The Quarry Review

On June 10th Supermassive Games and 2K introduced us to a new narrative experience that gave the ability to decide who lives and who dies. The Quarry is a new stand alone game and is second to Until Dawn that was released in 2015. It follows the story of a group of counselors spending their last night together at Hackett's Quarry Summer Camp before going home, but as the night goes on one by one, each character goes missing and something is hunting them down...and its up to us to uncover the mystery.

The Characters

The game consists of 9 playable characters, each contributing to the narrative and story. It also contains non-playable characters, that also get killed off due to your actions and choices. Our characters are...

• Laura
• Max
• Emma
• Kaitlyn
• Jacob
• Ryan
• Dylan
• Nick
• Abigail

Each character is unique with their own personality and take on the evening. Its up to us to determine the relationships they will have with each other, but be careful, if you're not friends with someone, it may come back to bite you in the arse.

You will get to play each character multiple times (providing you kept them alive) even if it's for a short few minutes. The game jumps around a lot, you may play Ryan for 2 minutes then play Emma for 15 minutes, all within the same chapter. This is good as it's shows each character often and also helps contribute to the story more; because if you were to play Ryan for 2 minutes, you may actually uncover something that will help Emma during her 15 minutes of fame.

Tarot Cards

Just like Until Dawn, we are given opportunities to see what lies ahead. In Until Dawn we had to locate Totems through out the game in order to see the future and figure out what we had to do in order to avoid it. In this game we have to locate Tarot Cards.

The Tarot cards are a little more harder to find as they have to be seen by the right camera angel in order to pick them up, there are usually 3-4 cards to collect for each chapter. Each one giving you the opportunity to look ahead. But unlike Until Dawn where we can look at each one, if we were to pick up multiple ones we can only pick one to look at, so make your decision wisely, and listen to what Eliza says...it may just help you.

Eliza is just like the Dr Hill of Until Dawn. You meet her at the end of each chapter and she will impart her wisdom onto you and also give you hints to what happened. But is she all what she seems?

Action Vs Dialogue

As said before, each choice you make will either have a large or minor impact, this is also true for the dialogue part of the game. For me, this game was quite dialogue heavy. I did feel like i was was watching the game instead of playing it. Unlike Until Dawn, where you could explore for a while and pick things up as well just admire the views, in The Quarry, it felt like nearly everything you interacted had to have some sort or cutscene or dialogue choice to go with it.

Although the game did have its tense and creepy moments they, to me, didn't live up to the hype and excitement as it's predecessor. We do have an action packed final chapter and that one final decision that determines the true ending of the game but, again you have to go through a load of dialogue to get there.

If you do manage to get through the dialogue to the ending, you will not be disappointed though, as it is fresh, exciting and something that is shaped in your image. You can either choose to be yourself or go with your gut feelings.

Can too many decisions ruin the game?

As we know, when it comes to these games, decisions means everything! But can too many choices ruin the game?

When playing this game, I found that you can actually kill off characters very early on, Chapter 2 to be more specific. Now, this may seem like fun, but killing off characters this early in the game can lead to a lack of development for that character as well as a loss of gameplay that may be what the game needed in order to open it up. I, unfortunately killed off Emma quite early on, and when i read what had happened if you kept her alive, it turns out that she had quite a good fight scene and some good tense gameplay. So, if you were to kill off the characters at the beginning due to your crap decision making, it makes the game really sort and boring. I understand the fact it is a decision making game and if we do happen to kill them all off then that's our problem. But being able to kill them off that early without actually doing anything with them before hand is pretty stupid.

The Death Rewind feature

If you have bought the deluxe feature version of the game or completed the game once you can unlock the Death Rewind feature. If you were to kill a character off due to your reckless decision making you have no choice but to move on and live with the guilt. But, thanks to this feature, if you were to accidentally kill a character off, the game will pause and ask if you would like to use one of your three lives to remake that decision in order to save them. But those three lives are the ONLY three lives you will have, you cant start a new game multiple times and expect to have three lives again, so if you want to have more than three I would recommend that you have a back up save ready.

This is a good feature to have as it prevents you from restarting the chapter in order to save the person you want to save.

Overall rating

Despites its dialogue and lack of exploration, the game is actually really good. It is a brand new game with new enemies and a new mystery to solve. The story is compelling and easy to follow and the new characters will have you picking sides and even picking fights. Creepy atmospheres and tense scenes will have you shaking and wanting to pause for a breath.

Finally, the decision making is amazing, even simple decisions like choosing to open a door or a window can mean the difference between life and death.

The game is worth the time and effort, but...I still think that Until Dawn remains the top game the Supermassive have released of this genre. Simply because the exploration was better and the characters were more enjoyable.

I give this game a 7.5/10

Until Next Time....

The Quarry is currently available on PC, PS4, PS5 and Xbox