Liquid Swords Plays: The Quarry

Happy Halloween! The spookiest month of the year is coming to a close, but not before we share some scares! In true October fashion, we picked a game filled with our favorite elements of the season: tea, cable-knits, and foliage.

Kidding!

We opted for night drives, skeletons, and blood-soaked strangers. We found all this and more in The Quarry during our Liquid Swords Plays: Halloween Edition! In this session we played together instead of against each other, not only because the format didn’t allow for it but also because the first rule of horror films is STAY WITH THE GROUP!

An homage to the horror and slasher genre, this game took us on a single-player journey to the aforementioned quarry along with nine unsuspecting teens. Together, we did our best to survive by making life-or-death decisions.

To avoid spoiling your own playthrough, we’re only sharing our recap of the prologue. But if you want to avoid any and all spoilers, we suggest skipping this article and checking out our much safer, but way more profane Mario Kart tournament instead!

The Quarry opens on a dark road cutting through a wooded area. Max drives through the night, and next to him sits Laura, our player character. We’re lost, and as we grab our phone to look at the map, it drops.

Now you may be thinking, this is an easy decision. Of course, you’d catch the phone.

WRONG!

This was not only the first decision we made, but the most crucial. It set the tone for our entire playstyle because to everyone’s shared surprise, almost all of us yelled out to let it drop. The person behind the controller, however, was cursed with too quick reflexes and caught it. But that was trivial because we had made the collective decision to align ourselves as Chaotic Evil.

This choice didn’t feel particularly murderous, but our thinking was that reading a paper map over the one on your phone seemed difficult. Picking the leaflet instead might have given our doomed protagonists too much information, and a shot at using the phone.

Our bloodlust was soon sated as Max ran the car off the road. Peril! Yay! Time to look around the area, but also the car.

Of course, we snooped! We found out that Laura’s treacherous boyfriend, who just ran us off the road, had also been lying about getting into graduate school. What else could he be hiding?

While we questioned everything that had happened so far, including the backstory of their relationship, something started moving in the woods. Something just beyond the trees. We needed to keep snooping. But Max doesn’t think that’s a good idea.

You are not Laura’s boss, sir! Especially not when you’ve been lying about grad school. We promptly left him to keep tinkering with the car and set off into the darkness where we found an occult poster, an escapology trunk, and a strange woman wandering about whispering “Silas”.

Time to run back to the car!

Rushing through the forest, we managed to duck a tree branch only because of the controlling player’s cat-like reflexes. But they redeemed themselves by allowing us to trip over a tree branch! This slowed us down, but not enough. Laura made it back relatively unscathed to the car, which Max seemed to have fixed.

The mysterious woman also showed up, and even though Max doubts her existence he follows Laura into the car. But before we can escape, the next terrifying being appears: a police officer. He starts asking us some questions.

With zero hesitation, we decided to act evasively rather than answering the officer’s questions honestly. Shockingly, he does not believe Laura. But regardless, he helps tow the car back onto the main road.

To thank him for his help, we decide to be dismissive when he asks Laura what they’re up to. But this man seems to take protecting and serving very seriously, so he still tries to warn them from continuing to Hackett’s Quarry. In the night. During hunting season. Instead, he directs them to the Harbinger Motel.

We’ve already decided against complaining, so we continue our aggressive narrative by insisting that they are, in fact, going to Hackett’s Quarry. Laura still let the police show her how to get to the motel, but she doesn’t put the map away until he has inadvertently also shown her how to get to the quarry. But before he lets her go, he wants Laura to hold still.

He is an officer of the law, not a man of medicine. There is no reason to let him examine Laura’s wounds from running through the forest. The cop is, understandably, over these meddling kids. He goes his way, and they go theirs.

Except he doesn’t go his way at all. The cop’s sitting in his car, watching them. But who has time to worry about that, when there’s a boyfriend to argue with? Next stop: Hackett’s Quarry!

Surprise, surprise, the quarry is abandoned. The bickering continues, but Laura perseveres and explores the grounds. Nobody’s home in the main building, but there seems to be someone, or something, in the cellar. It’s locked, so she needs to break it open.

We opted for the blunt force of a hammer rather than a sophisticated wrench.

And they need to act fast! And loud! They get down into the basement, but they can’t see anyone. The plot thickens when she picks up a discarded bloody collar belonging to Ian. Who is Ian? Who calls their dog Ian? No clue. But hopefully, there’s some hand sanitizer around somewhere.

Laura barely has time to engage in another fight with Max before something leaps out of the shadows and attacks him!

He’s covered in blood. He needs help.

Of course we left him. Laura may have been sorry, but reader, we were not. At least until a shadowy figure snuck up behind her and injected her with some sort of tranquilizer. As the figure steps into the light, we see that it’s the cop who helped us earlier. He shoots Max, which could very well be another act of kindness considering the amount of blood he lost.