The Quarry takes camp seriously and that's why it's stupid fun

The quarry is all about camping.

The new horror game tells the story of an ill-fated summer camp counselor whose last night of teen fun descends into a creature-feature fight for survival. The Quarry leans into the campiness of every genre you can think of in its choice-based narrative sandbox.

You have to figure out how many B-horror there are in the game over the course of about 10 hours. The gang of doomed-yet-horny teens stumbled upon some haunted woods that were cursed by the ghost of a fortune teller, but also found themselves being hunted by a group of cryptids and a family straight out of Texas Chainsaw Massacre.

It's similar to Cabin in the Woods: The Game, but with less meta layers.

Supermassive Games doesn't give you a series of tough moral decisions that can change the outcome of the game. In order to choose a path for each character, you have to solve a real-time puzzle in order to turn the narrative into a puzzle.

The use of stereotypes in The Quarry is not a result of being lazy.

One of the best ways to piece together a puzzle is with your knowledge of horror movie structure. The rules for fighting off supernatural monsters and surviving a Texas Chainsaw Massacre-style situation can be used to inform split-second decisions. Figuring out how to anticipate narrative beats and twists is just as important as figuring out how to ignore them.

The game's carefully worded descriptions of clues and pieces of evidence can be followed along with the fortune teller's cryptic glimpse into the potential outcome from a pivotal choice. It taps into the same type of joy that theorists get from predicting shows.

The Last of Us is a better narrative game than The Quarry is. It requires a different kind of intelligence than the typical video game skill of learning how to murder more quickly.

Credit: Supermassive Games

The Quarry is the most developed model for interactive story telling. It's by far the studio's most accessible title by de-emphasizing reflexes, making quick-time events more forgiving, and removing timers from most decisions.

The game's greatest potential is to bridge the gap between niche gaming audiences and mainstream movie goers. You can pair experienced and inexperienced players together in the couch co-op mode, which allows you and up to seven friends to switch off between characters.

Despite the ever-mounting life- or-death stakes, The quarry never takes itself too seriously. The script always has time to make a few jokes. Our emotional investment in the characters' relationships and personal dramas doesn't amount to much.

If you want to enjoy the many heart-pounding yet lighthearted thrills this game has to offer, you should not take the narrative's themes too seriously.

The game is a Hollywood summer blockbuster at its core. The Quarry's story is a load of empty calories that won't make you feel full after you've watched it. It's not a good idea to think about this game for a long time since it's just not that deep and you can just play it.

I'm happy glossy, dumb, story-focused games still exist.

Nowadays, big-budget, narrative-focused video games are hard to come by, as many in the industry continue to double down on the profitability of free-to-play online games. The implosion of Telltale Games left players with few options for narrative in their games. Supermassive only refined its innovations to interactive stories first established in Until Dawn and then in the Dark Pictures anthology series.

Some critics already have dismissed The Quarry as little more than a game with QTEs and no other video game mechanics. You wouldn't understand the point of what makes Supermassive Games so valuable. A vastly underserved audience is more interested in flexing their reasoning and strategic decision making than twitch-based reflexes.

The plot of The Quarry never reaches the exciting twists of Until Dawn. I would put the narrative below the House of Ashes from the Dark Pictures anthology. It's more predictable than Until Dawn, and it's also more reliant on horror genre stereotypes that appropriate other marginalized groups. Last time, it was Native American folklore, and this time, the "gypsy" slur is used with little regard for the history behind it.

Credit: Supermassive Games

The Quarry's narrative teases an underlying moral question about colonization through the suggestion of a theme. It's confusingly half-baked at best, and points players in the wrong direction. The Quarry tries to make you see your final choices as a moral stance, only to make everyone else see the same ending regardless. On paper, that could've been a different kind of game. It leaves you with a confusing sense of consequences and narrative arcs.

The quarry is a better journey than a story.

It's easy to get swept up in the chemistry and charm of the actors, which includes recognizable mo-capped Hollywood faces. At least the dialogue flows with a natural ease that's still a total rarity in games, even though the plot isn't much to write home about.

If you're looking for a different kind of mindlessness than your usual combat-laden title can offer, The Quarry is a good place to start. It's another vote of confidence in the studio's overall vision and a worthy evolution in the style of story.