The Quarry Review: Shallow horror with flaws 6.8/10

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The Quarry, the latest horror prank from the makers of Until Dawn and The Dark Pictures Anthology, will be released on June 10th, 2022, and promises once again fun evenings, whether alone or with friends in couch co-op. Find out what to expect in our spoiler-free review.

Information at a glance:

• Developer: Supermassive Games
• Genre: Horror and Thriller
• Platform: PC, Xbox One & Series X|S, PlayStation 4 & 5
• Price: €59.99 (PC), €69.99 (PS4, Xbox One), €74.99 (Series X|S, PS5)
• Playing Time: Approximately 10 hours per play through

This is The Quarry

Supermassive Games, the creators of Until Dawn and The Dark Pictures Anthology, have decided to release another game in the horror genre before the fourth and final Dark Pictures part. The Quarry relies on well-known features and a cinematic staging. It’s basically an interactive horror movie that you can enjoy alone or with friends in couch co-op.

In The Quarry, as a player, you take control of several young adults who spend the summer as caregivers at Camp Hacketts Quarry. Throughout the many cutscenes that advance the story, you’ll have to make important decisions that affect the outcome of the story. In between, however, you can also control the characters yourself and follow clues in order to track down what is happening on site.

You realize how important your decisions are at the latest when the first character dies. This is also one of the most distinctive features of the Supermassive Games titles. Each character can irrevocably bless their time and thus influence the course of the game. In the end, everyone can survive, or nobody, it’s up to you. So it is not surprising that there should be up to 186 different endings in the game.

This is what awaits you in The Quarry

Since we don’t want to sugarcoat anything in this review, we’ll just get straight to the point and tell you what we think is good and bad about The Quarry and how the spiritual successor compares to the other parts.

We like that

Visually Stunning: The Quarry is a gorgeous game visually that benefits greatly from the dark atmosphere. The entire game takes place over the course of a summer night, and the bright moon, in particular, makes for beautiful images at Hackett’s Quarry camp. Here the scenes and characters seem very real in places and the impression of a film is conveyed even more strongly.

Atmospheric soundscape: The sounds and music are also particularly important for the feeling, and The Quarry also does a good job here. Whether we’re walking our character through the dark forest or enjoying the cinematic cutscenes, the music didn’t disappoint.

Fair Gameplay: The Quarry offers a “death rewind” system after the first play through, or immediately with the Deluxe Edition. With this, as soon as one of your characters dies, you can rewind to the point where you made a wrong decision. You can use the whole thing 3 times per run and thus probably save lives.

The QuickTime events should not be missing in a Supermassive Games title, but they are designed much lighter here. You have enough time to master them and often only have to use the arrow keys or the joystick on the controller. The Quarry also offers additional settings to make everything even easier. This is primarily intended for handicapped players so that you too can enjoy the game.

Character development: The characters seem very cliché at first. There’s the pretty blonde who’s obviously easy to get hold of, there’s the dumb athlete and the nerd. In the course of the story, however, they show more profile, and you can grow fond of them. While these are not very strong character developments, and they all have something to do with your decisions, we still think the characters are great in the end. A colorful mixture that captures the flair of the old horror films and mixes them with modern elements.

That could be better

Face Animations from Hell: At this point, it has to be said that Supermassive Games has never really nailed face animations. Thanks to motion capture technology, everything looks as real as possible, but in most cases, it looks very fake. The figures often look like puppets whose facial acrobatics or fine motor skills are lacking. Fans of the Supermassive Games titles already know this and can ignore it, but we would still like to see an improvement.

Theater Synchro: If you speak English, we recommend playing the title in English. Don’t get us wrong, the German synchro is good and suits every character. There are also scenes that are really impressive. But in many cases, the synchro seems a bit exaggerated, like something out of the theater, and often makes for rather funny moments. And that in a horror game. You can like it, but you don’t have to.

We don’t think that’s a good thing

Gameplay is monotonous: The gameplay is typical for the Supermassive Games titles, and if you don’t expect anything else, you will be happy here. But still:

As is usual in an interactive film, there are many cutscenes in which you occasionally make decisions. Between these sequences, you walk around with your character as if everything is fine and look for clues. It then seems as if the characters have forgotten the situation they are in.

In the entire course of the game, no new features are brought into play, and so certain boredom spreads quickly. Sure, you can shoot, but that rarely happens. Otherwise, there is hardly anything to do. Very few puzzles, a lot of monotonous running passages, and clues that sometimes you can’t even look at again after finding them. We would have wished for more innovation here.

The Story: Without spoiling things, let’s try to get to the heart of the story. This turns out to be quite interesting at the beginning since the prologue already provides for guesswork. However, this tension dissipates very quickly as the events surrounding Hackitt’s Quary become predictable early on. While playing, it quickly became clear to us what it was all about, and there were hardly any surprises as the game progressed.

Unlike Until Dawn or The Dark Pictures Anthology parts, there was no “aha” effect here. While we were playing, even at the end, we just thought: “Oh yes. That was clear”. It’s a pity, really because Supermassive Games can actually tell great stories that create excitement throughout the game with plot twists.

Our conclusion

In comparison: If we were to consider all Supermassive Games’ titles released to date, and we had to add a rating, so:

1. Until Dawn
2. The Dark Pictures: House of Ashes
3. The Dark Pictures: Man of Medan
4. The Dark Pictures: Little Hope

In our opinion, The Quarry falls somewhere between Man of Medan and Little Hope. Although Until Dawn is still the best title and House of Ashes was also excellent.

Is the game for you?

Our Opinion: Supermassive Games continues well-known features from their previous titles in The Quarry and once again creates an exciting and entertaining interactive horror film. The level design and the scenery are really nicely implemented, and the atmospheric sound also goes well with the spooky mood. Only the German synchro sounds too artificial in some places.

The characters often seem too stiff, and the animations could be described as facial acrobatics. But fans already know from the other parts. The actually interesting story cannot convince in the long run and quickly becomes predictable. Very few jump-scares get your heart pumping, but that’s about it.

For €59.99 on the PC or up to €74.99 on the consoles, The Quarry is really only for hardcore fans who want to experience one or two evenings of nice horror. Unfortunately, it is nothing more than that. Everyone else is waiting for a sale.