So, theory time! (Potential spoilers as people post)

[Eel]

So, anybody have any theories so far on what the hell is going on or what any of this means?

I'm thinking the little girl is definitly the child from the numbered diary pages and you were also the fella. You probably ran away with her to the house, (although it looks like an apartment complex from the outside in the ending), in the woods and she may or may not have run away or disappeared at some point and you were thus driven mad by her disappearence and your own guilt, especially by the constant searching in the foreboding forest.

Also, definitly a scientist type of some sort. Could you have been involved in the experiments and kidnappings perhaps? Do the asylum like ghosts/guests possibly represent the oppressed town folk or past victums of experiments? Although, since they also seem to represent horrible thoughts you want to forget, could it be your past? Your father (the tall one with the wheel leg) and your grandfather (the shambling ghost with chains and hunchback), who also went mad like you? The house/s itself definitly represents your own mind, so perhaps the setting we see isn't actually real in anyway.

What does the monster represent though? The constant threat of someone invading your home, and snatching away your little girl? You definitly want to keep forgetting something, which does sound like the little girl as you mention you remember a child living and you remember losing something in your nightmares. Perhaps the monster is repression? Self hate and guilt and despair?

Who's the weeper? What do some of the fragments mean?

[LTK]

You can find an additional diary page that reveals the lost child that was hiding inside the blanket was in the writer's imagination all along. The room with the white footprints and handprints on the floor and wall is probably the one that the writer thought the lost child lived in. There's a blanket in the corner.

From the diary pages it seems that the writer has had his own children taken away by the Program, and his sanity has clearly suffered as a result. There is one room with a stool and a barrel knot rope swung over a beam, which indicates he was thinking of hanging himself. Maybe he eventually did?

The weeper might actually be the lost child, because we only start seeing it after we discover the diary. Reading the story probably caused the lodger to see the child in his nightmares.

I don't know what the relation of the lodger to the writer of the diary is. They are clearly different people: the writer lives in a town or city and has (had) a family, the description of the Program evokes oppressive Soviet practices, but the lodger is a scientist, lives in the middle of the woods, in the house that he has lived in since his birth, as his father before him, and his grandfather.

If we stick with the manifesto theory, that is, the assertion that Ice-Pick Lodge built this game according to someone's instructions, then we might interpret this as the description of a disturbed individual's dreams and nightmares (the game itself) resulting from his depression and isolation (described in the diary pages). In real life, he lived in a town where he was constantly in fear of men coming into his home and taking away his children, which eventually did happen. Maybe he was of sound mind before this, but in any case he likely developed depression as well as a form of schizophrenia. People with this disorder tend to sleep badly and experience vivid dreams, so his fear of uninvited guests coming into his home may have manifested itself as the recurring nightmare of having to defend your home every night, and it's not unlikely that this bleeds over into waking, so he starts to obsessively check his house when he's awake as well.

How this fits into being a 'world-ologist' and living in a forest I don't know. Maybe that's part of a whole other interpretation.

[Priest of Syrinx]

Originally posted by LTK:

How this fits into being a 'world-ologist' and living in a forest I don't know. Maybe that's part of a whole other interpretation.

Science has been an excuse for many terrible things people did. Maybe the Lodger was one involved in taking the children rather than one who has lost a child?

[malek86]

Mmh, for some reason, my theory is a lot simpler.

The lodger is just a guy who has lived all his life in a forest, and as a result of depression/loneliness, is starting to see things that aren't there.

The little girl represents nature, as in, the woods he lives in. If he meets her, he sees a "piece of reality", which means he understands that something he thought was a monster or whatever, actually resulted from a completely normal situation (animals making noises, trees in the wind, etc.).

So, if you find these "proofs of nature" enough times, the lodger finally understands that he was being delusional and there's nothing dangerous outside. If he doesn't find them, he eventually believes the monsters are truly real (throughout the whole game, he seems to be swaying between believing in them and not), goes crazy and locks himself in.

As for the diary, it might either be a fictional story written when he was a kid (someone living in a forest with his family alone, likely with no friends, might end up writing something as messed up and disturbing as that) or perhaps not even exist at all. The lodger is clearly kind of out there (notice he says that there are no trees near his house, but there clearly are when you go outside, so he is probably not the most reliable narrator anyway) so he might be imagining those pages too.

I suppose this is kind of a boring theory compared to others, but I kinda like this theory because it would be a bit more easily relatable to myself when I was a kid. I also sometimes happened to think something was wrong, and get uneasy, until I discovered the source of my worries was something perfectly rational.

Well, the cool thing about these open-ended games is that you can interpret them anyway you want.

[Eel]

Exactly! That's the beauty of these games, everyone connects to it personally in some way.

One thing we have to consider, like the above poster mentioned, are the fragments of reality. Weird as they may be, they are still called such for a reason. I've only seen four so far: the one with the horn and tree in the clouds, the one with the girl and various symbols pointing at her face, the one with the three animals with human faces convering/huddled, and the one with the house inside the lodgers head, the head being on this rusty/mechanical pillar along with two other heads with white eyes. What do they mean?

I really like LTK's theory, the lodger is definitly a schizophraniac, and the connection between the game and what it might imply about the supposed doner sounds quite possible.

My friend once worked with a man who had schizophrania, he wasn't a patient or anything as he functioned fine, and she mentioned him talking about going through some of these things, especially in his creepy house, like hearing the door open and close and someone moving/breathing in the house, seeing things at the corner of his eyes, a dominant antagonistic figure of some sort that's always followed/chased him through life. At least he went through quite abit of that before when he was younger but it got better.

[Priest of Syrinx]

During my Art Therapy studies I've seen art made by schizophraniac artists (and amateur artists). Some of those pieces looked exactly like the fragments of reality: deformed faces, human\animal hybrids, eyes (lots of eyes), deformed trees, symbols. Just some food for thought.

[careface]

I think he's the son/grandson of whoever was doing the experiments, most of the science-y stuff in the house could be explained but there was always 3-4 completely empty rooms during my playthrough that almost looks like cells. The girl may have been one of the children he was close to and she's the only thing he remembers clearly, he sees the other ghosts as monstosities because he can't quite remember them, maybe how they look was how they were experimented on. I never saw anything actually detailing what went on.

The only thing I can't make sense of is the forest/leaves that hurt you when you come into contact with them. Maybe he's agoraphobic aswell as schizophrenic.

Either way, it's an interesting game. I'll enjoy reading others thoughts.

[Eel]

Don't die on me yet, I know you people have thoughts!

[driveninhifi]

Perhaps there's no forest at all. Maybe he is the person who wrote the diary and is sitting alone in his apartment wandering inside his own head. (The loading screens make it pretty obvious you are traveling through his head, I think) Maybe the door knocks are more soldiers coming to the complex.

And I thought it was pretty vague as to whether or not there was actually a kid in the blanket. I don't know if it's because of the translation or if it was meant to be unclear. The diary's author says he/she came in to find the blankets strewn around but it doesn't really specify if there's a kid or not, from what I recall. He/she goes for a walk - it could be with the kid or it could mean he/she found the blankets and took them out for a walk and pretended to be talking to a kid. The last page is pretty clear that some leaves were left behind, but not clear on where they came from.

The guests are labeled "fears" on the website, so that's pretty clear. They are figments of his mind he's afraid of. I'd guess the scarecrow is just the fear of the unknown since the "main guest" is actually the girl - he just may not realize it yet. As to why the girl is so creepy looking I have no idea.

[Shabnakh-adyr]

My ideas are a bit reaching here, but I think he's the son of the man who wrote the diary. The Lodger comments that "he stopped seeing me," and I'm wondering if he was the invisible child written about. His comments about hide-and-seek being a way of life add to the idea, since he was probably told often to go hide when there was knocking on the door. I also don't buy the world-ologist thing. It sounds like an excuse the adults came up with to keep him from ever leaving.
The Guests, to me, look like corpses you would find in the woods. Perhaps one day he went exploring and he found where the Program was dumping bodies from failed experiments or something. The girl might've been his best friend. Finding her body, dressed in a hospital gown and tangled in leaves and twigs, would definitely make a huge impact on his sanity.

Or maybe he was kidnapped by the government, and escaped? Or maybe careface has the right idea and it was his own family was assisting the Program.
Either way, something about The Lodger is very childish to me. He tries to act rational, but it's strongly hinted he would play the games in the loading screens, and he even is the one who talks about his encounters with the Guests as a game. He strikes me as abandoned at a young age. The noose might've been for his father, not himself. If he had to bury him, it's just one other way we can make the connection between the woods and death.

I'm still trying to figure out the Doppelganger though. It's definitely an interesting piece to the puzzle. Or maybe not. You can't really tell with this game.

ETA: Found the quote I mentioned :)
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=184674513

[Priest of Syrinx]

Have anybody noticed that the person writing the journal is not sure if the Invisible One is a girl or a boy? What about the Lodger being the Invisible One? Or Lodger and the girl being the same person (guests represent his negative side, while the girl - his positive side and\or his knowledge that he refuses to remember? This way, Breaking the Cycle means that Lodger leaves the prison he built for himself inside his mind and embraces the thruth (the girl). Barricading himself inside his house means he decides to accept his demons and builds a fortress of his lies and delusions.

[Eel]

Oh wow, some very interesiting perspectives indeed! I never thought that the Lodger could have been one of hte children all togather.

[LTK]

Originally posted by juliusz.horst:

Have anybody noticed that the person writing the journal is not sure if the Invisible One is a girl or a boy? What about the Lodger being the Invisible One? Or Lodger and the girl being the same person (guests represent his negative side, while the girl - his positive side and\or his knowledge that he refuses to remember? This way, Breaking the Cycle means that Lodger leaves the prison he built for himself inside his mind and embraces the thruth (the girl). Barricading himself inside his house means he decides to accept his demons and builds a fortress of his lies and delusions.

I rather like that interpretation. The levels where time stands still are supposed to be the ones where the lodger is awake and not dreaming. And although there is banging on the door, no guests ever come into the house. Needless to say, when a giant skeletal monster appeared in the background, towering over the mountains, I was freaked the hell out. How could this be happening when I was supposed to be awake?

The fact that the girl takes the place of the monster once you see enough fragments of reality hints at the possibility that the monster represents some aspect of the lodger's psyche. The change from monster to girl could mean that the lodger's attitude and feelings have changed as a result of catching all these glimpses of reality. He finally realises that there is a world out there, outside of the dying forest and the decrepit house, and that his nightmares are only going to continue if he stays where he is.

It's kind of funny, I had slightly similar feelings when I first saw the girl. I was walking around the forest, looking for the way back to the house and ohmygodohmygod there's a creepy girl standing there and I turned right back and went the other way. A moment later I thought, I've seen all these strange horrors stalking around my house, and now that I'm outside I start running away from a girl? Sometimes a creepy girl is just a girl. Of course, when I tried to go back and find her, she was no longer there. So, um. Maybe she wasn't just a girl.

One thing I still don't really get is why the monster and the girl had to be so freakin' huge.

[driveninhifi]

I read an interview with the lead and he mentioned the house basically being a 'reality' the lodger had constructed for himself. And the knocks/guests are the real world intruding on his fantasy.
As for them being huge - well, if they are going to destroy his nice little fantasy world, then they would be huge, I'd think.

So perhaps the Scarecrow represents a coming time where he can no longer ignore reality. He's scared of this at first, so it's a monster. As he sees more fragments of reality he realizes it's not a monster, but a girl. Dunno.

The diary refers to the Invisible (referring to the kid). The Lodger at one point says the thing he fears the most is "The Invisible" (which is also capitalized). There's also the quote above talking about his father ("He lost me when I was very little. Then he lost his mind. He stopped seeing me"). I'm not sure if he's meant to be the father or the kid though.

If he's not lying/insane and actually was the writer then maybe the girl is the invisible one, she disappeared and has returned.

[bridgeofblues]

Off topic here but how become doublganger?

[Naesh]

My interpretation of what is going on is as follows. This game is about how your brain defends your ego against the horrors of reality. But as always, there are things that come out only when it's dark.

As for whether the government operation was real - i am not sure. We have seen that the Lodger is trying to find a foothold of what is happening to him. But he only manages to find pathetic excuses and lies to comfort himself. To gain the illusion of control, to restore his self-value. The "guests" are coming to play a childrens game.... right....

In the end (in my gameplay) i didn't found out with certainty what happened to the Lodger. Maybe all that was just him going bonkers as a result of total isolation in his cabin for many years. Maybe there was a girl. Maybe there wasn't. I guess that something horrible has happened that's related to a girl and the Lodger couldn't take it.

But as you can see in your own first attempts at the game, or in this forum for example, the lack of information, the loss of control over the situation triggers a defense mechanism.
Everybody is trying rationalize what happened, when it seems to me that we simply don't have enough reliable information to come up with an explanation. For me this "game" is about the self-defense mechanisms of the brain. And that is all.

By the way there are not many games with such strong central theme. It's hard to make a game that it is both horrifying and has this message. I could make it a lot scarier by turning it into an fps like the void was, but then the main message would be lost.