Reviews

The idea behind Cauldron 2 is almost diabolical ...

A bouncing pumking inside an enchanted castle full of dungeons and intrepid enemies ¿ what else can one ask ?

The tetric atmosphere is superb and the labyrinthic layout invites you to get lost ...

A lost wonder this Cauldron 2 is ... colorful and terrifying .


4,5 out of 5 .

In Cauldron (1985), you were a witch and had to kill all the pumpkins to finish the game. The sequel to this game reverse the plot: you are the surviving pumpkin from part one who strikes back, trying to kill the witch by collecting certain objects through a lot of screens that shape the visually marvellous witch's castle. And you finish your mission (and that's the problem in Cauldron II) by bouncing: bouncing downstairs, upstairs, to get and object, to avoid enemies... only bouncing, what makes this game one of the most difficult for the Spectrum. Graphically is good but with poor sounds that don't avoid a proper atmosphere.

In a nutshell, a deserving second part but with a terrible, bloody difficult.

by Richard Leinfellner, Steve Brown, Richard Joseph

My last review was Bounder, a top view platformer starring a bouncing ball, and this is another bouncing ball game, only it's disguised as a bouncing pumpkin game, and it's in a more common side view approach.
It's got an unanimous 9/10 from the three major Speccy mags at the time, and you can't see why, it's pretty well done, well presented, with a halloweenish tune and well drawn, animated and colourful graphics. Its prequel was about an evil witch defeating evil pumpkins or something like that, and its difficulty was pretty impossible, but Cauldron II reverses the situation: this time you're the perpetually bouncy pumpkin trying to destroy the witch, and the difficulty, albeit still very high, is more properly adjusted. The pumpkin is, anyway, very hard to control, and, most of the time, you find yourself going to places you didn't mean to go to. Also, as a consequence, the nasties are pretty much unavoidable, although you can help yourself with a bit of shooting magic that can be found scattered through the castle. This castle seems to be a large playing area to explore and it needs to be mapped [well, no need to, really, there are probably plenty of maps already, if you're lazy], so that you can orient yourself and locate a handful of useful objects, that will enable you to defeat the witch, which you can find sleeping in her bed, that sleeping ugly. There are tall skeletons marching forward and backward across the rooms, and big spiders following you, just a bit less horryfing than those in Wriggler. So, very difficult to get into and to control, but pretty smooth and pretty good.
4/5