A journal keeps tab of all of these branching paths and they can impact minor things like how one character may feel about another as well as major things like whether a character is alive or dead. You can see how this might take place as you play, with certain choices you make being highlighted on-screen. So how much do choices actually matter in The Quarry? In the lead up to release, Supermassive were boasting a whopping 186 different endings. Though when you realise the number of branching options within the title, any single underwhelming path suddenly becomes a lot more understandable. The game’s ending doesn’t quite have the bite I wanted it to, and that is unfortunate. It gives you campiness whilst simultaneously giving you high stakes that create immense tension in those moments of life and death. It’s supernatural and silly yet still threatening. There aren’t as many twists and turns as Until Dawn, and that can also make The Quarry somewhat more predictable, but I also can’t help but to enjoy the narrative for what it is. I don’t want to give much away about the overarching plot, but know that it does move in some interesting directions with one particular realisation being the pivot point that moves the game from mysterious to batshit crazy. I wouldn’t describe the game as perfectly polished or devoid of plotholes, though whether intentional or not, the game’s imperfections feel endearing and appropriate within the context of a slasher. Ripe with terrible decisions, some cheesy writing, and typical teen drama, The Quarry feels at home within its niche. Playing on tropes of the slasher movie genre (Scream, Friday the 13th, Halloween), the game takes you on a rollercoaster of near-death experiences as unimaginable sequences of horror befall the characters. Though, admittedly, it did make things scary. Particular forced camera angles and sequences were atrocious to control, with super dark environments not helping to make the exploration rewarding. Though if it was a deliberate choice, they may have gone one step too far in The Quarry. It’s not out of nature for a horror game to feel cumbersome to play, adding an extra layer to that feeling of helplessness and unease. Moments of exploration are kind of awkward, perhaps deliberately so, as you try to simultaneously control rigid character movement and unwieldy torch shining at the same time. They can also be turned off completely in the options menu, a good accessibility feature for those who may need it. Though unlike Until Dawn before it, these sequences seem to have been made more simple and harder to fail. Quick-time events and the mashing of a button can create anxiety in moments of tense action. On a strictly gameplay level, there isn’t much to talk about in The Quarry. Outside of these moments, a large portion of the game will simply be watching scenes play out, jumping in with decisions and inputs here and there. Other moments again give you choices, often on a timer, that force the player to pick one of two options, likely to cause a branch in the narrative. At other moments you can jump in to respond to a quick-time-event or button-mashing prompt that can influence the outcome of a scene based on a binary fail state. At times you can walk around the space in a third-person perspective, looking for trinkets or noteworthy environmental details that help you to piece together the mystery at hand or provide extra lore. Cutscenes and uninterruptible dialogue make up the majority of the experience, with the player jumping in to control the sequences of events in a fairly limited capacity. The Quarry is largely an interactive film. A string of bad decisions and poorly communicated warnings lead to a horrific night involving local hunters, ghost stories, the mystery of a burned down freakshow, and an unknown life-threatening entity. A season of summer fun turns to bloodshed and fear when a broken down vehicle forces our cast to stay at the Hacket’s Quarry lodge for one night longer than they ought to. The game takes place at Hacket’s Quarry, grounds to a Summer Camp for kids where our protagonists first meet as newly arrived camp counsellors.
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