Review: horrorgame The Quarry – Tweakers

The Quarry

The Quarry is a game from the makers of Until Dawn, but is less impressive than its predecessor. The player finds himself in an entertaining horror story about a group of teenagers who stay just one night too long at a children’s summer camp, with all its fatal consequences. The gameplay is limited; the player makes choices, performs quick-time events, and walks around looking for clues. Both the difficulty and the pace are quite low. The Quarry is therefore often more of an interactive film than a game. Fortunately, the interactive film manages to convey the story well and the tension, especially in the second half of the game, can be felt continuously. The fact that you can’t fast-forward or speed up the cutscenes and walks makes finishing The Quarry a second or third time a lot less enjoyable. Too bad, because the six to seven hour story can go in all kinds of ways and has different endings. The Quarry, for example, turns out to be a tasty snack, but the price is a bit too steep for that.

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In September 2015, we wrote about Until Dawn, a horror game from Supermassive Games. In that game, the player takes control of a group of youths who got into trouble in a remote forest when an evil mastermind wanted their lives. The game was mainly characterized by the storyline that was subject to choices and actions of the player. Choices, whether or not to successfully handle quick-time events, determined which characters survived the night and which did not.

The concept proved successful: the game received good reviews and Supermassive pushed ahead with The Dark Pictures Anthology, a series of games with a similar setting. A month ago, Until Dawn got a spiritual successor in the form of The Quarry. The ingredients – group of youngsters, remote area, mysterious danger and an excellent cast – are similar to those of Until Dawn, so there is a good chance that The Quarry will come out just as well.

In The Quarry you follow a group of nine young people who had summer jobs as camp leaders at Hackett’s Quarry summer camp. When the summer has ended and the last children have left, the young people prepare for one last evening of partying before they also return to civilization. However, that is different. When the warm rays of the sun give way to darkness, strange creatures appear to roam the woods of Hackett’s Quarry. Strange, armed people are also sneaking around. The player gets a picture of these fighters, but the youngsters are initially unaware of the threat that may be about to end their lives.

Yet the atmosphere is initially still nice and relaxed, at least partly. In the prologue of the story, we see a young couple, Laura and Max (Siobhan Williams and Skyler Gisondo), get off the road in a remote forest when something suddenly appears on the road. While they investigate what happened and try to get the car moving again, they come across a curious police officer (Ted Raimi), who doesn’t seem to have their best interests at heart. The last we see of Laura and Max is Max being attacked by a mysterious creature, while Laura becomes intoxicated and the screen goes dark. When the main story begins and we see the rest of the camp leaders in action, Laura and Max are nowhere to be seen and it becomes clear that they never applied for their summer job at Hackett’s Quarry.

Typical teen drama

At the moment there is little going on with the rest of the group. The player is taken into the typical teenage drama. Jacob (Zach Tinker) struggles to end his summer romance with Emma (Halston Sage), while Abigail (Ariel Winter) and Nick (Evan Evagora) like but don’t know about each other. Ryan (Justice Smith) is the quintessential quiet kid who prefers to listen to his podcasts, Dylan (Miles Robbins) is the blasé know-it-all and Kaitlyn (Brenda Song) is the tough lady who doesn’t like anyone’s bullshit. Above this group is camp leader Chris Hackett (David Arquette), who wants his pupils out of the area at all costs before dark.

However, that doesn’t work, because the van with which the group was to leave turns out not to work for – not so very – mysterious reasons for the player. So there’s no other option than to stay another night at Hackett’s Quarry, while Chris leaves in his jeep to get parts for the van. “Stay in the lodge and keep the windows and doors closed”, Chris tells the seven young people. However, the mix of an empty camp, some leftover food and drink, a campfire and raging hormones means that that is not what the young people decide to do.

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