The Supermassive team came up with another horror story, in which this time we can visit the Hackett's Quarry summer camp, where a group of young people wants to end the summer properly with one LAST party. Young people partying, isolated from the outside world in an empty summer camp, which is supposedly haunted by the ghost of a dead woman - come on, what could go wrong?

I think it is safe to say that the Supermassive Games team raised the concept of interactive film to a new level with the release of Until Dawn in 2015. Thanks to this horror game with an exciting story and fantastic atmosphere, the studio quickly became the favourite of the audience. Quantic Dream, which can be considered an absolute king in this style, could also learn a thing or two from it. Then the studio launched The Dark Pictures Anthology series (with three episodes released so far), which received mixed reviews, but overall it delivers what we expect from the development team. This summer, the studio released its new game, The Quarry, which some consider to be Until Dawn 2.0. But is it as good as Until Dawn?

A Story To Tell At The Campfire

If Until Dawn was a teenage horror film about winter break, then The Quarry is the summer vacation version. In the prologue, we meet two young people (Max and Laura) who head to a summer camp called Hacket's Qarry in the middle of the night, where they will work as camp counselors during the summer. However, something jumps in front of their car and they drift off the road. Fortunately for them, they are helped by a somewhat intimidating policeman who firmly orders them not to go to the camp tonight. The rebellious Laura doesn't listen to the policeman, which will have disastrous consequences.

We jump two months in time, to the end of summer. The last school bus is about to leave the camp, leaving only the counselors in the camp. The summer spent together brings the team closer and also developers romantic relationships. Because of this, our hopelessly romantic Jacob crashes the minibus so they can't leave and it gives him chance to spend one more night with Emma and try to save their relationship. Camp manager Chris Hackett is suspiciously panicked by the fact that the young adults have to stay another night. He firmly instructs them to stay indoors, close every door and window, and don't make any noise. Of course, the young people have no intention of following Chris's instructions and decide to have one last big party instead. The full moon night, which starts pleasantly, then takes darker turns, when it turns out that something horrible lives in the depths of the forest.

There are illogical things and clichés in the story, but I can't be angry about them. The whole story is structured so well that it maintained my interest throughout the whole game and I couldn't wait to find out and understand what was going on here.
There are a lot of clues, small hints and backstories hidden in the game that help you look behind the scenes.If we make the right decisions and find the cluess needed all of our questions will be answered by the end of the game. Here I have to mention the ending left me a bit dissapointed. Without any major spoiler as an epilogue we get a picture of the characters stayed alive with a little sum up about them. I expected something more complex.

The Victims
We get many characters for the story, who may not be loved by everyone, but it is certain that they have been built in such a way that each of them has a well-recognizable, distinctive personality. Among the characters we can find everyone who fits into such a horror: there is a shy girl (Abi), a shy boy (Nick), a master joker (Dylan), a tough girl (Kaitlyn), a nerd guy (Ryan), an influencer (Emma) and a hopeless romantic (Jacob). For this reason, the dynamics of the dialogues work really well, and it's interesting how their behavior changes towards each other, and also how some of the characters undergo serious character development. Just for example at the beginning I really hated Emma, and I was like she dies a tragic "accidental" death at the first opportunity. But later I realized she's not that bad at all.
For me most of the faces were unknown, but The Quarry has also acquired bigger names like David Arquette (Scream movies) and Lance Henriksen (Aliens).

The Beautiful Dark Woods

The visual world is quite amazing. There is plenty to see in the fairytale-like forest environment, both at daytime and nighttime. We will often walk in the wilderness. The way the sunlight filters through the hair of some characters or the light glints in their eyes is very well painted. Graphically, Supermassive made a huge step forward. The daytime parts are quite magical, but of course there are plenty of sights to see at night, but most of them are shrouded in darkness. And here comes the first con: it's LITERALLY too dark and I couldn't see anything sometimes. I have no complaints about the motion capture, except that the lip-sync sometimes looks quite strange, but in my opinion this is a small thing. The characters look great, the actors are recognizable.

Where It (almost) Bleeds to Death

Its biggest weakness is in the gameplay. Unfortunately, the British development team is somehow unable to improve this part. The QTE segments have also been greatly simplified, essentially we only have to pay attention to pressing the given key or pulling the analog stick in the right direction, and pressing a button quickly a couple of times. It's always the same. Half a dozen "don't breath" cutscenes have also been added to the gameplay, in which case we hold the our breath while holding down the action button, and if we decide that the situation is safe, we can continue. These mechanisms fit perfectly with the horror atmosphere and the illusion of influencing of the story, but from as gameplay mechanisms, they are almost ridiculous.

The (only) new feature comes up if one of our characters dies. We have the chances to jump back to the moment of the wrong decision in order to get everyone out safely. You can use it three times during a playthrough, but it may just happen that you can only prevent death with a much earlier action. What does this mean in reality? Specifically, that the game can set us back up to 40-50 minutes, which can be nerve-wracking for many, especially because there's no skip option for the already seen dialogues and scenes.
One funny thing they added to the game was a new form of tutorials. Here we get cartoon-like tutorial videos that cover specific game mechanics. Of course, these mechanics aren't complicated enough to require tutorials, but overall they were fun and I liked them.

Until Dawn 2.0

For me The Quarry was like the developers tried to recreate Until Dawn with different settings and context, (they pretty much succeeded) only this time they took back too much of the gameplay parts. I definitely liked the game, to be honest in terms of story I enjoyed it more, but in overall Until Dawn is still the best Supermassive title (in my opinion) If you're looking for classic survival horror experiences, you won't find it here, but if you're looking for a more "relaxed", story-oriented horror adventure, this game is perfect for you