Preview The Quarry: New trash gem from the Until Dawn makers?

A lonely cabin by the lake, a group of haphazard teenagers with rampant hormones, bloodthirsty hillbillys and monsters roaming the woods at night: The setting of The Quarry, Supermassive Games’ newest prank, sounds like an attempt to capture so many horror films -Cram stereotypes into a single game as humanly possible. We were allowed to play into the Until Dawn sequel for an hour in advance and found out: clichés can be very entertaining if you know how to deal with them properly!

The Quarry (buy now ) takes place in the eponymous Hackett’s Quarry, a quarry with an adjacent lake that has been converted into a picturesque summer camp. There is everything a teenage heart desires here: cozy fireplaces to be observed, creepy basement bunkers to nervously explore, dark forests to run away in panic and a deep lake to never reappear. Exactly the right environment for our hormone-controlled troupe, who want to do it all again on their last evening in the camp. A variant of truth or dare is played around the campfire, awkward questions are asked and, of course, the wrong people are kissed with tongues.

The Quarry: Until Dawn Sequel Preview – Camp Horror With Lots Of Tongue (5)

Source: 2K / Supermassive Games

Because the much too dressed-up quasi-girlfriend of the sports idiot prefers to choose his shy buddy, the scraps fly after a short time. After all, the buddy had actually decided on the uptight nerd girl, who then of course also has to be asked whether she has already slept with anyone in the camp (or at all).

The solution to her lovesickness: the furious escape into the dark forest, where exactly what has to happen happens. After all, not only hillbillys with hunting knives and dungarees hang around in Hackett’s Quarry, but also creepy monsters that creep growling through the bushes.

The funny thing about the setting and the characters is how shamelessly the game hits us with its stereotypes. Not only does it make heavy use of horror classics like Evil Dead and Friday the 13th, some even mention them by name, and the game knows exactly what it’s doing.

The Quarry: Until Dawn Sequel Preview – Camp Horror With Lots Of Tongue (6)

Source: 2K / Supermassive Games

The Quarry doesn’t want to sell you serious or really scary horror – instead, this is pure camp announced, so roughly speaking noble trash, the fun of exaggerated and bad taste. This is also made clear by the funny tutorial videos that teach us the game mechanics in the best Vault-Tec manner and with a good pinch of cynicism.

Just not one-dimensional

The Quarry: Until Dawn Sequel Preview – Camp Horror With Lots Of Tongue (3)

Source: 2K / Supermassive Games

And although at first glance one would think that the characters would all be annoying decals whose bloody demise one can hardly wait for, the teenage troupe has grown on us after a short time. The characters are mercilessly overdrawn and therefore entertaining, but written just humanely and sympathetically enough to let us root for their fate.

For example, while the tough Kaitlyn only fulfills the role of the responsible mother at the beginning, she shows when she competes shooting at watermelons and beer bottles that she definitely has more to offer. We catch the muscular footballer jackass Jacob crying by the lake after being picked up by the campfire.

In short: quite nice cheese, but quite fun cheese. Of course, what also contributes positively to identifying with the characters are the decisions that we can make for them. And beyond that, there is still the option of letting particularly annoying characters run straight into the open knife.

Quick Time Decisions

Like Supermassive Games’ other works, The Quarry is much more film than game. The chapter we played consists mostly of cutscenes with very short gameplay sections that are interspersed with them often enough. Then we can explore parts of the camp on foot to collect clues and choose paths, or grab the shotgun ourselves when shooting the bottles.

The main positive thing here is the fast pacing: the playable sequences don’t last longer than necessary, we can speed up the exploratory passages using the sprint function if desired, and the texts for the clues that can be collected are crisp and short. When it comes to cutscenes, the game benefits from its large cast and thanks to frequent scene changes, there is little room for boredom.