It isn’t quite summer without a little bit of summer camp terror, right? Welcome to The Quarry. We have had the pleasure of getting a sneak peek inside what will more than likely be another wonderful and terrifying addition to Supermassive’s library of decision-making horror games.
Let’s get right into it.
What to expect
The preview build we saw put us right into one of the acts without introducing the story fully. The decision to skip some story was more than likely driven to keep the details under wraps, which is understandable considering that all of Supermassive’s resume of games are completely story-driven. I’m a huge story fan, so I wouldn’t want to ruin it for anyone. Anyway, the preview was merely a taste of what’s to come and fans of the dev’s previous games will probably not be disappointed with the latest offering. Getting back to what we played, the acts we participated in started at a campfire, where the game introduced not only the main characters you might be playing, guiding, or killing due to bad decisions but also to the branching narrative mechanic driving most of the adventure. The second part of the preview shifted to more action, but the beginning gave us a good primer.
The campfire act gave us a preview of the branching narrative mechanic, which seems to be refined with The Quarry, where your responses dictate emotion and how a character treats you or another character not controlled by you. The demo showed off a game of ‘Truth or Dare’, which fits right in with a branching narrative structure perfectly. As expected, within five minutes of gameplay, I managed to ruin two relationships quickly – one over a girlfriend, another over a bag of chips. This campfire scene went on for about 20-30 minutes and guided the story down a specific path, which, again, is no real surprise. How that ends up affecting the rest of the game is an unknown, but there were plenty of significant moments that have the potential to create specific and multiple paths with the story. And this was only 20-30 minutes of gameplay.
As the scene wrapped, we were taken to a tarot card reader, who gives you mysterious choices, which affect the direction you’re going to go next. Much like the curator in Supermassive’s The Dark Picture Anthology, this mysterious person is tough to read in the short span that we saw them. Once that ended, we were taken back to the campers and were slowly introduced to the situation at hand, which started with a woman’s scream and a large gunshot. Nothing like a let’s go check that out in the middle of the night start to the adventure. Although the breadcrumbs were laid out at the beginning of the previous act, the scream and shot reassured us that something bad was afoot. And why wouldn’t it be? Horror movies and previous Supermassive games have prepped us for this type of scenario. The only question is, how bad is it going to get for our adventurers? From what I could tell from the short preview, it’s going to get messy, and honestly, I wouldn’t have it any other way with my horror.
From there, the action in the game shifted from branching choices to something a bit more explorative, and the situation felt that there was a lot more at stake with each action I made. This is much like what you would find Until Dawn. While this act had a lot more pace and story to it than the previous, and a bit more freedom to go different ways, I don’t want to reveal too many things that might take the gasp away from the adventure. I will say that you should look forward to plenty of jumpy moments, and fun mechanics that aren’t just simply branching narrative and QTE-related. Again, if you loved what Supermassive Games did in the past with this type of gameplay design, then you’ll appreciate the leaps and bounds they made for this game to make it more than just the usual. This feels like a true horror experience.
What isn’t a horror experience, and it might be my 11th generation i7 and 3080 card making this so, is the graphics and the atmosphere. While there is no doubt that The Dark Picture Anthology looked and sounded amazing, as did Until Dawn, this seemed to take all that past presentation history up a notch. The lighting, shading, environments, and the outrageously gorgeous character models are something to behold. Supermassive knows how to make the experience feel real with both visuals and the acting. They have some big names in this game, and they wanted to sell the horror in various ways on the presentation side of things. While the preview only lasted about an hour, it was visually and audibly impressive, and the game is probably going to be more impressive at launch. Anyway, there are zero drop-offs from the developer’s previous efforts, and it seems like they have perfected this for current-generation console and PC hardware. It’s going to be freaking gorgeous in so many ways.
Conclusion
Anyway, while I know there weren’t too many specific details included in this preview, I think this type of game needs to be seen and experienced, rather than some yahoo reviewer giving you the skinny. Like I have said previously if you enjoyed the efforts of Supermassive Games from their past titles, then you’re probably going to fall in love with what the devs have done with The Quarry.
Keep an eye out for more on this game coming up soon.
