The Quarry Preview – Panning for the specks of gold

The Quarry is the latest game from Supermassive Games known for their interactive horror titles launching 10 June 2022 for PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X | S, and PC. The age-restricted Prologue is available on Youtube, which you can watch for another taster to the Things that await at Hackett’s Quarry Summer Camp.

When the sun goes down on the last night of summer camp, nine teenage counselors are plunged into an unpredictable night of horror. The only thing worse than the blood-drenched locals and creatures hunting them are the unimaginable choices you must make to help them survive.

I was given access to a preview build, a slice of what’s to come.

OPTIONS

As you fiddle around with the settings, all of them come with short descriptions which is nice. What is less nice is the fact they’re somewhat squirreled away on the lower left of the screen that I missed them on my first time. The game recommends a controller – as I was playing on a preview on PC – but I played with keyboard / mouse regardless.

The settings I could tweak in the build included:

DISPLAY

• Brightness
• Cinematic Filters: Indie horror, 80s horror, classic horror

GRAPHICS

• Screen Mode
• Resolution
• Vsync
• Frame limited to 30FPS On / Off
• Quality presets
• Anti aliasing quality
• SSAO
• Textures
• Shadow
• Depth of field
• Effects
• Foliage

AUDIO

• Music
• SFX
• Dialogue
• Streamer mode ( On / Off licensed music )

SUBTITLES

• Off / on / Closed Captions
• Size: Auto / normal / medium / large
• Background: None / Semi-transparent / Black / Yellow
• Line start: Off / Hyphen / Character Name
• Use Open Dyslexic On / Off
• Colour: Default / Character

MOUSE/KEYBOARD

• To tweak keybinds for movement, general interaction and camera

CONTROLLER

• View / change profiles

CAMERA

• Invert X Y axis
• Look sensitivity Y X

ACCESSIBILITY

• Simple QTEs: Default ( specific key / direction ) / Any ( any key / direction ) / Auto ( automatically succeed )
• QTE speed: Default / Medium / Long / Max Timer
• Choice timer
• Interrupt speed: Default / Medium / Long / Max Timer / Auto
• Button mash: Default / Hold / Tap / Auto
• Don’t Breathe: Default / Auto
• Aim assist: Off / On / auto
• Death rewind: On / Off
• Colour blind setting: Off / Protanopia / Deuteranopia / Tritanopia

While there is the option to let the game automatically make decisions for you when toggled, this is completely disabled for the “Wolf Pack” occasions. I can’t precisely tell you what this mode is in the preview, but what’s important is that this is when you can still interact with the game outside of the automatic decisions and Movie Mode. Death rewind does as it suggests: you’ll be able to revert character deaths, though I did not have an occasion to use it.

Last but not least, you can review any tutorials you have previously unlocked at any point. However, I couldn’t seem to skip them so that was a little strange and bothersome when I just wanted a quick review. These look like educational cartoons, with the ones revealed in the menus include:

• QTE
• Combat
• Don’t Breathe
• Evidence
• Interrupts
• Path Chosen

PRESENTATION

The style is definitely there, with the comparatively ancient CRT monitor, the tape surveillance set up, a peek into the apparently suspicious camp counsellor’s office. I do like the start menu for setting the mood.

Motion capture reigns as usual and as usual, I think they’re pretty fine. I feel like there’s always a certain rigidity to them since human bodies can’t match the liquidity of drawings, but that’s just me. As the preview build, there were some occasions where I felt the rendering was a little off, which you can expect to be fixed as launch approaches.

As I alluded to earlier, the tutorial “videos” are akin to educational cartoons, which I’d say would fit in the Cuphead era, say, or them old Looney Tunes because that’s what they reminded me of. The colours are a sharp contrast to the realism of the main game, little bright, almost childish spots, narrated by some guy who sounds rather detached as he talks about needing to use a gun to protect yourself. You know, in a summer camp for teenagers, who don’t have the greatest handle on their hormones much less live firearms.

The Open Dyslexic font is the same one they use in The Dark Pictures: House of Ashes, though thanks to the font resizing, I find the default typeface easy to read too. Open Dyslexic’s font is spaced very widely, and I think it does break the reading speed and obscures a lot of the screen unfortunately. Speaking of the subtitles, a character was named when their dialogue appeared which felt like it could have been a spoiler since I hadn’t seen them before or watched the prologue, but it shouldn’t be an issue when you play through the game from the start.

GAMEPLAY

I won’t talk much about the story since I don’t think I’m wrong in saying this is essentially 90% of the point of the game, and it was only a slice of teens being a mix of awkward, dumb and painfully heterosexual with the tension just very subtly building up with a Something in the background unfortunately not here for their idea of a fun time.

I can’t say how different it is from the games in Supermassive’s prolific repertoire from a modest preview, but at the very least, if you’ve played one game, the general flow is essentially the same with the difference being the story. As you might expect, there are numerous paths and branches you may find yourself going down on. All the while, you may observe some clues to tell you the story of Hackett’s Quarry, the Tarot from which you may ask to get visions of the future, and even a map and the locations within. Even from the preview, it feels like there’s so much more to The Quarry, that tantalizing “something” I have to wait for. Try rope someone in with couch co-op, or Movie Mode, the latter I couldn’t try out.

Much like the previous games, dialogue choices, actions and interruptions can alter how characters may perceive you. This game’s “future sight” feel much easier to pick up now, as in the camera does pull you directly to the card with a prompt to pick up – at least, for the settings I had on. I suppose it’s because you don’t directly get the vision as yet, as checking them in the menu only provides a somewhat jovial, if ominous, reading of the associated arcana.

As for the “locking in” of Paths, these only seem to apply during the mandatory time-sensitive choices. This is a highly appreciated design, as the Auto toggles may do something you hadn’t intended to do, while still giving you the opportunity to “choose your path”, as it were.

CLOSING THOUGHTS

Really, as a preview, it felt way too short to get a proper “feel” of the game, and I wasn’t able to see just how much my choices could affect the game. Is it intriguing? Definitely. How good will it be? I’ll have to wait to decide.

I’ll just look forward to see where the ride takes me, and perhaps, strike gold instead of stone.

Join Us!