After delivering Hen Wen to the, uh, secret fairy house place, I was already feeling a bit burned out. …
Preliminary: Wow, some hideous title screen music and then starting gameplay music. Let's hope the fact it's a King's Quest style adventure game with interesting, seemingly simple controls will save it heh.
And what a chore it was to get this game to play right and with the (seemingly) right colors. Looks soooo much prettier the way I got it to play, rather than the SVGA graphics card I originally was trying. I really didn't think I'd stick to this game, despite the nice colorful Look and King's Quest-esque gameplay and relatively smooth Function Key controls--it's slow (like, you literally move slow), seems like there isn't a lot of "meat" and excitement to it, and I don't have a connection with the Black Cauldron plot (plus, I see you get hungry and thirsty periodically blergh... and it looks long).
Ironically it was how smooth the save and load function are, with great director navigation, that convinced me I will give this an earnest try after all this travail ha. Here goes nothing
Look: 7/10
Lol cute
Sound: God awful
Play: 6/10 After delivering Hen Wen to the, uh, secret fairy house place, I was already feeling a bit burned out. If only there were a good jingle, or tho the Look is nice and classic, if it were more striking... Or maybe if the character moved faster and there were less navigation :-p
Feel: 7/10 I do love the King's Quest and Below the Root vibes, but it wasn't enough to save it. Maybe if the Sound wasn't so annoying, or the gameplay was more engaging, it'd help allow the good Look to make the game what it could be. (Or if I had an attachment to the Black Cauldron story... something)
Attachment: 6/10
Welp, I wound up saying enough is enough, after the chore of navigating through the calmer parts of the river to get to the Dagger and the Mountain cave thing (which did look cool for the record, like a bunch of gemstones), but it was this Rope part that made me say it's enough. Why do these early text-adventures-brought-to-life often love to exploit their poor platforming or movement mechanics? Like, you clearly knew this game was sluggish and clunky in its controls and was supposed to be a text adventure brought to life but with Function Keys instead of King's Quest style text commands... after trying 3 times to go "diagonally" up this rope, as much as I knew I'd eventually figure it out, the fact I still had a whole chunk of the game ahead of me meant nah... time to move on. 
Completion: 44/230 Score Playtime: ~50 mins