The player character is a young assistant pig-keeper named Taran, who undertakes a quest to stop the evil Horned King, who seeks for Hen Wen, the magical pig of the wizard Dallben, for her visionary abilities.

There are plot branches and multiple endings depending on many variables, such as whether Hen Wen the pig was saved, how the cauldron was destroyed, and what reward was chosen afterward.

However, it somewhat resembles the control system of other later simpler point-and-click adventure games, such as the King's Quest VII or The Dig whose interfaces only consisted of "Look" and "Use".

Being based on a Disney film, the graphics present some relative 'flexibility', compared to the monolithic and straight sceneries of previous and later games.

Antic in 1987 criticized the Atari ST version of The Black Cauldron as "typical of early software for newer computers.