The Quarry review: a brutal, blood-soaked, janky summer camp rampage

Ah, summer camp — it’s a great chance for young people to meet new friends, make lasting memories, and get out of their comfort zone. If you have the bad luck to be living in the horror genre, it’s also a place where you’re likely to get ax-murdered or mauled by a feral beast.

Supermassive Games’ Quarry is set at one such modern-day summer camp, nestled in the isolated Hackett’s Quarry. Seventeen counselors have just finished a great summer and are ready to head home. They have to stay another night because their van broke down. Their last-minute celebratory bash turns into a blood-soaked horror movie, and it’s up to you to affect who lives, who dies, and how traumatized the survivors are. QuarryIt has an unforgettable cast that each commits to the funny bit. They include Ted Raimi and Miles Robbins as well as Evan Evagora and Ariel Winter. Brenda Song, Halston Sage and many more.

Quarry is essentially a series of cutscenes in which players get to choose between branching options from several characters’ points of view. The Supermassive game gives the player some agency but it doesn’t allow them to completely alter the story. For instance: One counselor, Jacob, decides to sabotage the old van out of Hackett’s Quarry so he can have one more night in which he can woo Emma, an aloof influencer who only wants a summer fling. As the player, I don’t get to stop Jacob, but I get to choose whether he takes the rotary arm or cuts the fuel line. All of these decisions are mutually reinforcing each other, creating a complex web of stories.

This binary choice is punctuated with quick-time sequences where a character must duck under a tree, avoid the swipe of claws or grab an item. These sequences can be used in high-tension chase scenes or fights. They are often accompanied by multiple events, which can create an edge-of your-seat scene as you attempt to rescue the counselor. These challenges can be simplified in many ways, such as an auto-pass feature. There’s even a movie mode with “everyone lives,” “everyone dies,” and “gorefest” cuts, for those who just want to watch the brutal action unfold.

Image by Supermassive Games/2K Games

QuarrySlowing down allows exploration sequences. The game’s lowest point is when the camera swings to another perspective. I can reverse W and S from my keyboard and my character does a 180 back towards the original shot. These scenes make characters feel bulky and slow, even though they are agile and quick during fast-tempo events. The game clearly wants me to pore over each room I enter to find hidden secrets and puzzles, but it’s so awkward to do the rounds that the process breaks my immersion. To compensate, the game highlights clues with bright light. This is an effective, but very clear reminder that it is actually a videogame.

The environments and props are gorgeously rendered, but my frustration over the controls negates that gravitas; I’d rather have options that auto-steered me on a guided tour through the sequence than ones that skip the quick-time events. It’s an odd step back for Supermassive, which has improved on third-person exploration in each iteration of its previous series, the Dark Pictures Anthology.

Quarry is distinct from the Dark Pictures games; it’s instead meant to succeed Supermassive’s first big hit, Jusqu’à la Dämmerung. The cast is larger — and less individually developed — than those of the anthology, instead focusing on fun horror archetypes. Jacob is a sensitive himbo who’s crushing on Emma, an influencer straight out of Riverdale. The handsome and charming Nick and Abi, a bookworm, are mutually crushing. Meanwhile, DJ Dylan and Kaitlyn (jokester, sharpshooter, and head counselor Ryan) are involved in a romantic love triangle.

Image by Supermassive Games/2K Games

Supermassive doesn’t plumb the depths of these characters, because they’re not the main attraction of the story. It is essential to move the plot forward, and it must fire off every Chekhovian clue. Quarry’s characters are scraped pretty thin.

You can either cheer these kids toward success, encouraging them to be the best possible version of themselves … or be the shoulder devil that pushes them into conflict, pettiness, and spite, and relish in their eventual mauling and/or death. You can make the plot even more intriguing by adding the antagonists: a group sinister hunters, an evil humanoid creature and their relation to Mr. Hackett.

Supermassive is able to weave these diverse plot threads into an incredibly bloody scarf, regardless of all variables. They begin with a struggle for survival, then discover the real stakes. Then they have to create a long-term strategy. Each answer uncovers new mysteries. Every round of the game is compellingly solved as each answer leads to new mysteries.

Quarry is about 10 hours long, and it’s the sort of game that can’t be seen all the way through in just one go. However, the game tracks the main “decision paths” that can alter a playthrough, so you can check and see what butterfly flap might have caused a particular hurricane you want to avoid next time around. It’s an excellent storytelling trick.

Image by Supermassive Games/2K Games

What’s more, the presentation of it all is fantastic, from the ’80s-style surveillance technology aesthetics of the menus to the way tutorials are presented in old-school retro animations, a la the Fallout PSAs. There are even chapter breaks where you visit with an unsettling older lady who hints at the wider questions of the setting and the Quarry that help maintain an eerie, unsettling mood — even after an action scene or a comic tension-breaker.

Unfortunately, Quarry’s central monster doesn’t stand up to the player’s scrutiny. At one point, the beast gets a big cinematic reveal, exploding out of a body in a shower of gore, in a sequence that doesn’t make sense — and gets worse each time it’s repeated. The supernatural creature comes with a list of rules that aren’t always conveyed well visually. It’s more funny than it is scary.

It’s okay to feel a little corny, but that is the point. The game has clearly taken inspiration from ’80s horror and slasher classics. It’s just a shame that QuarryIt’s better to be observant than playing. I’m sure I missed some secrets back in Hackett’s Quarry, just because I stumbled past them as I tried to trawl the woods and cabins with frustrating controls. As long as you can tolerate the moments where the veil slips and the story’s illusion momentarily breaks, there’s a great horror story to enjoy, full of satisfying twists, creepy characters, and tantalizing mysteries.

QuarryThe release date for Windows PC and Xbox Series X will be June 10. 2K Games provided a pre-release code for Windows PC. This review was done using that code. Vox Media is an affiliate partner. Although these partnerships do not impact editorial content, Vox Media could earn commissions for products sold via affiliate links. Here are some links to help you find. additional information about Polygon’s ethics policy here.