videogameblog

I remember when Supermassive's 'The Quarry' was announced I thought "Wow, the devs must have been working on this since Until Dawn!". A few weeks later I checked their website and it turns out they made like 4 games inbetween? This is one of them. I got it in the Humble Choice bundle at some point and played through the co-op with my friend (who probably isn't even reading this!! fuck you aj!!!).

It's... fine, I guess? I can appreciate the alternative approach to a typically action-heavy setting like a warzone. Instead of focusing on gunfights, it's a slower, narrative-oriented experience. This allows an engagement with real-world politics; unlike Call of Duty's Urzikstan, we play through the invasion of Iraq in 2003. Unfortunately this opporunity for commentary is squandered. The narrative takes the cowardly, (centrist) 'both sides are bad' 'everyone should just get along' stance. Instead of having any semblance of political commentary, narrative strengths lie heavily in it's development of connections between characters, providing some fun interactions based on the choices each player picks. I played as one character who can either choose to distance or reconnect with her husband; choosing the dialogue options to distance myself while my friend (who was playing as the husband) chose the ones about reconnecting resulted in some very funny, awkward exchanges. Choices feel decently impactful; me and my friend both really hated this one character so I just chose to kill him like halfway through the game. Stuff like this makes the narrative feel malleable and customisable, providing alot more outcomes than most choose-your-own adventure games do.

Unfortunately the story itself is extremely lame. You're just running around in a cave killing these creatures and eventually descend into hell to blow up their nest. Supermassive clearly understand how to implement mechanics into narratives, they're probably the best at the choose-your-own adventure style out there right now but they can never really craft an engaging story. Their games have always (for me anyway) maintained engagement through their silliness, which is something they never really lean into. The funniest thing you can do in this game is keep insisting on bringing this disgusting, dying, zombie-infected woman with you through the cave even though she's clearly about to turn. Until Dawn has alot more stuff like this because it includes a tonne of slasher tropes, which are missing here.

Overall this was pretty fun and silly but never really ended up being anything more than that. Me and my friend both bought the next game in the anthology, Little Hope, so maybe I'll write about that at some point. I think I would have had alot more to say about it's annoying centrist narrative if I'd written this closer to when I actually played it but I've forgotten mostly everything. Only like 8 more games until I'm caught up again! (I'm trying to write one a day but I'm also beating a game a day so I'm really getting nowhere).