Play The Black Cauldron Online

The Black Cauldron is a graphic adventure game released for MS-DOS in 1986 by Sierra On-Line, Inc. It is based on the Disney animated film of the same name and presents a fantasy story set in the land of Caer Dalben. The game is viewed from a side perspective and operates as a point and click adventure, forgoing a text parser in favor of function keys to initiate commands.

Players control Taran, an assistant pig keeper, who must protect his magical pig, Hen Wen, from the Evil Horned King. The primary objective is to prevent the king from locating the powerful Black Cauldron. Gameplay involves navigating Taran through various environments where he can walk, run, swim, and converse with other characters. Progression is driven by solving puzzles, which often require finding and using specific items in correct locations or sequences. Key actions and interactions are managed through the function key interface, a design characteristic of several Sierra adventure titles from that period.

The narrative follows Taran's journey to rescue Hen Wen and later his allies, including Eilonwy and Fflewddur Fflam, while seeking a magic sword needed to bargain for the cauldron. The game features branching plot points and multiple possible endings. These outcomes are determined by player decisions during key events, such as whether the pig is saved and how the final confrontation with the Horned King is resolved. This structure allows the story to conclude in different ways based on the player's actions throughout the adventure.