Theories for the indie RPG TinkerQuarry. Beware of spoilers, marked or unmarked.
Pre-release
Staya will not be the Big Bad.
Because that's what it seems like he's going to be. Since the protagonist is implied to have been a bad person in the past, maybe Staya will turn out to have good qualities too, making this a case of Gray-and-Gray Morality.- Staya having good qualities is confirmed. Whether or not he'll still be the main villain is still unknown.
- Jossed. He is the Big Bad for the whole game, although Clint takes over as the True Final Boss if you have him in your party. And the game has more of a Morality Kitchen Sink.
Peter will turn out to be evil.
In this teaser image
◊, as well as the game's icon, he looks downright sinister, like an Evil Overlooker. It's also strange that he acts somewhat like a grump.If he appears again, Walter will turn out to be evil.
When you get behind the counter at his shop and talk to him, he freaks out and attack you. Maybe he was just startled, but maybe this is a clue that he's hiding something...- Word of God says that he was just startled, and later updates removed the part where he hits you and introduce more shopkeepers (one of which is much more explicitly evil), so this doesn't seem likely.
- Jossed. He never appears again, and he's not evil.
Alternatively, Odette will turn out to be evil.
Her playfully mischievous behavior seems like it could be a front for something darker... When you first meet her, she states that she is annoyed because Staya moved her out into the hallway, yet she's apparently able to move around all on her own. And for that matter, how do we know she actually walks around? What if she actually gets assistance from Staya or the rats? Also, although this is admittedly less likely, she seems to be a Tinker. Although it's made clear that Tinkers are Not Always Evil, Skid's thoughts on Tinkers seem like they're meant to make us distrust Clint. What if he's a Red Herring, and we should be distrusting someone else entirely? Perhaps Odette is actually a spy for Staya.- Jossed. She's a perfectly innocent Save Point the whole way through. Also, Clint really is the one you should distrust.
Between Skid and Whiskers, whichever character you choose not to add to the party will be impaired.
Because whichever character you don't choose ends up staying behind in Havenquarters, which Skid and Whiskers stress over and over is a "safe place" and that no enemies will ever get in. That sure makes it sound like somebody's going to get in.- Jossed. Nothing bad is shown to happen to whichever character you leave behind. However, you beat them almost to Impairment if you're on the bad route, and they later get turned into the Chimera by Staya.
The toys are all the ghosts of people that the protagonist knew.
Maybe the Dollhouse is some sort of purgatory.- Jossed. They are The Girl's toys, having somehow gained "Motion," and the fact that they have Essences instead of a Soul like Adeline proves that they are their own beings, not reincarnations of dead humans.
Every boss will have a name starting with S and ending with A.
So far, we have Staya, Sera, and Stella.- Adding on to this, one of the bosses will be Santa.
- Half jossed with the Chimera in the "bad" route... although it still ends with A.
- Finally jossed with the Rat King, Whiskers and Skid, and Clint.
Clint is the toy soldier.
You know, the one who wasn't moving or speaking because he was missing his windup key? The one who appeared in one room and hasn't been mentioned again since then?- Confirmed.
Adeline is not human.
Going off of the "Dollhouse is purgatory" theory above. The toys mention that she was comatose. She must have died in her sleep and been sent to the Dollhouse as a doll. When talking to Whiskers, he talks about how different she is than how she used to be, saying that she was taller, and there is something else different about her that he'd "rather not say".- Probably not. Peter mentions that Adeline does not have an Essence, implying that she is not a toy. Also, Adeline seems to bleed when hit in battle.
- Jossed. She is human. She may not have an Essence, but she does have a Soul, which is even more special. However, she does have a different Tomato in the Mirror twist...
If Adeline really is human, there will turn out to be other humans in the Dollhouse.
Well, hey, Frisk turned out to be not the only human in the Underground, so why not?- Sorta jossed? Adeline, The Woman, may be the only human in the Dollhouse, but her daughter, The Girl, exists in the void outside the Dollhouse. And obviously, we're not counting humanlike toys like Clint and Odette.
Sera was the one who locked away Clint's wind-up key.
The combination to the dresser that the wind-up key is held in is in Havenquarters, and the dresser itself is in the same area. But Whiskers and Skid state that Clint was their friend, and from what we've seen, there is no reason that either of them would want to impair him. But Sera, who used to live with the two, could have done it, believing it was necessary to do so. She probably did this before running away from Havenquarters - in fact, that might even be the reason she ran away, to prevent Whiskers and Skid from finding out what she did.- Maybe she was suspicious of him, due to being a Tinker like Staya. As Skid and Whiskers say, thanks to Staya, Tinkers have kind of a bad reputation.
- Jossed. Word of God says it was Staya who did it.
Staya is in a "Sorcerer's Apprentice" kind of scenario.
All the enemy toys (and maybe even the mice too)? All created by him. He created them all to serve as his minions (or maybe even just to keep him company while he waited for Adeline) Since they were not made with human hands, they lack the life and personality of the pre-existing toys. Although Staya seems to have them all under control, they may turn against him later.- Mostly jossed. It's implied that he did not create the Lesser Toys. It's unclear, but unlikely, if he created the mice and rats, although they never turn against him.
Alternatively, the enemy toys were mass-produced while the other toys were crafted by hand.
And there will be a moral on Doing It for the Art, which is fitting considering that this is an indie game. And hey, it would explain why the enemy toys of each type are identical.- That moral is not explicitly presented in the game, although there's nothing jossing the idea of the Core Toys being handmade and the Lesser Toys being factory-made.
Someone will try to take Adeline's soul.
In the tutorial, Peter makes a point of saying that, in the Dollhouse, having a soul makes Adeline special. And considering that taking and equipping the Essences of various toys becomes a gameplay mechanic, it seems likely that someone will try to twist it into something even darker.- Almost confirmed. Clint may not want Adeline's soul to absorb its power for himself or anything, but he does try to stitch a new body to put her soul into, so that they can be together forever.
