I'm going to do my best to keep this as spoiler-free as possible, but if you've played Until Dawn, the interactive drama horror game for Playstation 4 centred around five teens attempting to survive the night in a remote location in the mountains, then you should already know vaguely what to expect.
The Quarry is a "survival horror interactive drama" played from the third-person perspective of nine teenage camp counsellors, as they try to make it through the night at Hackett's Quarry.
Supermassive Games have themselves stated that they view this game as a spiritual successor to Until Dawn and so, much like it, The Quarry draws heavy inspiration from teen slasher movies - think Scream (1996), Cherry Falls (2000), or any of the Friday the 13th franchise.
We only experienced a slice of gameplay (around an hour), but the parts we played captured the "teen horror" feel excellently, combining great choreography with a powerful narrative to deliver an experience which seems to swing effortlessly from warm and heartfelt to dramatic and hair-raising in mere moments.
The Quarry follows the general outline of Until Dawn - make choices that impact the story in ways from minor to crucial, cultivate relationships that affect dialogue and scene choices, and find clues and evidence to get insight into the history of Hackett's Quarry and the situation the teens find themselves in.
All of this is done while navigating quick time events, button bursts, combat, and "don't breathe" events - moments in which you must hold your breath when danger is near and release only when it's safe.
The game also features local co-op, "movie mode", and an Online Mode, although we didn't get to trial these as they weren't included in the preview version we got our hands on.
The formula for gameplay is a simple one, and one that Supermassive Games say they have "perfected" using their experience from Until Dawn and Dark Pictures Anthology (their other series of a similar genre).
In each Act, you assume control over a particular camp counsellor and explore the area and situation they find themselves in. Throughout the game, you will be presented with choices and decisions, although it might not be immediately obvious how consequential those choices will turn out to be.
Your choices matter - Until Dawn focused heavily on a "butterfly effect" narrative, and although The Quarry doesn't seem to openly reference this concept, it's still very much at play - the tiniest of decisions can set events in motion that ultimately result in one or more characters meeting a grisly end.
The story seems to do a good job of keeping you on your toes, with the "right" choices not always being the obvious ones. This is compounded by a lot of cryptic clues and messages that you might be given by a particular character, or that you might find along the way.
Certain choices will lead to a major turning point in the story, this is indicated by a "path chosen" message appearing on the screen. These moments, when they occur, are truly exciting - they signal that a ball has started rolling, but they give you no indication of how, why, or when the effect of the path will be seen.
Paths are tracked in the pause menu, meaning you can check in periodically and see how the story is unfolding. It also helps you link together two events, and see how the situation you're in now has been affected by something minor you did a few hours before.
The narrative also focuses heavily on relationships, with a lot of the characters being embroiled in interpersonal drama, love triangles, or just simply not liking each other. These relationships evolve as the story progresses, and are affected by decisions you make both in and out of the dialogue.
Cultivate the relationships in the right way, and you might find yourself gaining the upper hand later down the line. Get it wrong, and the consequences could be dire.
The gameplay fits the genre pretty much as you'd expect, but has now been going long enough to be polished and refined. The Quick Time Events (QTEs) present themselves as on-screen prompts to press a particular button, although unlike in Until Dawn and Man of Medan (the first instalment of the Dark Pictures Anthology) you get a warning on screen before the prompt appears.
There is also something the developers call "button bursts", which are similar to button mashes but may sometimes be based on precise timing rather than speed.
Additionally, in a completely new feature from Supermassive Games, there are now "interrupts" - certain things may play out during the story that you decide you want to stop in their tracks. As you'd expect, this can have groundbreaking consequences whether you choose to interrupt or not.
Although the game does technically have combat, this may be a somewhat grandiose claim for what are essentially point and click events. That said, the focus in these isn't really on action and thrills - it's another narrative tool. Hit, miss, or don't shoot at all, each action has a consequence.
Clues and evidence are found throughout the game and hint to the history of Hackett's Quarry, and the events unfolding there. They're tracked in the pause menu and come in many different forms. Unlike in previous Supermassive Games endeavours though, they seem to have a use beyond just providing lore, with the developers claiming that "items of evidence you find during the game can really impact the ending of your story."
I really hope this claim comes to fruition, as I often found the Evidence collectables in Until Dawn and Dark Pictures Anthology were a little underwhelming. Finding them all was difficult and often took multiple playthroughs, but beyond that, the story was often revealed at the end whether you found them or not.
There were exceptions to this of course, which I won't mention in case you haven't gotten around to playing Man of Medan yet, but generally, I think giving the evidence more of an impact on the story is an exciting prospect.
Interacting with the world will yield many discoverable items and collectables, including Tarot Cards. These cards can be given to a particular character in exchange for a reading or prophecy - essentially a short clip that shows an event in the future that may play out.
Notice the emphasis I've put on the word "may" there - not only can you try to avoid such an outcome if it doesn't look great (I witnessed one of the characters being hung upside down in a somewhat gruesome manner) but you might not even make it to that point at all. Perhaps for you, the decisions you've made cause the story to branch in a totally different direction.
From what we've seen so far, The Quarry looks like a truly fantastic release from Supermassive Games, with them doing what they do best better than they've done it before.
They've been in the game long enough now, and they've had plenty of practice at it, so it should come as no surprise that the concept feels polished, with a powerful story being told in an artful way through characters that are multifaceted and convincing enough to immerse you deeply into the dramatic world they find themselves in.
The choreography builds tension beautifully, with enough spooky moments to satisfy even the most seasoned of horror lovers. These moments range from high thrill slow burns culminating in a gruesome scene, right through to the cheapest of jumpscares, and each one of them promises to be as gripping and fulfilling as the last.
The developers wanted to create the spiritual successor to "Until Dawn", and in the hour that we spent with the camp counsellors, they certainly seem to have done that. If you've never taken a walk through a Supermassive Games tale before, I honestly can't recommend it enough - the 10-hour tale that The Quarry offers is as good a place to dive in as any.
Just be careful of the bloodthirsty locals, and watch out for a creature even more sinister than them.
The Quarry releases on June 10 2022 for Windows, Playstation 4, Playstation 5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series S/X.
