Cauldron

Copyright : Palace Software | Reviewed by : Malc Jennings

Cauldron is the game many called the turning point in adventure gaming, looking back on the game now though we can?t see quite where that idea came from. Various ingredients to a magical spell have been lost and scattered about the woods outside the witches cabin, your mission is to battle the other evils in the woods and try to recover these items in order to complete the spell - pft you just can?t get the staff these days.

Graphics

If like us you played the sequel before grabbing the original then you will be aware of the many changes made to that sequel when compared to the first outing. Cauldron takes place outdoors at night time in the evil woods, you control the witch who flies about the place on a broom stick. Graphics wise the game looks pretty nice indeedy and runs at a great speed all the way through, the only problem we noticed (well not much of a problem) is that in some backgrounds our main character can easily get lost.

You battle giant bats, the elements of the woods and various other nasty beats on your journey and the whole experience has been brought to life nicely on the Amstrad CPC version - great stuff!

Sound

Sound is superb, we are treated to a great piece of introduction music at the start of the game which alone will keep you sitting and staring at the credits for a while before finaly hitting the fire button to start the game. The usual great sounds as we have seen in so many other Palace games remain in place and only add to make the game that tiny bit better - more great stuff!

Gameplay

The idea of the game is to recover the missing ingredients, you fly about the place on a broomstick and have to avoid the rather nasty beings that inhabit the place while doing so. For me at least the idea of the game taking place outside and controlling an actual human being (as opposed to the bouncing pumpkin in the sequel) works much better and makes a much more entertaining game.

There are plenty of challenged to overcome and the game certainly has a lot of staying power even today, if you loved the game all those years ago then I?m sure it will still keep you playing today. On the other hand if you have never played the game we can only recommend it to you right now!