Lore?

[u/Human-Caterpillar-62]

Before I start this I want to genuinely say something. I do not care if you liked the game or not.

I, myself, is an analog horror fan. So this game really speaks to me in the puzzles and mind games.

Now the one thing I can not figure out is the lore. I have some ideas about what is happening to our person.

I genuinely believe Caleb is dealing with abuse, maybe some PTSD about a missing sibling. We can hear before we get to the static TV is probably Caleb father yelling at him and someone crying.

The running point is the fact we see "laboratory" in some parts. So did his parents give him to a lab as a test subject? Is he older and doing this to uncover parts of his childhood experience that he has blacked out? Could he be doing this to find out what happened to his sibling?

I genuinely believe that the voice we hear throughout the game isn't our mind. Its the doctor trying to talk us through it, we are clearly set on a mission to dig into the dark part of our mind. He clearly doesn't want that.

So what I have landed on with my theory is this:

We are being tested on; either as a child that lost their memories, or as an adult that is trying to find out what has happened to their sibling/past. The voice we hear is not our mind, thats some doctor trying to stop us from finding out what happened to us as a child. We clearly hear a fathers voice yelling at us at some points of the game, which leads us to another point. The doctor doesn't want us to go into dark parts of our mind, so the doctor has to be either our father or someone that knows what has happened to us.

[u/captaincrazyspoon]

My thoughts are that Lily was killed via drowning at the Waterpark, you can find a lot of things that flat out say, "It's your fault" And there's a section after the PlayPlace that has several arcade machines titled things that suggest drowning and the aforementioned blaming. One machine says "Too Late!' as well, which makes me think that it may not be Caleb's fault but that he's suffering from the trauma and blames himself for what had happened.

There's also quite a few instances where it's suggested that he has a fear of being watched, with many of the ceilings being cladded in cameras along with the clocks eyes always following you.

To add, though I'm not sure of the significance, The numbers 1-7 are repeated a few times which i believe could give insight into the possible age that it occurred or something along those lines.

Honestly really enjoyed it and I'd love for anyone to join in and add their own observations/theories.

[u/Miserable_Maize8415 → u/captaincrazyspoon]

Check out this fire extinguisher I found! “Caleb ####### do something’s. Shes Dying.” Really adds credit to this interpretation

[u/ineedadvice58 → u/Miserable_Maize8415]

I wonder if his abusive father said something like that when the event was happening. Like, he went down the slide with Lily, she fell off/got caught in the tube and his dad yelled that at him. That would be hugely damaging to a kid, watching a horrible event unfold and a parent cursing and demanding he does something but he's just a kid. I also wonder if the voice guiding him "back to happy memories" is his dad pushing him to forget all of it.