YMMV / The Dream Machine

• Alternate Character Interpretation: Is Victor really a hero trying to save his family and the rest of the apartment from a mind-eating parasite, or is he a ruthless xenophobe who invades other peoples' homes and minds just to kill an artificial intelligence that desperately wants to survive? The Dream Machine lampshades' Victor's willingness to troll his neighbors and gas them to sleep, along with his willingness to kill babies just to prevent them from growing up with a mental parasite in their heads.
• Awesome Art: The insanely elaborate, gorgeously detailed stop-motion environments are nothing short of stunning to see.
• Awesome Music: The tune that plays during your last dialog with Morton.
• Darkness-Induced Audience Apathy: The game starts out as a relatively mellow mystery, becomes much darker and more disturbing around Chapter 3 and ends with a huge Downer Ending after putting the protagonist and everyone around him through a major Trauma Conga Line. Not to mention the protagonist himself doesn't come out looking his best self in the process.
• Fridge Brilliance: When you make a Bloody Mary for the captain in chapter 3, you have to use your own blood instead of tomato juice. When the drink arrives to the captain, she calls for the bartender, who took credit for your work, presumably in order to promote him, because she liked the drink. Of course, she liked it - the liquids in human body is what the machine lives on!
• Fridge Horror: Look at the things Alicia goes through during all the chapters, but especially chapter 3. Keep in mind that she is pregnant during the whole ordeal. Yikes.
• Older Than They Think: A creator version! According to the game's development blog, it was discovered that the cutting edge practice of keeping track of what players do in game to help streamline it was actually done in 1987 by Sierra in Leisure Suit Larry 1: In the Land of the Lounge Lizards. While disappointed, he still gave props to the man responsible for the idea.
• Nightmare Fuel: The reveal of the third chapter. Victor finds himself in the hold surrounded with dead replicas of himself piled around. The machine has been draining them of their live forces.
  • The appearance the Machine takes on in the various dreams. Large, black, slimy, throbbing tentacles that are literally feeding on the dreams.
  • Let's not forget the horrifying high-pitched shrieks the machine emits when Victor disables one of its tentacles.
  • It happens a lot in the game, so you'll most likely get used to it, but the first foray into the dream of another person is really freaky, what with the static, the image of everything around you distorting and a sound that sounds suspiciously like screaming.
  • Morton's notebook in the fourth chapter implies that he planned to invade the mind of Victor and Alicia's unborn child. In Episode 5, (caution: massive spoiler) this actually happens.
  • Most of Episode 5, but special mention goes to the organ thief, who is exactly what he sounds like, and the damn eyes.
• Squick: When the pixie asks Victor to tickle him, it seems just funny at first, but then the pixie's, uhm, dialogue makes it quite clear that Victor has just been sexually harassed.

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