Being the latest game released by Supermassive Games, The Quarry has players make harrowing choices that will determine the life or death of several characters. Stranded at Hackett’s Quarry in upstate New York, the youngsters become the target of some deranged locals out for blood and something far more disturbing.
The Quarry features nine playable characters, portrayed by veteran Hollywood actors, who must survive one night at Hackett’s Quarry. Depending on player choices and responses, all the principal characters may survive the ordeal or fail to do so. Although players will probably want to experience a blind first playthrough, several tips will help beginners get the most out of their experience.
6 Pick The Ideal Play Style
As a survival horror interactive drama, The Quarry can be played in several ways. The game offers roughly 7-10 hours of gameplay and over 180 different endings, so players should choose how they want to approach their cinematic horror experience.
A feature of The Quarry is Movie mode, which essentially eliminates all gameplay such as quick-time events and button-mashing, minimizing the player’s input to make the experience as similar as possible to a film. Another Movie-only mode permits players to select the personality traits of various characters at the start of a playthrough before the story progresses without much input. Local and Online multiplayer modes are also available, with local multiplayer assigning different characters to players whilst online mode has players vote on critical decisions. Of course, the game can be played normally but it’s important to select the correct style of play to maximize enjoyment.
5 Don’t Skip The Tutorial
As players delve further into The Quarry, they will encounter a list of tutorials they can watch to understand how different mechanics work and how to correctly respond to certain situations. These will include Quick Time Events, Evidence, Interrupts, Path Chosen, Combat, and Don’t Breathe.
The most important of these are Combat, Quick Time Events, and Don’t Breathe as they will determine if a character survives or dies, based on how well these mechanics are executed by the player. Though these mechanics appear to be an improvement over their predecessor and may be familiar to more experienced gamers, players should at least be acquainted with these components to ensure that their game experience isn’t hampered by errors.
4 Quarry Paths
Players should know that there are 15 "paths" within the game. These Quarry paths are key story points or main choices that have a real impact on the story. When a path is triggered, the game will notify the player on the screen with a "path chosen". Subsequent decisions that are tied to that particular path will notify players with a ‘path updated’ prompt.
Knowing about these paths can help players track their progress throughout the story. Furthermore, several achievements and trophies relate to certain paths so completionists may want to take that note down on what paths are.
3 Chapter Select
Players should know that the option to select a chapter will unlock after the storyline has been completed at least once. However, players should note some key differences in how chapter selection works in The Quarry. First, if players use chapter select to replay a particular chapter, then the chapter select option becomes unavailable until the end of the story (meaning if players select chapter 4, then they must play through chapters 4-10 to unlock chapter select again).
Players also cannot skip between chapters, which means they cannot change a choice in chapter 4 and then jump straight into chapter 9. The player would have to replay chapters 4-9 in full to see the result of the updated choice.
2 Go In Blind
Although some players may want the "good" ending or have certain survivors get through the night, the best possible experience is to go blind in without knowing what to expect. When players finish the game (or have purchased the deluxe edition) they will have the option to unlock an ability known as Death Rewind. This option allows players to undo up to three character deaths within a particular playthrough (which can be helpful if a mistake was made).
There’s always something about the magic of the first playthrough. Once the game is played once, it simply doesn’t have that effect anymore. Achievements and collectibles can be gathered later but a first-time playthrough lasts forever.
1 Players May Want To Be "Nice"
This is specifically for players that want to have the best possible outcome for each of the playable characters. The game features several recurring characters that may return at critical moments throughout the story, including a police officer. Some characters will also be non-playable at certain moments but will remember decisions that were made earlier on and react accordingly.
By generally being "nice" or choosing the kindest response during a conversation, chances are that these returning characters or non-playing characters will be more compliant or even helpful when the story ramps up.
The Quarry launches June 10 for PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S.