Video Game / The Quarry

Terrified kids are bad for business…

"Hello, my friend. Welcome to the show."

The Quarry is a survival horror game from Supermassive Games (Until Dawn). It was published by Take-Two Interactive.

The plot is a callback to 1980s slasher pieces such as Sleepaway Camp and Friday the 13th (1980). A group of camp counselors are left alone at camp after the kids have all gone home. Once night falls, however, their plans of drinking and sex take a backseat to unimaginable horror. Out of the darkness, the counselors face "blood-drenched locals", as well as a far more sinister threat hiding in the shadows.

Gameplay-wise, the experience is similar to Until Dawn: players control each of the nine counselors and their decisions will shape how the plot unfolds. These choices determine who will live and who will die, ranging from everyone surviving the night to none of them.

The game boasts an impressive cast, including David Arquette, Halston Sage, Justice Smith, Brenda Song, Ariel Winter, and Ted Raimi, among others. The game was released on June 10th, 2022.

Previews: Trailer One

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Tropes:

Tropes A-F

• Action Film, Quiet Drama Scene: After an intense scene where Nick and possibly Abi get bitten, there's a quiet scene of Emma walking to check out the cabin while she vlogs with her subscriber base, discussing her relationship with Jacob.
  Emma: Maybe in 50 years, we'll see each other again and remember that amazing summer at Camp Hackett. It's only a matter of time. And time... makes fools of us all.
• Affectionate Nickname:
  • Max and Laura often address each other by "hon" or "honey", and Max jokingly calls Laura "Ma'am" a couple times.
  • Abigail has her name shortened to Abi by her fellow counsellors, Jacob is called "Jake" by Kaitlyn, and Emma is called "Em" by Jacob.
  • Emma affectionately calls Abi "party bear" in their first on-screen interaction.
• An Arm and a Leg: Ends up being something utilized to avoid infection from a werewolf bite. Bobby will shoot off his finger if Nick bites him, but the big one is Ryan amputating Dylan's hand should he get bitten.
• Anyone Can Die: Given the nature of the game (interactive survival horror), this is in full force, potentially crossing into Everybody's Dead, Dave or "Everybody Dies" Ending depending on exact choices. There are even two separate achievements for the worst instance of this kind of scenario; one for all the counselors and another for the Hackett family. The headline of the newspaper during the podcast in the credits (both before and after any collected evidence is discussed) changes depending on which characters from which group (Hacketts vs counselors) died or survived.
• Ape Shall Not Kill Ape: Werewolves do not attack each other. This is invoked by the family Hackett, who mark themselves and any of the counselors they find with werewolf blood, which causes the werewolf to not attack. Alternatively, if Kaitlyn or Dylan are previously infected, Caleb will not try to kill them in the lodge.
• Arc Words: The camp motto: "What doesn't kill you will make you stronger."
• Art Shift: The tutorials are presented as 2D educational cartoon shorts.
• Bisexual Love Triangle: Ryan has two potential Love Interests (Kaitlyn and Dylan), and he has the option to kiss either of them during a game of "Truth or Dare" (during which he quips "I take it both is off the table?")
  • Subverted in the sense that once Laura comes back around, Dylan and Kaitlyn have the option of musing in the scrapyard that Ryan seems more interested in her than either of them (this is an option even considering that Laura already has Max as a boyfriend and even if Ryan takes every opportunity to flirt with either or both Kaitlyn and Dylan AND even if Ryan and Laura absolutely hate each other after they first meet in Chapter 6/7).
• Bittersweet Ending: Even in the best possible ending scenarios with the werewolf curse ending and curing the remaining infectees, the counselors and Hacketts will be presumably traumatized, and there will be inevitable deaths, particularly Kayleee, Chris, and Silas.
• Black Dude Dies First: Technically averted as it is impossible for Ryan, the one black character, to die before Chapter 9, while Kaylee Hackett, a white girl, always dies in Chapter 5. Can be in play in the sense of player caused deaths if the player's choices/actions kill Ryan before they kill anyone else.
• Blood Is the New Black:
  • Bobby and Jedediah cover themselves in blood at the start of the game, and Bobby can do it to potentially Jacob and Kaitlyn if either of them are caught. This is a subversion, however, as it's done to cover their scent like normal hunters using musk. It protects them from the werewolves to an extent.
  • Travis, if he works with the group, can inform them on the protective power of the werewolf's blood. If Ryan finds a bottle by arriving fast enough to save Nick from Bobby, Laura can choose to use it or let Ryan use it.
  • The Transformation Sequence of the werewolf is done in a spray of blood, and the creature is covered in blood after it happens. This also happens in reverse, as a human will be covered in blood.
• Bloodier and Gorier: Compared to Until Dawn and The Dark Pictures Anthology (neither of which were exactly pulling their punches), The Quarry stands out as the most gruesome Supermassive horror game to date. There's a greater focus on injury detail and possibility for the main cast to take horrific but non-fatal wounds, in addition to some extremely bloody death scenes, of course. Notable moments include Dylan having his hand amputated by chainsaw and continuing the latter half of the game with a wrapped-up stump, Max slashing at Laura's face and exploding her eyeball with his claws, Jacob having his face get caught in a beartrap just moments after his foot gets caught in a separate one, and several lingering close-ups of Constance's flayed-open face if Laura shoots her during the struggle for the shotgun.
• Bottomless Magazines: Despite many survival horror games having an emphasis on having very few conventional methods of fighting back enemies AND on having incredibly limited uses of those methods (ex: only having a basic weapon like a pistol with just a few bullets), not only will you nearly always have a double-barrel shotgun on hand, but you will quite literally NEVER have an instance where you don't have any more shells or need to reload, at least not at a crucial moment where having that one additional shot really matters. The only way in which ammo is in short supply is with silver ammo, which is the only way that the shotgun can kill a transformed werewolf.
• Brother–Sister Team: Kaylee and Caleb were this in their werewolf forms when first seen in the forest, biting Abigail and Nick, respectively.
• Cannot Spit It Out: In two different flavors.
  • The policeman who stops Laura and Max at the beginning of the game orders them to go to a hotel instead of the titular Quarry, flatly repeating his instructions when they ask why they shouldn't go to camp. Turns out later that it's because there's no real easy way to explain or talk around the existence of werewolves, especially without risking drawing suspicion to your family, who've been hiding the whole thing for six years. He finally starts opening up when Laura and Max reveal they've worked out that the latter is a werewolf for themselves.
  • Counselors Abigail and Nick are a classic Twice Shy example of this, and their relationship to this trope becomes darkly subverted when Nick becomes a werewolf, and in the throes of pre-transformation aggression, his diffidence is replaced by him angrily nagging and guilt-tripping Abi for a romantic confession that she can't give — no longer due to shyness, but to her being very understandably stressed, scared, and confused by his behavior.
• Chase Scene: Several, throughout the course of the game, with various outcomes for the characters:
  • In Chapter 3, Abi is pursued through the woods by a werewolf Kaylee, who may infect her if she fails Quicktime Events during the chase. Although this seemingly has no effect on her, perhaps because Kaylee is killed soon after, which would nullify the infection before the symptoms began to show.
  • In Chapter 4, Emma is chased by a werewolf Max when she opens the trapdoor in the treehouse on the island. Depending on the player’s actions, she may die here, become infected, or escape unscathed.
  • In Chapter 5, Kaitlyn (as well as Abi and Nick) are briefly pursued by Bobby when he breaks into the lodge. Kaitlyn will always lose her gun during the confrontation and the trio will flee the lodge to find Dylan and Ryan.
  • In Chapter 6, Jacob (and Emma, if she survived Chapter 4) are pursued by a Werewolf Caleb across the tree walk, which may result in Jacob being infected or killed here. The chase culminates in Jacob being caught in a bear trap.
  • In Chapter 7, Laura is chased by Werewolf Max when she returns to the island after killing Kaylee, thinking she killed Chris and that Max is therefore cured. An interesting one in that she isn't actually playable and that it's a cutscene. Justified in that it's a retelling of an event that already happened and likely because she's always infected during this sequence.
  • In Chapter 8, Abi is briefly chased by a Werewolf Emma if Emma was infected in Chapter 4. Kaitlyn can choose to shoot her and save Abi or flee, in which case Abi will be mauled to death in the storm shelter.
  • In Chapter 9 ,an injured Ryan must flee from Bobby, who stabbed him, and use stealth and his wits to avoid detection. This can end with Ryan using Bobby’s weapon against him, stabbing him in the chest. Also in Chapter 9, Laura is briefly pursued by Jedediah through the Hackett house. Furthermore, if Abi and Emma are still alive, and Emma was infected in Chapter 6, she will transform and chase after Abi in the storm shelter, possibly killing her.
  • In Chapter 10, if werewolf Chris is still alive, he will chase Jacob through the forest. This ends with a snare trap, and either Jacob can get caught in it and eaten by the werewolf, or Jacob can avoid it, Chris gets caught in it, and is not a danger until morning when he turns back to a human. Also in Chapter 10, Kaitlyn and possibly Dylan can be chased by werewolf Caleb through the lodge.
• Chekhov's Gun:
  • In the beginning of the story, Abi can choose to find a cute stuffed rabbit that was accidentally left behind that talks when you pull the string on its back. Kaitlyn can use it to trick Caleb the werewolf into getting stuck in the freezer.
  • Even before this, Jacob can find Emma's silver bracelet near the minivan. If both Emma and Jacob are infected, but Emma is cured by killing Chris in Chapter 9, the two will meet up in the woods in Chapter 10. Jacob will transform into a werewolf, and Emma will be ripped apart by Jacob without the silver bracelet to drive him off.
• Clothing Damage: The werewolf transformation explodes outward in a torrent of blood. When reverting back to humans, their clothes are in tatters, or, in the case of Max and Chris, they lose their shirts entirely.
• Collection Sidequest:
  • Clues can be found throughout. However, aside from achievements, these don't do much.
  • Evidence can be collected and it changes the Greek Chorus ending with the podcasters. And if you don't find enough, the counselors are arrested.
  • The Major Arcana of Eliza's Tarot card deck can be found. These burn when found, hinting at what happened with the fire.
• Cursed with Awesome: Sure, turning into a werewolf and having an insatiable hunger isn't cool, but having a Healing Factor strong enough to survive mortal injuries is surely helpful. Ryan is even given the choice to be infected so he will survive being stabbed.
• The Dark Side Will Make You Forget: Chris is still concerned for the safety of the counselors, but isn't bothered by his actions when transformed, such as the murders of the hikers that stumbled onto the grounds. (You can even encounter one his victims in Lake Septimus.) In fact, when Travis confronts Chris, pointing out that he tried to kill Laura and Max, Chris' response is "That was you...I'm telling mom!".
• Demoted to Extra: There are some points where main characters just seem to disappear from the plot, particularly once they've passed a point where they could potentially die. Some examples include:
  • Nick very early on in the game due to him transforming into a werewolf. Even when transformed, he's swiftly captured by the Hacketts and not seen again until very late in the game, where he can be killed by Laura with little fanfare.
  • Abigail's relevance drops off after Nick's transformation, largely due to potentially dying at Nick's hands or Emma's if Emma becomes a werewolf. If she lives, she largely just passively tags along with the group and spends the final battle hiding in the cellar or Chris' surveillance room.
  • Jacob practically disappears from the plot after he's either set free from the Hackett household by Ryan or eaten by a transformed Nick. He only appears in Chapter 10 in a cutscene, unless Emma is a werewolf or Chris is still alive, in which he has a short chase scene.
  • Emma largely loses relevance after either escaping from, being bitten, or being eaten by a transformed Max on the island. She doesn't reunite with the group until very late in the game, and spends the final battle hiding in either the cellar or Chris' surveillance room, or meeting Jacob if she was bitten by Max.
  • Max starts in a comparatively smaller role as opposed to Laura even in the prologue, then gains about equal footing with her in Chapter 7, where they are both heavily involved in being interrogated by Travis and figuring out the werewolf curse that plagues Hackett's Quarry, only to be demoted afterward to one playable scene that is perhaps the smallest in the entire game that, aside from a little walking, only contains one binary decision which literally just amounts to "press this button to live, this one to die". The cherry on top is that you can possibly not even see this later game content if you don't kill Chris Hackett as Ryan in Chapter 9, thus leaving the curse on Max, Laura, and all of Chris' other victims intact.
• Developer's Foresight: For the player who manages to get Jacob killed as early as possible by drowning in the lake the Hermit tarot card, which normally shows a possible fate of Jacob, will instead treat the player to a unique scene that isn't in the game otherwise, since Eliza can't read the future of an already dead person.
• Don't Go Into the Woods: When the counselors are forced to stay overnight, they're specifically told to stay inside and keep the doors and windows locked until sunrise. Naturally, they don't listen, and things quickly go to hell.
• Double-Meaning Title: The title refers to both the actual location where the teens are — an old quarry that was converted into a summer camp — as well as the fact that the teens are being hunted by something in the woods, 'quarry' being another term for animals that are pursued by hunters. Also towards the Quarry the Hackett family is hunting, Silas the original Werewolf.
• Dramatic Ammo Depletion: Mostly averted; you'll never run out of shots even if you take every single opportunity to shoot. The one instance where this is present is in Chapter 7, where you can potentially escalate the conflict between Ryan and Laura to the point where she dares him to shoot her. If you actually do so, this will be the one time in the whole game where the gun doesn't have any ammo, thus Laura isn't even injured and promptly sucker punches Ryan for trying something so bold, although the shot wouldn't have killed her regardless because it wasn't loaded with silver.
• Drunk on the Dark Side: Laura starts to really enjoy her transformation into a werewolf, even though she by that point would have been stabbed, shot at least once, dropped off a cliff, and seen for herself the horrors of the transformation. It creeps Ryan out when she mentions how good she feels.
• Emergency Transformation: After Ryan is stabbed by Bobby, Laura offers to infect him with lycanthropy to give him the Healing Factor he will need to survive, with the caveat that he will need to kill Chris Hackett to be free of the curse. Whether he accepts or not is left to the player's choice.
• "Everybody Dies" Ending: While surprisingly a bit trickier than at first glance, such an ending is only possible if Silas is killed by Laura after the car crash (as she dies from her injuries shortly after) and Caleb is locked in the freezer as he mauls Kaitlyn, since the werewolf curse will be lifted, and he'll be trapped frozen to death. Thus, the game could end with every counselor and Hackett family member dead.
• Everybody Lives: Par for the course for this type of game, such an ending is of course possible (for the counselors, at least).
  • While, bar a few late game decisions, it is not very difficult to keep all the counselors alive, the complexity of this approach can be taken even further if the player wishes to keep as many of the Hacketts alive as possible or even just have the lowest number of deaths period. Assuming the counselors' lives are the ones of highest priority, it is entirely possible to end the game with only two player-caused deaths in total (and one Plotline Death; Kaylee Hackett); those being Chris Hackett and Silas Vorez. Chris must be shot by Ryan for him, Laura, and Travis to be alive and fully human again, and Silas must be killed to lift the curse off of everyone.
  • Perhaps the most complex person to keep alive, without sacrificing other lives at least, is Caleb Hackett. Succinctly put, Kaitlyn (and Dylan if he is alive by the time they reach the scrapyard) must be infected before Caleb attacks the lodge in Chapter 10. Having this be the case allows you to Take a Third Option where Caleb swipes at Kaitlyn (by this point, Dylan is elsewhere, given that he turned in the scrapyard) but does not fully maul her because she is infected, allowing her to simply evade Caleb rather than shooting him or trapping him in the freezer. If, in the same playthrough, you convince Travis to work with Laura and Ryan to kill Silas and actually go through with it, Caleb, Kaitlyn, Dylan, and any other infected characters will be cured and their human forms will be unscathed.
• Evil Makes You Ugly: The werewolf transformation causes the otherwise attractive cast to undergo some rather horrible changes. For starters, their eyes and skin turn a sickly shade of yellow, as if they have jaundice, with every vein in their face popping out to the point of almost bursting. A few get some extra traits, such as Emma and her teeth turning into jagged canines.
• Expy: Eliza the fortuneteller plays a role not dissimilar to Dr. Hill in Until Dawn or The Curator of The Dark Pictures Anthology, acting as a Horror Host who occasionally turns up in the game. However, she's also an actual character within the backstory, though she's dead by the time the game starts and you're talking to her ghost. If the player has been listening to her advice and pushing the characters into making certain choices, however, they will have fulfilled Eliza's Curse against the Hackett family and desire to see them all dead so they will stop hunting her son Silas, as well as Revenge on the two youngest, Caleb and Kaylee, for her Accidental Murder during a fire set as a distraction that got out of control, in essence making the player her instrument of vengeance throughout the game.
• Eye Scream: What happens to Laura during her time in jail; when Max transforms into a werewolf in front of her, he is able to swipe her across the face, blowing out one of her eyes in the process.
• Final Girl: As is common in Supermassive Games titles, any of the characters can be the Sole Survivor. Ryan and Kaitlyn, however, have achievements for it. Kaitlyn's is even called Final Girl.
• Five-Second Foreshadowing:
  • When Laura has been discovered by Constance, Laura tries to break free of her grasp and says "I'll blow your fuckin' head off", and soon after, if a certain QTE is passed, that is essentially what happens.
  • When Jacob goes back looking for Emma, he may examine the edge of a walkway and say "wouldn't want to fall off this", and then soon after if a certain QTE is passed, he accidentally makes Emma fall off it.
• Foregone Conclusion: Anyone familiar with Until Dawn or The Dark Pictures Anthology will know that prologue characters in Supermassive games have an extremely short life expectancy, so Laura and Max not even making it to Chapter 1 should come as no surprise. Played With only to be eventually Subverted, in that they do actually survive and are simply off in their own plot during the two-month Time Skip, which is eventually recapped in Chapter 7. Observant players might have expected something was up, given that Laura's face gets the most space on the game's cover art, suggesting a larger role for her than Decoy Protagonist; and indeed, when she returns in Chapter 7, it quickly becomes clear that she's the main character if anyone is.
• Fate Worse than Death: If one fails the QTE to pull free from the bear trap as Jacob, he will fall face first into another trap right next to it. If he also happens to be infected, this will not kill him, and he will instead struggle and attempt to scream in agony until Jedediah comes to capture him.
• Foreshadowing:
  • In Eliza's first scene as the Horror Host to the player, she says that she's "waited a long time" to meet them, and that you can both "help each other", with her offering to shed light on the potential consequences of the paths you can take through the tarot card collectibles you can find throughout the story, but not mentioning what exactly the player can do for her. As a ghost who perished years ago through the events that caused the werewolf curse to be brought to Hackett's quarry, Eliza is unable to directly intervene in the story, and the most she is able to do is hauntings: calling out names and making phones ring. She can't make anyone do anything. As the player, however, you can, so she is guiding you to the choices that will lead to the deaths of the Hackett family to achieve her Revenge against them and sparing her son Silas from being hunted down by them, as none of the teenagers have been infected by Silas himself and thus there is no need for them to kill him to break the curse affecting them.
  • If one pays attention during the prologue, you can clearly see Eliza's face and figure as the ghostly woman moving around the woods where Laura and Max crash, in ways that spell out that she's a ghost, pointing to the reveal that she's been Dead All Along before it and her connection to the story get spelled out in the final hours before dawn.
  • In the prologue when Laura tells Max she saw someone in the cellar, Max asks if the person in question might be Mr. Hackett. In chapter 7, it's revealed that it was indeed Chris Hackett in werewolf form.
  • If the player finds any of Eliza's Tarot cards, they always burn as they disappear. In the Hierophant's Tarot card vision, the player sees that her cards disintegrated this way in the fire.
  • Part of the reason Max and Laura disregard Travis's advice to go to the motel that night instead of the Quarry like they planned is that in addition to his generally creepy demeanor and the circumstances they're in, Max notices what appears to be fresh blood on him, enhancing his image as an untrustworthy individual. The Hackett family turn out to mark each other with werewolf blood on the night of the full moon to avoid their transformed family members attacking them, and as Travis is trying to hunt down Silas to end the curse for good, he too has marked himself whilst in the vicinity of Silas' nest.
  • The motto of Hackett's quarry is "what doesn't kill you makes you stronger". Getting mauled by a werewolf is a fairly life-threatening situation, with no guarantee of survival, but if you survive, you gain a Healing Factor that allows you to shrug off anything short of silver bullets, not to mention increased strength and agility in your werewolf form.
  • While exploring the lodge, Jacob notes that the central chimney doesn't look very stable. Emma can also find blueprints detailing a planned remodel of the chimney to strengthen it, confirming it is a structural weakness. This comes into play later when a transformed Caleb breaks into the lodge through the weakened chimney. He'll also note that the freezer looks like it'd be an awful place to get stuck in. Kaitlyn or Caleb can get shut in the freezer as Kaitlyn tries to elude Caleb during the lodge attack, and they'll die of the cold unless Kaitlyn is infected or Caleb is never cured, as werewolves' near-invincibility allows them to endure it until they're freed in the morning.
  • In chapter 1, Kaitlyn will remark, "One more night in the great outdoors might actually kill me." Considering her status as a character in an interactive horror game, that statement rings more than a little true.
  • The campsite has a bunch of signposts pointing to different cities (Toledo, Boston, Burbank...). If you check the sign again at night, you might notice that the sign for Death Valley is pointing at the moon◊. Now, what's the main threat of the game, again...?
  • Chris squints in the light far more than any other character. He is also very adamant about the counselors leaving camp on time but doesn't offer them a ride. He turns out to be a werewolf and couldn't risk transforming on the way. Also, the werewolves have heightened senses, so bright lights affect them, as shown by Laura later in the story.
  • After Chris leaves the group alone, Dylan pitches that they throw a party while describing them as "just a bunch of grown-ass adults looking to get down with their animal side." Considering what each of them can end up becoming…
  • Nick can state during a chat with Abi that he's never sure what the future holds and that at times, he tries to content himself by letting things happen as if they were meant to. Abi returns, "Like it's all predetermined? Fate?" Nick is the one member of the main group of seven counselors who is not only always guaranteed to become a werewolf, but to become one at the same point in every playthrough. His inevitable lycanthropy affliction is also foreshadowed by multiple references to Nick having a hidden bold side to him that the others find almost inconceivably at odds with his usual soft-spoken and awkward personality. When Jacob assumes he's never shot a gun before, Nick replies, "Yeah, not that you know of" only to be scoffed at; Ryan says that "Nick's got the beast in him" when Kaitlyn doubts either he or Abi will ever initiate a relationship, and when laughs it off, he and Dylan will say they've noticed he's surprisingly shredded for the cute and preppy way he styles himself; and when Jacob says he doubts he has any experience with women, Emma counters that he's a confident kisser.
  • After Abi and Nick begin conversing about fate, Abi goes on to say that she's not fond of the idea, since she feels it implies one could use it to shrug off the consequences of their actions and claim that "it wasn't really me" if they do something horrible. Nick's infection inevitably warps his behavior and causes him to act aggressively towards her, and while she recognizes that "this isn't you", she won't survive the night unless the player has her retaliate via a shotgun blast when he ultimately attacks.
• Fortune Teller: The Horror Host this time around is one of these, and bringing her different tarot cards hidden throughout each chapter will allow her to share outcomes for certain subsequent actions you might take. She was this even before she was killed, as the posters said she would read your fortune with her deck.
• Four-Girl Ensemble: With the girls in the game, Emma is the sexy one, Kaitlyn is the snarky one, Abi is the naive one, and Laura is the admirable one. Although Kaitlyn could also count as the admirable one, being the Team Mom of the group.

Tropes G-O

• Gameplay and Story Segregation: It's rather heavily implied that the werewolf transformation actually destroys all of the victim's clothes, rather than Magic Pants actually being in effect, as more than one character refers to themself as naked afterwards, and full frontal nudity would probably push the game into an AO rating.
• Genre Throwback: The game is a 1980s slasher film updated for the modern era. Isolated summer camp, horny teens left alone, and unseen evil waiting to strike, now with smartphones and Ariana Grande songs.
• Golden Ending: If you make all of the optimal decisions, the game ends with only three casualties: Kaylee Hackett (whose death is unavoidable), Chris Hackett, and Silas Vorez. Killing Silas puts an end to the werewolf curse, and collecting all of the evidence ensures the protagonists are acquitted of murder in the aftermath.
• Grey-and-Grey Morality: The protagonists themselves are just trying to save themselves and the only time they do anything evil is either by accident or if they are not in control of themselves as a werewolf. However, both Eliza and the Hackett family have both good and bad qualities.
  • On the one hand, Eliza kept her son safe from other people and there were no records of Silas biting other people. On the other, Eliza uses her son as a sideshow attraction. She also swears vengeance on an entire family of people, despite the fact that not all of them were responsible for what happened to her son. This is a bit downplayed: She's pretty upset if the player doesn't kill a Hackett if they have the chance, but as long as Caleb and Kaylee are killed along with Silas being safe, she'll be satisfied.
  • Kaylee and Caleb were only trying to help a little boy that looked like he was being abused, not to mention any of their evil tendencies happen while they are werewolves, when they have no control of their actions. On the other hand, Kaylee also convinced Caleb to start the fire that ended up killing innocent people like the former Sheriff Hank. Given that they were raised by a summer camp owner, they would also absolutely know how dangerous fires can be. In addition, the two of them did not cage themselves in the hopes that they would draw attention from the outside world so they could get some help in hunting Silas.
• Guide Dang It!: The game has a gargantuan number of branches/scenes that a player can experience in a given playthrough, at least as much, if not more, than Supermassive's last game Until Dawn. The "problem" in layman's terms, however, is that many of these scenes can only be seen if certain characters or combinations thereof are alive, dead, infected, or in certain locations at certain times, and many of these criteria can only be set through failing certain quick time events and/or making choices that no "sensible" player would make. Most players will try their best (and succeed) to complete any QTEs that they come across in their first playthrough and will be mostly sensible about the choices they make, and so the result is that many of the game's more intricate and heavy scenes will not be found until subsequent playthroughs.
  • As an example, finding one of the final collectible clues requires you to deliberately fail a quick-time event at one point in Chapter 5, in order for it to show up in Chapter 10. The only hint about it is found in Movie Mode.
  • Supermassive Games attempted to avert this to an extent by introducing a setting where all QTEs have shorter response timeframes before they fail. This was introduced because many players thought that miss QTE = playable character dies, but in reality that usually isn't the case (that is to say, you won't die if you fail any single QTE) and, if anything, missing at least some/certain QTEs allows for new story possibilities, but many players weren't seeing them because of the forgiving QTE success timeframes and so the patch was introduced.
• Healing Factor: People who get infected with lycanthropy in this universe gain shocking regenerative abilities and resiliency, to the point where Laura regrows her lost eye as she gets closer to transformation. Later, she will always take at least one bullet without noticeable injury, and even a short period of infection is enough to keep Ryan from dying after being stabbed in the lung.
• Hunting the Most Dangerous Game: Dylan mentions a "most dangerous game-type situation" as one of the ways the night could go wrong. While there is hunting going on, the Hackett family is not interested in harming the teens, at least not until Laura kills Kaylee.
• I Just Shot Marvin in the Face:
  • If Ryan isn't careful with the shotgun at the firepit, he can unknowingly kill Jacob with it.
  • One path has Constance attempting to wrestle a shotgun away from Laura, causing the gun to go off and literally shoot Constance in the face.
• Interface Spoiler: One of the path "covers" early on shows Laura and Max's incarceration in Chapter 7.
• Ironic Echo Cut: In Chapter 7:
  Laura: Are you out of your—
  [flash-forward]
  Ryan: —goddamn mind?
• "It" Is Dehumanizing: Laura does this on several occasions, not out of cruelty, but to desensitize herself to the fact that the werewolves she is hunting down are still people.
• Kill It with Water: Werewolves find immersion in water painful even before transformation. This is invoked with Max as he is left on an island, so he can't be a danger during the transformation. At least, before Emma goes on the island and finds him.
• Leaning on the Fourth Wall:
  • Early in the prologue, there is a tutorial sequence in which the tutorial character catches on fire whilst sitting near a firepit. Not long after, Max tells Laura to "imagine herself curling up in front of a big old firepit singing campfire singalongs", to which Laura remarks that no one does that because they would catch on fire.
  • In the end of Chapter 4 after the conflict between Emma and Jacob, there is a fanservice overloaded sequence in which Emma wanders around the island recording a vlog while dripping wet in her underwear. When she gets to the end, she turns to the camera, smirks and says "This is all you're getting, I'm putting on some clothes."
  • In the prologue after Travis tells Laura and Max to go to the hotel, Max wants to comply but Laura shoots this down. She asks him if he really wants to go to a creepy unknown motel out, in the middle of nowhere and on the recommendation of a blood splattered cop...
  • While on the island Emma jokingly asks her viewers if they want to explore the creepy trapdoor that is sure to contain a monster that will no doubt jump out and kill her. There is, and it does.
  • After the landline goes dead, Dylan suggests "tapping on the hang-up thingy" as that's what he's seen in movies. Ryan exasperatedly tells him they're not in a movie, to which Dylan responds, "How do you know that? Maybe that's just what they want you to think, man"
• Like Brother and Sister: Kaitlyn and Jacob are childhood friends. During the Truth or Dare scene, Ryan can ask Kaitlyn if the two have ever been intimate, and Kaitlyn explains that they used to make out as high school freshmen, but she thought it was weird and didn't take things further than that partly because it felt like she was kissing her brother. Kaitlyn is often openly mocking and critical of Jacob despite their closeness, but this information implies that she means it in a Vitriolic Best Buds way that wouldn't be too unexpected if she was Jake's biological big sister.
• Lodged-Blade Recycling: Bobby stabs Ryan in the ribs when he escapes. After Bobby chases Ryan down again, Ryan can (given that he hasn't already pulled out the blade) take Bobby's knife out of his side and stab Bobby with it in turn.
• Ludicrous Gibs: The werewolves' transformation is essentially an explosion of blood and gore.
• Magic A Is Magic A: One of the rules of werewolves in this story is that if you kill a werewolf with silver under the full moon, they die and everyone they infected is no longer cursed. This is shown when Silas the Wolf Boy is killed, as everyone is restored, even people Silas didn't directly bite. However, when Caleb is killed, it does not cure Chris, whom Caleb bit. This might just be a Plot Hole.
• Magic Pants: The werewolf transformation, in both directions, takes the form of a violent explosion of blood that destroys clothing. Despite this, enough clothing is left intact to cover the crotch and, for female characters, breasts as well.
• Major Injury Underreaction:
  • If Ryan stabs Bobby Hackett in the chest in Chapter 9, pretty much all he'll do is point out that he got stabbed and say that it really hurts. He will go off screaming for his dad Jedidiah afterwards, but the scream is not befitting of a recent stab victim at all and just ends up just sounding like a little kid snitching on his brother for taking his cookies. Justified in the sense that Bobby seems to play the archetype of the "big, hardy, yet simple-minded" guy and that the game isn't trying to be subtle about its use of established movie/character cliches.
  • Almost entirely averted other than the above instance. While some characters may recover from the shock of the injury particularly quickly, such as Dylan being right back to cracking his usual jokes mere hours after getting his hand either cut or shot off, when actually receiving the injury the character in question will almost always be reacting with the appropriate level of agony.
• Minor Injury Overreaction: Emma sprays Dylan when he takes her by surprise in the car, and he screams and flails on the ground until Kaitlyn yells at him that Emma was wielding air freshener, not mace.
• Motion Capture: Motion capture was heavily featured by the actors.
• Multiple Endings: Word of God states that there are at least 186 different possible outcomes depending on the player's choices.
• Mythology Gag: Several Shout Outs and Running Gags from Until Dawn and the Dark Pictures games make a return:
  • The Running Gag of characters referring to various athletic pursuits like gym or abseiling training with the Buffy Speak term "climbing class" makes a return, having previously featured in Until Dawn and House of Ashes.
  • Ryan and Dylan head to the PA shack to look for a radio, since every Supermassive horror game always features a sub-plot where a pair or group of characters must find a radio to call for help. Dylan even Lampshades that it's a bit of a long shot, as his PA equipment isn't really designed to broadcast outside of camp, but it's the best they have.
  • Over the closing credits, podcast host Grace exclaims "It was just a prank, Anton!" in the same intonation as Emily's Memetic Mutation "It was just a prank, Han!" from Until Dawn.^note Which raises an interesting question of whether Until Dawn is a video game or otherwise familiar work of fiction in-universe, since the way Grace says it (her captioned dialogue even has quotation marks around the phrase) suggests she's calling back to a familiar meme.
  • If Dylan is with Kaitlyn in the final stand in the lodge near the end of the game, she will crack a joke about fantasies of going on a cozy vacation at a ski resort. Just to drive the reference home, her ski vacation story takes a dark turn into being stranded by a broken lift and forced to resort to cannibalism to survive.
  • When Emma goes to the treehouse on the island, she'll notice something banging on a trapdoor in the ceiling. She'll then talk for the vlog she's filming about how the situation is very spooky and she'll definitely die horribly if she opens it; and sure enough, if she opens the door without first preparing by checking the bags nearby, she'll be mauled to death by a werewolf. This comes across as a tongue-in-cheek Call-Back to a similar moment in Until Dawn, where Ashley can die after opening a trapdoor for a monster as a result of the player ignoring or leaning into several red flags like the fact that getting Ashley to the trapdoor to begin with means separating her from the rest of the group - a scene made particularly infamous by Markiplier taking the Schmuck Bait and promptly regretting it in his first playthrough of the game.
• Names to Run Away from Really Fast: A man named Mr. Hackett runs a summer camp in a town called North Kill, which also has an inn called the Harbinger Motel. Anyone old enough to be familiar with horror should visit expecting to wind up in a slasher movie.
• No Ontological Inertia: Killing a werewolf higher on the food chain will end the curse to anyone that werewolf has infected. Using this can lead to some interesting outcomes depending on which werewolves you kill:
  • Killing Silas will end the curse for everyone, since he is the head werewolf and the source of the infection.
  • Killing Chris will end the curse for Max, which is what Laura is trying to do. And because Max bit Laura, killing Chris will cure her too. If she bit Ryan, then he too will become uninfected.
  • Killing Caleb will cure his father, Chris, and - following his line of infection - Max, along with anyone else who has bitten throughout the night, unless Dylan is infected by Silas.
• No OSHA Compliance: Jacob can inspect the walk-in freezer in the lodge's kitchen in Chapter One, and will say aloud that it'd suck to get stuck inside it. The freezer must be actual decades out of date, because it can't be opened from the inside. This can end up killing either Kaitlyn or Caleb.
• No Romantic Resolution: Even if all the counselors survive the night and avoid criminal prosecution, the various romantic threads between the nine of them (all of whom have some explicit romantic relationship/attraction to someone else in the group) are left on an ambiguous note. There are only two exceptions, both of which only occur in very specific circumstances:
  • If Jacob escapes the Hackett house and reunites with a cured Emma in the woods, they'll bitterly argue and she'll bluntly tell him she does not want to be with him anymore.
  • If Max is cured and Laura kills Travis, they'll joyfully reunite on the island, now having the freedom they've craved for months.
• Not Quite the Right Thing: If the player is trying to spare as many of the Hackett Family as possible whilst also keeping the teenagers alive, it is possible to non-lethally subdue Caleb Hackett when he attacks Dylan and Kaitlyn in the lodge at the end, by tricking him into and locking him behind the freezer door. However, if the player then goes on to kill Silas to break the werewolf curse for good, Caleb will revert back to normal inside the freezer and freeze to death without the protection his curse proved him from the cold, a slower and more agonizing death than if they'd simply shot him.
  • A second instance occurs within the first one detailed above if the player makes a couple specific decisions. The werewolves do not attack each other or anyone they perceive as their own, so since the two normal options for dealing with Caleb are either killing him or trapping him (rather than just running away from him until Laura kills Silas), the only way to keep Caleb alive in a way that allows him to have his curse lifted without killing off any other characters is by having Kaitlyn (and Dylan if he is alive and with her) be infected when Caleb attacks the lodge. If the player simply waits as Kaitlyn while this is the case, she will get attacked, but Caleb will be tricked by the scent before he fully begins rampaging. If Laura then kills Silas, the curse will be lifted on every infected character, including Caleb, with his human form unscathed and without having any of the counselors killed during his rampage on the lodge. Essentially, in order to maximize the number of people alive in the morning, infecting characters besides the automatic ones (Laura, Max, and Nick) may prove helpful or, in this case, essential.
• Only a Flesh Wound:
  • With any of the wounds that cause a given counselor to become infected. Some of these wounds, such as Nick's, look deep and painful enough to where if they were inflicted under normal circumstances there'd be a high chance of death by blood loss. However because these wounds were inflicted by werewolf bites, after some time has passed since infection, the werewolf healing factor will kick in and prevent the infected person from dying from the wound.
  • This begins being the case with any wound wrought upon a counselor if they had been infected beforehand, both in the time before they transform and after they actually do so. While their skin can still be pierced and they will still bleed, there is absolutely no chance of death unless the weapon that inflicted the wound contains silver in some capacity.
• Our Werewolves Are Different: The werewolves are nocturnal as they will transform at night, their senses are strong enough to suffer from hypersensitivity as they can be scared off by loud noises, their strength has been increased as they can decapitate their victim in one strike, and they are extremely athletic. The werewolves are vulnerable to silver and can be killed with silver bullets, they also avoid water, and one way to avoid them is to smear their blood on your face so the werewolf would mistake you for one of their own. In human form, the infected have a healing factor as they can regenerate lost limbs and survive fatal attacks. During their infection, the sufferer will become aggressive and quick to anger as the disease affects their brain and nervous system ^note specifically the amygdala, which processes fearful and threatening stimuli. The pons relays and regulates signals that provide the feelings/sense of pain from the parts of the body below the neck. The cerebellum handles balance and movement. The thalamus regulates sensory and motor signals, as well as controls your sense of sleep, wakefulness, consciousness, learning, and memory. The curse has been compared to rabies due to Nick's reaction to being shoved in a pool after getting creepily frisky with Abigail. The only way to cure the person affected by the werewolf curse is to kill the werewolf that bit them.

Tropes P-Z

• Permanently Missable Content: There are multiple clues, pieces of evidence, and tarot cards in each level. However you can only collect them in each playable section of the story - once the plot advances, you will have missed your chance until the next playthrough. Furthermore, some collectibles can only be obtained on certain paths or with certain choices, making it impossible to collect everything in one go; players will have to choose between collecting all the clues or all the tarot cards. Since the tarot cards are used by Eliza to provide glimpses of the future that nudge the player towards outcomes that result in the deaths of the Hacketts/make the player more inclined to pick the hostile options towards them, and the Clues showcase that what actually happened was an innocent case of bad judgment, these differing paths could be considered a nudge to the endings. The evidence the counselors can collect so they aren't arrested by the police can all be collected on any playthrough. Additionally, if the player fails to find and keep the doll found in Chapter 2 or the silver shells in the cellar in Chapter 9, Kaitlyn and Dylan (if he is still alive and neither of them are infected) will have no way to kill or trap Werewolf Caleb, resulting in their deaths.
• The Place: The game’s title refers to Hackett’s Quarry - literally an old quarry used by the Hackett family that was converted into a summer camp in 1953.
• Plot Armor: Try as you might, Ryan, Laura, and Kaitlyn are unkillable until late in the game.
  • On the flipside of this, most of the other counselors have a "survival guarantee" that can kick-in before Chapter 9, wherein they are immune from death for the rest of the game, and don't have to worry about dying in the final two chapters, when the game is at its most difficult. Emma's is the earliest in Chapter 4, if she survives the island without being infected. Dylan's is in Chapter 5, if he gets bitten but does not get his hand chopped off. Jacob's is in Chapter 6, if he gets infected by Caleb but otherwise survives the encounter with him. Abigail's is also in Chapter 6, if she shoots Nick and Emma doesn't get infected in Chapters 4 or 6. Nick's is in Chapter 8, as preventing Laura from shooting him will also prevent his one and only death. Max is the only outlier of the remaining counselors, as his "survival guarantee" comes in Chapter 9, if Ryan fails to shoot Chris (which also leads to Ryan's death). Otherwise, Max is only given a single choice in his lone playable segment in the whole game, which takes place in Chapter 10, where one choice leads to his death and the other his survival.
• Plot Hole:
  • According to the story, Caleb bit his father Chris and infected him. Killing Caleb therefore should cure Chris of his infection. However, if Kaitlyn shoots him in the lodge and Chris survives the night, he is described as "Still Infected", however, he should be cured. Eliza mentions in this ending that the "curse is broken", so it probably just coded incorrectly.
  • If Kaitlyn fails some QTE's during Chapter 5, Bobby will splash her in the face with werewolf blood. After this, she runs from him and goes to get Nick and Abi, who then leave through the window to go to the radio tower. At no point does Kaitlyn remove (or even have the ability to remove) the blood and in the next scene, it's not on her face.
• Plotline Death: Kaylee Hackett's death is the only one in the game that is completely unavoidable, and the only one to not be instigated by player action.
• Poor Communication Kills: As per Horror traditions, a lot of suffering could have been avoided by people simply talking to each other.
  • In the prologue, Laura admits that she didn't actually talk with Chris about showing up a day early and simply assumed it would be fine. Big Mistake.
  • When Travis instructs Laura and Max to stay at the Harbinger Motel instead of heading to Hackett's Quarry, he doesn't really give them any good reason as to why they should follow his advice, and only gets angry when they question him, leading them to become suspicious of his motives and refusing to follow his instructions. Since they're standing very close by Silas, the Alpha werewolf's nest, he's understandably on edge and nervous whilst trying his best to hide it and project an image of authority to get the kids out of the danger zone so he can go back to trying to hunt Silas without having to expose himself out in the open, especially since Laura and Max's descriptions of the thing they almost ran over (if they tell the truth) make him very aware that he's nearby and potentially watching them. Likewise, he also isn't in the right state of mind to come up with a convincing excuse as to why they can't go to Hackett's Quarry that night, since his transformed brother is locked up in the basement there, and his concerns with Silas and others finding out about his family's situation mean he can't do much more than assert his authority as a police officer in hopes they'll listen. Not helping matters is the fact that he needs to smear werewolf blood on himself in order to help hide from Silas' senses, which further highlights his image as a creepy and untrustworthy individual to Max and Laura when they notice.
  • When the counselors are stranded, Chris panics and then orders them to stay inside the lodge without giving them any sort of reason why this was so important. Even a partial truth probably would have helped, since then they would know that there was a dangerous "animal" in the woods, and his family would be out trying to hunt it down. Of course, since Chris himself and his family are the animals in question, and he doesn't want either the campers to die or get blood on his family's hands, it's understandable that he would panic over the worst-case scenario he can imagine, and fail to come up with a convincing lie or partial explanation of the truth that doesn't make him come across as delusional or crazy.
• Pretty Little Headshots: Very much averted. Buckshot is the only ammunition available so any headshots landed turn into gore blossoms that are not at all pretty. Constance getting a close face full of buckshot is shown in incredibly vivid detail, with several Gross-Up Close-Up shots of the damage afterwards.
  • That said, if Laura gets shot in the head in the Hackett house, all she has to show for it is a little hole in her forehead that's already healed by the time of her transformation.
• Red Herring: In the prologue, one of the clues Laura can find a bloodied collar labeled 'Ian'. Its menu description specifically says it is too big to be a dog's collar, implying it might belong to one of the monsters. In the final chapter, it's revealed through a chalkboard drawing that Ian was a sheep and the camp's previous mascot. He had actually been eaten by Chris in werewolf form in an attempt to sate his hunger.
• Retraux:
  • The UI for the game resembles font that might appear on a VHS output.
  • The "Paths Chosen" menu presents each path with its own VHS slipcover.
  • The tutorial videos are presented as an old tv switching to a different channel.
• Reckless Gun Usage: During the shooting competition between Jacob and Nick, Jacob carelessly points his loaded shotgun at both Nick and Kaitlyn, prompting Kaitlyn to angrily confiscate the gun from him and declaring an automatic disqualification due to his gross negligence. Ryan's reckless use of a gun could kill Jacob. Constance also grabs Laura's gun by the barrel, which is an incredibly dangerous thing to do, and Laura can blow her face off as a result.
• Running Gag: If a counselor is justifying their actions or the existence of certain objects, expect bears to always be the answer. Emma grabbing the gun in Chapter 1? Protection from bears. The trail cams? Detecting bears. The SOS message Dylan sends from the radio hut? He states how they're being attacked by bears. Trailcam footage of a werewolf being reviewed as evidence? Probably a really skinny bear.
  • Dylan lampshades this when the power to the lodge is cut in Chapter 4.
    Ryan: Maybe it was the... bears?
    Dylan: Bear. Why does everyone blame everything on bears? Okay, so for the sake of argument, what if that 'bear' that cut our phone line and just cut out all the power- what if that "bear" is waiting for us out in the hallway?
• Schmuck Bait:
  • Just as Emma predicts, opening the banging trapdoor leads to a gory and horrible death at the hands of a werewolf.
  • Sure, go ahead and return to the spot that Laura lost her eye at, you'll be fine!
• Scenery Porn: The woods surrounding camp and quarry are simply gorgeous to look at.
• Self-Surgery: What Laura has to do in order to repair her blown out eyeball, just going off what she read in textbooks.
• Sex Signals Death:
  • Emma's first death opportunity comes after she's stripped to her underwear to go for a swim with Jacob. At the end of the vlog she films while on a stroll afterwards, if you have her investigate the trap door before she puts on clothes, she will never find the bear mace and taser stored with them, and will be defenseless when attacked later on.
  • Likewise, Jacob's first potential death comes when he's just as naked during the swimming scene itself, as he can drown while diving to recover the van's rotor arm (if he removed it at the beginning of the game) after realizing he's dropped it. Unlike Emma, he never has a chance to get dressed after this, and has the dubious honor of being the character with the highest number of deaths in the game.
• Shameless Fanservice Girl: Jacob and Max are humiliated and embarrassed by their nudity. Not Emma, who not only has no qualms about wandering around in her underwear but actually records vlogs in them. She even addresses the camera at the end of it and says "I'm putting on some clothes, this is all you're getting."
• Shout-Out:
  • One to The Evil Dead (1981) in the trailer: a POV shot of something moving through the woods at alarming speed, much as in the film. Max outright name-drops the movie to Laura as they enter the basement of the seemingly-abandoned cabin in the prologue.
  • The first scene of the game starts with Laura turning off the music in her and Max's car to point out to him that it seems like they're lost. When he asks her what's up, she tells him she wants to talk to him about something that starts with an "L". After a beat, Max guesses, "Lesbians?"
  • One to Evil Dead 2: when Dylan is bit on his hand, he begs Ryan to cut it off before the infection spreads. You're given the option to use a chainsaw, which has the brand name GROOVY printed on the blade.
  • At the very beginning of Chapter 2, Emma makes a reference to Alive of all things.
    Emma: So here we are! Stranded...in the great American wilds with nothing but our wits to guide us. Will humanity prevail? Or will we grow ravenous and resort to eating the flesh of the deceased like I saw in that one plane crash movie.
  • In the game, before a werewolf transforms, they becomes more aggressive, abrasive and violent, a concept first introduced in Silver Bullet. Granted, in the film, the werewolf gets progressively more animalistic and violent in the days leading up to the full moon. Here it only takes a few hours. This concept was also used to great effect in Teen Wolf.
  • A severed and piked pig's head can be found in chapter 4 of the game, the same chapter it was introduced in Lord of the Flies.
  • The Bloated Corpse Clue is a clear Shout-Out to Jason from Friday the 13th. In Jason Lives, The New Blood and Jason takes Manhattan, Jason was depicted as sleeping in a similar manner at the bottom of Crystal Lake. Additionally, his body is tied to a heavy object to prevent him from leaving the bottom of the lake. However, in Jason's case it is with chains, rather than razor-wire, and it also doesn't work as he's technically a zombie. For the Corpse however, it was a Fate Worse Then Death. Every time he reanimated he would be submerged in water, which is already agonizing for a werewolf, but covered in razor-wire as well. Presumably he would then trash relentlessly while either his skin burned like acid or was sliced to brisket. Eventually, the pain would be enough that he would go into shock and "die" again. Evidently this was able to kill him as the corpse eventually stopped reanimating as it had begun to decompose when Jacob found it.
  • To Jurassic Park: during the confrontation between Kaitlin (and Dylan if he's still alive and uninfected) and werewolf Caleb, there are a number of shots in the main cabin's kitchen that closely mirror the famous 'raptors in the kitchen' scene with werewolf Caleb in the place of the main Velociraptor. Further fitting the homage, surviving this scene requires successfully trapping Caleb in the freezer, which is also what Lex and Tim do to one of the Velociraptors.
• Silver Bullet: Werewolves are the enemy so silver is a given. While Travis crafts his own silver bullets, Laura is able to jury-rig a silver bullet by filling a shell with Abi's silver bracelet. Abi and/or Emma can also find some in the storm shelter if they survive that long.
• Slasher Movie: The game draws heavy inspiration from classic 80s and 90s slasher movies, featuring a Summer camp setting with playable teen counselors who are left stranded at the camp overnight, which is soon populated with backwoods hunters and blood-thirsty werewolves.
• Sole Survivor: Entirely possible for all the counselors, especially if the counselor you want to be the last one standing gets and stays infected until Laura kills Silas with her dying breath. Although some deaths and infections void the possibility of certain other characters dying, there is a way to play the game where everybody dies in an "independent" way; that is, if you wanted to make any given counselor the sole survivor you would only have to change decisions that directly lead to the death of the counselor in question, rather than "re-doing" the death of another counselor because it got in the way of that outcome. Even though this possibility exists for all counselors, only Kaitlyn and Ryan have achievements for it, which differs from Until Dawn in that there are no gender-specific survival achievements.
  • Additionally, either Travis, Caleb, or Chris can be this for the Hackett family.
• Soundtrack Dissonance: Many of the licensed music choices are quirky, but the prize has to go to the song that plays over the final scene before the credits/epilogue kicks in: the relatively upbeat "Daydream Believer" by The Monkees plays over a Where Are They Now-style montage detailing the fates of all the characters (which range from traumatised at best to grisly at worst).
• Splatter Horror: The game is intended to be a homage to classic splatter and slasher movies, featuring many of the tropes and clichés as well as a variety of very bloody ways in which its cast can die, ranging from violent decapitations to gory bisections.
• Spotlight-Stealing Squad: Laura. Once Chapter 7 rolls around, she completely steals the show. For the remaining 3 chapters, Kaitlyn, Dylan, and Ryan are the only characters who get any sort of major roles for the rest of the game. Previously important characters, such as Jacob, Abigail, Emma, and especially Nick, are pushed out of the limelight and only given a handful of scenes. Granted, this was likely to accommodate the fact that by this point they've all had multiple opportunities to die.
• Strange Minds Think Alike: The Ironic Echo Cut, where Ryan repeats word for word what Laura said to Max when the latter suggested that he turned into a werewolf after Laura tells the group what had happened to her and was happening to them. Laura even laughs and notes she literally said the same thing to Max when he first said it.
• The Stinger: During the credits, the player is granted a shot of Chris Hackett's computer displaying a news report on the events of the game and playing an episode of the Bizarre Yet Bonafide podcast discussing said events. The hosts of the podcasts will review any evidence the player has collected during the story, which will affect what the report changes to after the podcast.
• Streamer-Friendly Mode: There is an option to mute the licensed music (such as the Ariana Grande song at the beginning) or replace it with music created for the game. As the name suggests, it's to avoid royalty problems with licensed soundtracks.
• Story Branching: In the game, you are able to make choices. Those choices can affect gameplay and how characters view each other.
• Stupidity Is the Only Option:
  • Despite the multiple branches available to the player, sometimes you're not given a choice to not do something objectively short-sighted. These forced decisions are partly because the plot needs to moved along and partly because the game is meant to be reminiscent of 80s/90s horror films and the clichés and tropes that come with them.
  • Laura and Max, during the prologue will always ignore Travis' advice (because they don't trust him) to go to the Harbinger Motel for the evening, instead going to Hackett's Quarry one night early. Likewise, there is no option to not break into the storm cellar, only the method. Had this choice been present, it would have been extremely difficult and time-consuming to code around Laura and Max being in the entire game vs. Laura only coming back during Chapter 5, and Max being a werewolf on the island that Emma faces off against.
  • Jacob's decision on whether or not to sabotage the van during Chapter 1. As this is not a timed choice (where-in a player is given a hidden "third choice" to do nothing), the player is forced to pick a method to sabotage. If the player had been given this choice, it would have ended the game in Chapter 1.
  • In Chapter 5, Kaitlyn will always investigate the sound coming from upstairs (emanating from Bobby Hackett's footsteps) rather than electing to simply leave the lodge with Nick and Abi and head towards the radio hut where Dylan and Ryan are. It is true that, at this point in the story, Nick is terribly hurt and that the counselors don't know about the werewolf curse yet (and therefore don't know that Nick will soon turn and potentially kill Abi), but any reasonable person would have elected to simply get away from the spooky noises while figuring out some way to carry Nick away alongside them without hurting him.
• Sudden Downer Ending: Even if all of the counselors survive the night, if they didn't collect enough evidence about the existence of werewolves and the Hacketts' wrongdoing, they'll end up being arrested and charged with murder for killing human beings, as at the minimum Kaylee, Chris, and Silas are all guaranteed dead in this scenario. This is especially the case since any surviving Hacketts would be reluctant to admit their family's culpability in events in order to save the very people who killed them.
• Summer Campy: Follows a group of camp counselors stranded at camp after their ride home is sabotaged.
• Superpowered Evil Side: The werewolf transformation is this, even before the actual transformation; it grants you super strength and speed, a healing factor that can shrug off gunshots and regenerate lost body parts, super senses, and the only thing that can kill you is silver. All for the cost of turning into a blood soaked mindless killing machine!
• Tap on the Head: Played straight and discussed. Characters are drugged (with a generic dosage) and knocked unconscious for up to hours several times with no apparent ill effects, even though Max brings up that knocking people out is "kind of a movie thing only" and the likely outcome is brain damage or death.
• Tarot Motifs: There are 22 different tarot cards (all the major arcana) hidden throughout the game, each one relating to a certain character or scenario, and allowing the Horror Host to predict an outcome of a future choice. In addition, some of the cards have the faces of the various cast seen that night.
• Tarot Troubles: Each of the major arcana cards you find will have a small epitaph of what that card represents for the plot, which are the readings of the Horror Host. The readings however are not completely accurate, as Eliza will give you a reading to nudge you towards killing off the Hackett family at the detriment of everything else, no matter how hamfisted the reading is.
• Teeth-Clenched Teamwork: Ryan and Laura, especially if Ryan unapologetically defends Chris Hackett and if Laura is especially passionate about killing Chris to save her boyfriend Max. The result is that the two of them go for the exact same objective/location but for entirely different reasons; Laura to kill Chris and save Max, and Ryan to convince Laura that Chris is good/redeemable and that his death isn't the only way out of the situation (spoiler alert, Ryan is totally wrong).
• Tempting Fate: As Laura, Ryan and Travis are searching for Silas in Chapter 10, Laura questions Travis how they're supposed to find Silas by driving down the middle of the road... right as Silas emerges from the bushes and leaps onto their car.
• The Many Deaths of You: The counselors have many very gruesome ways to die.
• This Was His True Form: Dead werewolves all revert back to human form a short while after they're killed.
• Twice Shy: Nick and Abi, at the start of the game. All of their peers know that they're interested in each other and they reciprocate each other's attempts to flirt, but due to their shy personalities, neither of them has admitted to anything, and even with the boatloads of encouragement the other counselors give them, Kaitlyn doubts either ever will. Of course, they end up proving her wrong by either sharing a kiss or finally stating they have feelings for each other... the very moment before they're the first counselors to be attacked by the werewolves.
• Unluckily Lucky: For many of the counselors, the easiest way to ensure they survive the night is for them to be bitten by a werewolf, since this protects them from future werewolf attacks and only Emma will be directly endangered by her werewolf form attacking someone who is armed with silver.
• Video Game Cruelty Potential:
  • As is the standard for the genre, the game emphasizes characters potentially dying or being brutally injured/tortured, and the game does a pretty decent job at evening out the number of potential trauma avenues for each playable character. Put in a single general statement, any character who has many less potential deaths than others will, for the most part, have those few deaths be especially brutal. Conversely, some characters have MANY more opportunities for death, but many of those possibilities are less brutal than average. This, for the most part, ensures that no one character is an absolute exception to the carnage that can occur.
  • An example of a character with very few potential deaths that are all very brutal to make up for the low number of individual instances is Abigail, who only has 3 potential deaths but literally all of them are at the hands of werewolf claws and/or jaws. The options here are getting decapitated by what was once her mutual crush, getting her throat ripped out by what was once her best friend, or getting torn apart in a creepy old basement by the aforementioned best friend if she happened to get infected later rather than sooner.
  • An example of a character with MANY deaths but not so much concentrated brutality, is Jacob with about 10 possible deaths, but many of these are (relatively) low key, such as him drowning or being shot by Ryan (remember, this is a game where people can be torn apart completely by werewolves; getting shot suddenly doesn't sound so bad.)
• Viral Transformation: A fate that can at least be set up on all playable characters (but only some actually transform during the game's story), and one that can be permanent (at least until the next full moon) if the source of a given character's infection is not dealt with.
  • Nick, Max, and Laura will always get infected. Nick can be cured by killing Caleb, while Laura and Max can be cured by killing Chris.
    • With Laura, the only option is killing Chris because if he does not die while Laura is transformed, Travis will be forced to kill her to save his own life. With Max, the player only sees his playable scene if he's cured by killing Chris, but Caleb is one step above Chris in the infection line, so if Caleb does die (and not Chris) Max would be cured even if the player doesn't see him fully human again.
  • Abi can only be infected around when Nick is and is always cured when Laura kills Kaylee in Chapter 5.
  • Dylan can get infected by either Silas at the radio hut or by a turned Emma later on. In the former case, Laura must kill Silas in Chapter 10 to cure him, but in the latter, either Emma must die (the opportunity appears right after she mauls Dylan), or Emma's line of infection must be cured by killing Chris and then Dylan will be cured by proxy.
  • Emma can be infected at two points; by Max in the treehouse or by Caleb in the forest. Depending on the instance in which she was infected, she will be cured by the deaths of either Caleb (if bitten by him) or Chris (if bitten by Max).
  • Jacob can be infected in Chapter 6, with the perpetrator most likely being Caleb. Thus, his cure comes from Caleb's death/cure.
  • Kaitlyn can be infected in the scrapyard by Caleb; his death/cure will cure her.
  • Ryan can be infected by voluntarily getting bit by Laura. Soon after, he will either get cured or die depending on whether he shoots Chris or not.
  • Killing Silas the dog boy (the original werewolf and the source of the curse) will cure everyone, either directly or by proxy, and prevent the curse from afflicting anyone in Hackett's Quarry ever again. Killing Caleb will achieve a similar result since he was the only one Silas directly bit, but the werewolf curse will not be done away with entirely since Silas is still alive.
• Wham Line:
  • We get The Reveal during Laura's chapter, via a confrontation between Chris and Travis at the police station.
    Chris: Jesus, Travis. [Laura and Max] are still here? That's fucked up!
    Travis: You fucking bit one of 'em Chris, what was I supposed to do?
  • During Chapter 9, if Ryan shoots Chris and Laura and Travis don't kill each other, we learn that Chris wasn't the first infected werewolf and therefore the curse hasn't been completely broken.
    Laura: So...what now, everyone's back to normal?
    Travis: What? Oh...You think this is over? This isn't over.
• Wham Shot: A possible death in early on. Kaitlyn, Dylan, and Ryan hear strange noises from the woods and Ryan can optionally fire two blind shots into the foliage. As Kaitlyn chides him for firing at nothing, the camera pans down to show Jacob lying dead in the bushes, half of his face blown off.
• Where Are They Now: A montage clearly inspired by this trope plays just before the epilogue/credits, although unlike most examples, it only shows the characters as they are to be found at sunrise the following day.
• Why Don't You Just Shoot Him?: Justified. Breaking the curse of a werewolf upon the victim requires the death of the progenitor werewolf who bit them with a Silver Bullet, but only on the night of the full moon, where the werewolf's curse is active and they're transformed into their monstrous forms, and at their most deadliest. Despite being aware of the location of the Alpha werewolf Silas' nest, Travis can only try to trap and kill him when he's at his most dangerous, rather than sneaking up and shooting him in human form in the daylight, as he is always active and roaming the woods during the Full Moon. Likewise, breaking the curse on Chris and Kaylee would require just killing Caleb with Silver, but since the family don't want to sacrifice one of their own, they instead go for the risker option of restraining the three of them infected with lycanthropy on the night of the Full Moon, whilst the rest of them try to track down the older, stronger and more dangerous Alpha werewolf to cure all of them at once.
• World of Snark: Anytime the camp counselors are together interacting with each other, their dialogue is heavily sarcastic and jocular. This is noticeably absent to a degree whenever they're alone.
• Writers Cannot Do Math: Chris refers to his children Caleb and Kaylee as "teenagers" when discussing their career plans with Ryan while making small-talk, and Dylan refers to them as "weird kids", likewise implying they're younger than the 18-to-20-year-old counselors. But according to the family tree you can find in the Hackett house, they would be respectively 26 and 22 years old in 2021 when the game takes place.
• Zombie Infectee: Nick gets bitten by a werewolf early in the story and transforms about halfway through. Uniquely it is entirely possible for everyone to get infected at one point, though Ryan and Laura won't survive the night infected, and Abigail will always be cured prior to showing symptoms (as her attacker is the only werewolf killed regardless of player choice). Chris, Caleb, and Kaylee are also infected and have been for years.

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