Our nameless protagonist in Who’s at the door is trapped in their apartment, ordered by the doctor to take medication for the next eight days to complete the treatment plan. But when you can’t be sure if it’s a real person or a hallucination bringing you your medicine, how are you supposed to start feeling better?
Thankfully, we know what to look out for. This anomaly hunting game focuses on two types of hallucinations: anomalies that don’t disappear and others that chase us.
Reminiscent of I’m on Observation Duty, The Exit 8, and BrokenLore: DON’T WATCH; Who’s at the door blends psychological horror with the supernatural as hallucinations plague your mind, blurring the line between dream and reality. But what exactly is real, and who can you truly trust if your own mind is playing tricks on you?
Who’s at the door? full story, explained
The first and second days fly by, acting as the tutorial to explain what you’re supposed to do. Day one sees the protagonist go to the front door and accept the medicine from the female visitor with bulbous facial features. Her appearance is distorted and uncanny, perhaps an exaggerated interpretation of cosmetic surgery. It’s a wonder whether this character is a hallucination or the protagonist’s warped view of this woman. When you first start the game Who’s at the door officially begins day three, where you need to determine whether there’s an anomaly present before you open the door. It’s easy to get distracted by anomaly hunting, but you also need to keep an eye out for doll pieces as they’re key to progressing through the loops.
Progress will reset if you fail to take your pills or incorrectly open the door when there’s an anomaly present. Anomalies can then appear from the first day as you’re no longer safe. Three types of visitors can come to the door. Their cartoonish sketches are scratched into the table of the room you always start in, a reminder so the protagonist won’t forget.
Lore can be picked up around your apartment, but the protagonist can’t make much sense of it. They’re fractured memories that are incomplete. Each doll piece offers a glimpse into the past—your past. Completing a doll by finding its head, torso, and legs will give you the full picture, thus completing one loop of a character’s backstory.
Figuring out the past
There’s a Sunshine Clinic employee card of the Director, the protagonist recognizes the name, but doesn’t remember who he is. Everything surrounding him acts as a reminder, yet taking the pills only breaks him further. There’s a clear link between the protagonist and the Korean Hospital Director, as there’s a picture of a doctor in a lab coat and with a stethoscope around his neck, alongside an older image of a young Bori and Ms. Gomu. But the final picture frame is faced down.
Like a scene out of P.T., a newscaster anomaly plays, which broadcasts a breaking news story about a triple homicide at Gyeonggi Province. Medical equipment was found on the scene, yet another link back to the protagonist, the employee card, and apartment pictures. Is this pointing to the three visitors at the door being the homicide victims?
You try to leave the apartment complex but fail when day nine is reached. Something hits you in the back of the head, and you’re forced to start again, this time with a far darker interior.
Bori’s story
The story we’re being told is as follows: A man met a woman called Bori, or more accurately, saw a woman perform in a bar and became captivated by her beauty. Determined to get close to her, he started following her. Bori grew scared of her stalker, but wrongfully chose to confide in the man, unaware that he’s actually the perpetrator. He offered for her to stay over for the night, and she reluctantly accepted. He then experimented on the woman to see what was underneath her “beautiful surface,” resulting in a disfigured face.
Takgu’s story
Takgu was supposedly the man who was stalking Bori, thinking she was his missing daughter. The physician offered Takgu a (presumably free) hair transplant. Takgu had become an alcoholic from the guilt of losing his daughter, who was then preyed upon by the physician. The surgery saw Takgu get an unorthodox hair transplant, where hair was sewn directly into the roof of his mouth. Is this his twisted way of reuniting a father with his lost daughter?
Ms. Gomu
The final story to tell was Ms. Gomu, the woman in the photograph pictured with Bori. She was an orphanage teacher who joined a cult for financial aid. Her husband filed for bankruptcy, and her son couldn’t go to college, likely because the family couldn’t afford tuition. Desperate, she joined the cult to help support her family. Ms. Gomu is tricked by the physician who lured her into a ritualistic surgery under the false pretence that Bori was sick.
Who are the visitors?
The woman with large features is Bori, the smiling woman is Ms. Gomu, and the man with hair coming out of his mouth is Takgu. Every time you successfully reach eight days and complete the doll on the ninth, you finish the story of one of the three victims. But why is he being haunted by them?
Who’s at the door? ending, explained
While you could interpret multiple endings are present in Who’s at the door, this game only really has one conclusion. Every time you try to escape at the end of the loop, you repeat eight days once again until your “treatment” has concluded. This isn’t actually a loop, but it is tricking the protagonist into thinking it is. The loops instead act as key moments in the game that reset your progress but push along the narrative as you hunt for a new doll, collecting pieces of the lore to discover what happened to the next victim.
Learning the story of all three victims and that the antagonist wasn’t so much a serial killer, but a psychotic doctor who abused his position and used it to destroy the lives of multiple people. Something he didn’t think about, however, was that the victims were connected and wanted revenge.
This wouldn’t be an indie horror without the reveal that we are the villain, Mr. Kim. We were playing as the physician all along. But rather than being haunted by our past actions, the victims were our consequence. The victims literally gave him “a taste of his own medicine.” He was given the same procedures he conducted on Bori, Ms. Gomu, and Takgu. Now living in a state of permanent confusion, unaware of what’s real and fiction, we’re forced to spend the rest of our days alone in an endless cycle. The final news broadcast reveals that the suspect went missing, a well-deserved fate for his wicked crimes.
Mr. Kim has been spending the same final eight days of his treatment on a loop, likely until the day he dies, for that is his punishment.
