The protagonists of The Quarry are a delicious set of dipshits. They range from being funny and nasty, to the range of teenage archetypes, from the shy bookworms to the queens of the Riverdale drama. Some of these kids are a little more realistic, while others aren’t here to make friends; they are here to start problems or break hearts. There are dramatic love triangles, secret kisses and unrequited longings.
But they all have one thing in common: they are here to be killed. How many of them survive depends on you.
Quarry developer Supermassive Games is taking another turn to recapture the magic of Until Dawn, the studio’s teen horror debut since 2015, for its new cross-platform game. The Quarry shares many of the same pillars: a wide cast of characters, slasher movie aesthetics, and an emphasis on player choice.
Here’s the setting for Supermassive’s new horror story: Due to unexpected circumstances, the kids at The Quarry have to spend another night at Hackett’s Quarry Summer Camp. Adults in their lives are strangely terrified by this news, but for teenagers, it’s just one more chance for an epic party. The night starts like a normal summer party, but things quickly go awry. There is something in the woods, and he is not at all kind to strangers. Add crows, mysterious whispers, tarot cards, 80s VHS technology, and rural tales, and it’s a recipe for a fun mix between camp and chills.
The cast is large and the campers bounce back from each other in interesting ways. They are also very proactive, which continuously drives the plot. The characters do not reflect on deep trauma or complex moral dilemmas. Instead, they’re making decisions like: Wouldn’t it be fun to spin this gun? o Why do we have to wait inside like a bunch of nerds when we can have a campfire?
Teenagers, played by young Hollywood talents like Justice Smith, Brenda Song, Skyler Gisondo and Ariel Winter, have simple problems at first, but things get complicated when they have to focus on survival. This is an easy dilemma to dive into and it means the player has opportunities to choose. My character’s love interest is being horribly altered. Am I trying to save him or is he fleeing into the woods? An athlete swims desperately to get a piece of equipment and is running out of breath. Can I go out and risk losing my precious booty, or am I left underwater with all these chains and corpses?
Because the cast is so large and full of painfully dumb decisions, there is room to revel in some of their terrible deaths. Supermassive’s The Dark Pictures Anthology has a smaller main cast and encourages the player to protect them carefully, but The Quarry is much more knightly at throwing cast members into the meat grinder.
The Quarry is also much less cerebral than the Dark Pictures Anthology, which loves to complicate its twisting narrative. Dark Pictures games are steeped in military conspiracies, childhood trauma, and other narrative curved balls. Even the most messy interpersonal game, House of Ashes, is tame compared to The Quarry: there’s only one romantic conflict, unlike a whole crowd.
Image: Supermassive Games / 2K Games
They are not marine or even adults with fully developed frontal lobes; they’re dumb kids, so many of the choices I had to make during my playtime were petty and silly. There are more of these small-scale options that can branch out in interesting ways, splitting the group or creating the mood for a scene.
The player must navigate the game through dialog options and quick encounters. Are teens honest with each other or evasive? How do you split the group and bend over to save each other from danger? Can a survivor climb a tree, or should he focus on running through the undergrowth? Supermassive has added a lot of useful accessibility features that make skill checks very flexible. The player can change various options to adjust the difficulty and requirement of these checks, so they can be split-second or slower-paced indications.
The Quarry will be released on June 10 for PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Windows PC, Xbox One and Xbox Series X. The online multiplayer component of the game, which will allow a group to decide the fate of teenagers, has been delayed a July. 8 release.