YMMV / The Sandman (2014)

• Accidental Aesop: Give yourself a break. Figuratively AND literally. It's okay to be "selfish" and want people to pay attention when you're having problems, and overworking yourself (like Sophie's father and all the Fairies do) is only gonna end up hurting you.
• Nightmare Fuel:
  • The brief Early-Bird Cameo of the Boogie Man.
  • Sophie's fate in the second Bad Ending: trapped as the only one still awake in the eternally slumbering world, unable to wake anyone, start time up again, or even fall asleep herself. Plus, the ending implies the Boogie Man may be coming to visit her...
• Tear Jerker:
  • In the third Bad Ending, Sophie deciding to give up on her humanity and being reborn as a Glimmer.
  • The final Bad Ending, earned in the Sand Man's scenario: See You In Bad Dream. The Sand Man successfully puts Sophie to sleep, just like he wanted... But watches her fight in vain to stay awake, then succumb while crying for somebody to help her. Even the Sand Man can't free her from her nightmare, and cries out of guilt.
  • The entirety of the bonus scenario paints the Sandman a bit more tragically. He seemed to take Sophie rejecting his food a bit more personally than shown in the main game. He seemed saddened by him falling into the hole of the green fire room and when he saw Sophie hiding in the closet from him. Until Dwarf cleared up all the misunderstandings, the Sandman couldn’t understand why Sophie was so afraid of him.
• Unintentionally Unsympathetic: While Sandman's desperate want of getting some sleep himself is understandable, his reasoning is narrow-minded and inconsiderate to a fault. His belief that everybody wants/has to sleep at night completely disregards people working night shifts at their jobs as well as nocturnal animals. Arguably Sandman doesn't even seem to care about animals at all. This makes it considerably harder to forgive his absent-minded-ness.

---