The Quarry Review

The Quarry is yet another interactive love letter to horror from the twisted minds at Supermassive Games. Since 2015’s Until Dawn, the studio has been trying to repeat the success of their beloved PlayStation exclusive with mixed results. The Dark Pictures Anthology has been a fun episodic experiment, albeit one that has yet to produce a game as enrapturing as Until Dawn, but it’s the surprise announcement and release of The Quarry that has seen Supermassive create a true successor to Until Dawn in all but name.

The Quarry clearly follows in the footsteps of Until Dawn with a near identical core to its design design, paying homage to the teen slasher subgenre of horror film, allowing players to decide the fate of its Hollywood cast as they try to survive the night.

With summer camp at Hackett’s Quarry done for another year and the unruly kids sent packing, it’s time for the counsellors to let their hair down. It’s the quintessential setup for a horror movie and one that’s been modernised with updated teen archetypes to fill the roles of each playable character.

If this is your first Supermassive game, think of The Quarry as an interactive movie of sorts. While there are sections that give you complete control of a character to explore certain locations, you’ll mostly watch cutscenes that are either dialogue or action oriented and require your input. It’s during these scenes that you can alter the trajectory of the story as well as its many side plots. Comparing your playthrough with a friend’s, it’s extremely unlikely that you’ll have both seen the same series of events play out.

If you’ve already played Until Dawn or any of the The Dark Pictures Anthology, The Quarry won’t have that same impact upon you. Similar to other games such as Heavy Rain and Life is Strange, there’s a definite magic to experiencing this kind of storytelling for the first time. The fact that Supermassive carries forward so much from its past work is an interesting choice, though there’s enough nuance here to suggest the developers are trying new ideas instead of leaning solely on their established, blood-splattered blueprint.

Throughout the game, your choices are chronicled in a submenu alongside the clues you gather as you attempt to unravel the mystery of Hackett’s Quarry. There’s also a live map of the camp to help get a better idea of where characters are at any given moment. Supermassive has also trimmed some of the more redundant systems seen in previous games such as character profiles that display their emerging characteristics and the strength of their relationship with other survivors. Instead, this has been streamlined to notifications that will periodically appear during play.

Meanwhile, premonitions are a returning mechanic, meshing pretty nicely with this evolved template by giving you the option to look at glimpses of the future, but only if you manage to locate collectable tarot cards.

This kind of game relies on two major factors: the likability of its characters and the immersiveness of the mystery they are embroiled in. Here The Quarry gets a double thumbs up thanks to a mostly charming cast and a story that serves up plenty of curveballs to go with the buffet of predictable teen horror tropes.

Supermassive has managed to bag some pretty big names from the world of horror cinema including Ted Raimi, Lin Shaye, and David Arquette to name just a few. There are some familiar faces among The Quarry’s survivors too, bouncing off each other quite convincingly with their irreverent banter and goofy tangents. They’ll take some time to grow on you, but then that’s one of the many advantages this game has over a horror movie, with a run-time of around 10 hours. Sure, the pacing isn’t perfect, and not every plot has a super satisfying conclusion yet, as a whole, it comes together brilliantly, no matter your chosen path.