The Quarry Review (Xbox Series X|S, PlayStation 5 & PC)

The Quarry brings something out in me that I don’t often get the chance to see. Like Until Dawn, or The Casting of Frank Stone—two extra Supermassive cult favorites—it gives me something to hang onto—a hope; a prayer; a faint sense that something will go right when all hell has finally broken loose. More to the point, it gives me a reason to keep certain people alive, despite several of said people being socially futile and, let’s face it, highly intolerable. Yet, like the studio’s previous work, The Quarry builds all of the right bridges and gives me the calling card to keep them afloat. It doesn’t tell me how to do it, but it does inform me that, if I do much as fail a QTE or misplace a Tarot Card, then I will ultimately be responsible for the death of multiple camp counselors. Great.

The Quarry sets a perfect scene, one that leans into all of the slasher pulp and campfire horror tropes that we both crave and adore. A camp after hours; a band of mischievous counselors; a vehicle without a rotator arm; a pack of “not-so-boarish” boars; and a lot of summer romance. Suffice it to say that, narrative-wise, The Quarry doesn’t just nudge the barriers of an eighties slasher flick; it fully embraces it and makes it one of its own. And you know what? I’m not even mad about it.

Of course, if you have played one of Supermassive Games’ choice-based, QTE-heavy thrillers before, then you ought to know how The Quarry plays its cards. In an almost identical fashion as its ilk, it tasks you with ultimately keeping characters alive over a single night, which either requires choosing dialogue that further advances relationships or vital moments, or making brash decisions that either involve hitting QTEs in a timely manner or deciding which avenue to explore. Granted, there is more to it than that — but you get the gist. It’s Until Dawn with more campfire pulp and lakeside beatings.

The Final Summer

The Quarry bases its premise around a troupe of counselors who, after ending the summer tenure at a lore-addled children’s camp, find themselves stuck at the remote retreat for a final evening. The catch: it’s hunting season, and the “game” that prowl the neck of the woods aren’t regular bears or wolves. A tale soon begins to emerge from the spits of old campfire tales—“The Hag of Hackett’s Quarry”—and within a flash, the campsite unravels into a grueling shift of emotion as the counselors desperately attempt to survive until morning. This, of course, is where you begin your journey: in the early evening hours as the sun sinks beyond the lake and the hunters come out to play their part.

What entails over a relatively short five-hour story is a series of character-shifting escapades, with each arc allowing you to build relationships with counselors, as well as to make vital decisions that lean into the ever-famous butterfly effect that Supermassive Games is known for implementing into its tapestry of tales à la The Dark Pictures Anthology. There are Tarot Cards to collect—important instruments that grant you a sneak peek at “potential” outcomes—as well as various Clues and Evidence files to unearth, which effectively flesh out the narrative and reveal more details on the history of Hackett’s Quarry. But, that isn’t quite as important as the primary objective, which is keeping the souls in your hands breathing.

Forged by Campfire Stories

The Quarry sets a good standard for Supermassive Games’ catalog of thrillers, with a clean and vibrant visual palette and the added bonus of a stellar cast that stretches out to the likes of Brenda Song and David Arquette, among several other commendable BAFTA nominees. And as for everything else that makes up a Supermassive hit—the crucial QTEs and the overlapping narrative arcs, that is—The Quarry has by the motherlode. In other words, yes, there is a lot of replay value here. But that’s Supermassive, in a nutshell.

Although The Quarry is a relatively short game that doesn’t stick around to flesh out some of its finer points, the game does make a fantastic effort to bulk out its characters and establish genuinely unique traits that make you feel all the more connected with them. I can’t say that I wanted everyone to survive *cough* Emma. However, the story pulled me in that much that I didn’t want to pass up a QTE to get the “bad ending” or, in a worst case scenario, put the other counselors at risk of meeting a similar fate.

Of course, with The Quarry being a souped-up Dark Pictures entree, you can more or less expect a lot of walking and talking here. With that, there isn’t much to do outside of exploring in short bursts, as well as collecting small fragments of lore and conversing with other characters. What I mean to say is that, aside from the usual Supermassive trappings, there isn’t a whole lot of original content here. But then, that isn’t what you typically look for in a game like The Quarry; it’s the plot points and the consequences. And frankly, The Quarry gets just about everything in the book right.

Verdict

The Quarry abandons the ol’ Kumbaya campfire song for a tale that’s as equally captivating as it is teeming with all of the beloved eighties slasher pulp and butterfly effect trappings that we both love and crave in a Supermassive universe. I’d say that, as far as the studio’s back catalogue goes, The Quarry stands tall as a worthy adversary of its predecessor, Until Dawn, and a superior over its Dark Pictures doppelgängers. It’s not that the likes of Little Hope or The Devil in Me are bad games; it’s that The Quarry comes across as a beefier game that has more intricate details and better character development arcs. What’s more, it delivers some of the series’ best audiovisual elements to date, which is, of course, a boon in itself.

With all of the above said, I’d say that The Quarry feels like an easy title to recommend, more so if you’re looking to scratch that slasher itch and engage in some good old-fashioned QTE-based drivel. Better yet, if you’re desperately searching for a game that stands its ground against Until Dawn (and maybe even puts it to shame), then I’d say that The Quarry is, in spite of all its minor flaws, the best alternative that money can currently buy. There’s The Casting of Frank Stone, true — but that’s a whole different story that deserves its own campfire reunion.