Black cauldron game play

The original inspiration for both game and movie came from the popular series of children's books, Chronicles of Prydain by Lloyd Alexander.

In this version of the story you play Taran, a young boy on a heroic quest to rescue your beloved HenWen the magical pig from the evil Horned King. You also need to find the Black Cauldron and destroy it, so the Horned King can be stopped from conquering your homeland. The graphics and sound are similar to the early King's Quest series released in the late 80's and are equally primitive , which isn't surprising since both King's Quest and The Black Cauldron were designed by Roberta Williams of Sierra.

If you wish to cut short the opening sequences, simply hit the space bar. Managing the inventory and the interface of this game is a little more bothersome, even though a 'readme. I'll go over the trickier bits here.

The readme-file tells you that hitting the Tab key will open the inventory. It does open a very simplistic-looking list of items depending on what you're carrying , but you can't interact with them.

Hitting F3 opens another version of this primitive interface which instructs you to hit Enter for a selection. You use the arrow keys to scroll through the items, and hitting Enter means you are now carrying the item in your hand. In the meantime, Taran was continually dying of thirst because I couldn't get any water to him from the flask he was carrying.

Use Flying Dust to cross to the other side to the south-west. Open the door and go inside. Walk to the Chest and open it. Frogs will escape and three witches will appear. Talk to them first by pressing F6 and then offer them the Magic Sword in exchange for the Black Cauldron. Speak to the witches and walk towards the Black Cauldron. Make your way back to the castle and go inside. Walk back to the castle, this time the drawbridge will still be open if you broke the chain to escape last time.

Inside the castle go north to the wine cellar and take the secret path between the two wine casks to the corridors below. Walk south and east but get ready with the Magic Mirror. When the Horned King gets close, but not too close, use the Magic Mirror. Congratulations on winning The Black Cauldron. Most Popular Games. The Black Cauldron. Introduction The Black Cauldron was designed to be a little bit easier for kids to play. Pyrdain Leave the cottage and use the Water Flask on the trough outside the front to fill it up with Water.

The Castle Walk north to the wine cellar and then walk between the first and second wine casks on the right side nearest to the far door. Back in Pyrdain Descend down the mountain the way you came, back to the rock maze. The Horned King Make your way back to the castle and go inside. Other You can use the "X" key instead of the F10 key. When the game was written all function keys were to the left of keyboard, with F10 at the bottom. Technical If the game won't work on your computer, you might try downloading the new open-source AGI interpreter here.

It runs under Windows and also works with some of the other games here. Anyway, I consider this game one of my best. Again, Disney shared artwork from their Pooh movies which our artists used to come up with the background art and I used as inspiration for the locations and puzzles. I've found both the msDOS version and the Apple ][ version. Check out Curt Coder's what a great name for a programmer!

ScummVM website. He has an emulator that makes this game run much better on modern computers. And here is an Apple ][ version of the game in Apple disk format.

Players visit all nine planets in the our solar system. The file you download unpacks to 2 subdirectories called "Disk 1" and "Disk 2. And here is what is purported to be an Apple ][ version of the game in Apple disk format. If you get this to work, please tell me how!

It looks incredibly simplistic now, but as I recall, I worked a lot of hours on it! If you die, you must restart the game from the beginning, as there are no extra lives to spare. There are several different endings to the game. Depending on the choices you make or events that happen during the game, the story takes on different paths that lead to different endings at least 6 endings.

This greatly increase the replay value of the game, since you may want to replay it to explore the others possibilities. There are no real puzzles in the game. In order to proceed onwards with the story, you simply have to accomplish a number of mini sub-quests in succession, such as finding a specific object, rescuing a certain person, and so on.

Unfortunately, the game quite often does not give you any clue on what to do next, leaving you wandering around in the game without a goal. Even for today, The Black Cauldron is a decent adventure game.

The dated graphics and the clumsy interface can make for some frustrating gameplay, but they are endurable flaws. Although the game is largely aimed for younger gamers, it is a game that can be easily enjoyed by older adult gamers as well. We need your help! We are now seeking talented gamers to join our team as volunteers to be editors or contributors. No prior experience is required.

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