Cauldron (video Game) - Development

Development

Cauldron began development as a game based on the 1978 film Halloween. Palace obtained the video game rights and assigned Steve Brown to the project. Unable to develop a concept he was happy with, Brown took the game in a new direction. Inspired by the Halloween holiday, he envisioned a game featuring witches and pumpkins. Stuart Hunt of Retro Gamer, however, attributed the switch to Mary Whitehouse's campaign against violent horror films in the 1980s.

Brown submitted concept drawings to Palace co-founder Pete Stone, who approved further development. Influenced by what he deemed a "classical witch", Brown designed the witch with a long nose and a broomstick. He created a Plasticine model of the character as a reference for a painting that was used for the game's box art. Brown was joined by Richard Leinfellner, who served as the lead programmer. The two enjoyed different video game genres—Brown liked platform games, while Leinfellner preferred shoot 'em ups—and decided to create a game engine that could handle both methods of playing. Both developers play tested the game, but only played the segments individually rather than in a sequence. In retrospect, Brown attributes the game's excess difficulty to this along with the fact that the two played with unlimited game lives. The game was released on three home computers: Amstrad CPC, Commodore 64, and ZX Spectrum. The Spectrum version lacks scrolling graphics in the shoot 'em up levels and uses flick-screening to approximate it. A port of Palace's 1984 game The Evil Dead, originally programmed for the Commodore 64 by Leinfellner, was included on the second side of the Spectrum cassette. Retailers feared a parental backlash, resulting a limited release for the game. Palace chose to include The Evil Dead to distribute the game to a wider audience.