We sit down with the writer and director of The Quarry, Supermassive Games’ Will Byles, and go through just what it takes to create an interactive horror experience. It’s a fascinating look at creating a game like this, what parts are like making a movie, and what it means to be a classic horror experience where you’re in control.

A snippet.

Shooting The Quarry Was All About Filming Scenes with Real Actors and Creating Both Digital and Real Sets

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“It's kind of weird. On set, we're there, and it’s all motion captured. There’s like a big white set with a grid and there's infrared cameras around and the actors have all the dots on their suits, these little reflective nipple things [laughs]. And there’s a camera on their head and stuff like that. And we do build a set, because it is performance capture, but it’s skeletal. So doors are kind of just the frames of doors with handles so the infrared can go through.

When we capture them, they can see themselves on a TV, in full costume, all lit, all the effects are in there too. There's a fire, it’s roaring, and there's the moonlight coming down, all the trees are there. They can literally see themselves walk around. And I have a special stick that’s basically just a stick with some reflectors on it and on the display it's a light, so I can shine lights around and show them where to look. It’s super bizarre. They all freak out at first, and really just behave like children dancing away in front of the screen like, “look at me”.”

COVID Made an Impact, But You Wouldn’t Notice

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“Usually each one of those things we capture in its entirety with everybody, but here we were having to do it separately because we couldn't have everyone due to COVID. Big scenes, like the fire pit scene, the super awkward fire pit. We split that up and had to shoot that across five different days because we couldn't get all the actors together. When Emma kissed the guy, he wasn't even there. She was like floating in mid air and squatting pretending to kiss. And then he was there doing it on a separate day.”

Our In-Depth Look at The Making Of The Quarry