Perhaps one of the most devastating conditions that is difficult to overcome in the 21st century is loneliness. Even if we are constantly surrounded by people: our loved ones, friends, acquaintances, we can still periodically be overwhelmed by a wave of loss in this world, an understatement of our own importance. The feeling that no one wants to understand or even listen to your feelings. This is a heavy, gnawing feeling that is difficult to cope with, especially alone.
But it’s much more difficult for people with clinically confirmed mental disorders. And it doesn’t matter what their diagnosis is: depression or anxiety disorder – they feel ordinary worries and fears several times stronger. You need to deal with this yourself, but you’re afraid to go to the store for groceries. The thought of taking medication makes you feel nauseous, although you know that if you miss it once, something even worse will happen.
These people have an almost completely broken connection with reality; they do not feel part of this world and society. It often seems to them that they exist somewhere completely outside of space and time. This is becoming commonplace.
And going through a game in which so much despair, loneliness and resignation with the situation is concentrated that the heart becomes heavy, and in the head instead of analyzing events there is only an impregnable empty fog, the player is to some extent overwhelmed by a feeling of emptiness. The heroine does not try to fight, she knows that she is weak and will die one day anyway. The peak of her perseverance and work on herself is an independent walk to the store, taking medications, even if she is already sick of them, as well as honesty with us and herself when we hear the story of her, her fears, experiences and delusional hallucinations.
Today we will see the most ordinary everyday events and things through the eyes of a person with his own understanding of the world and norms.
"Milk Inside a Bag of Milk Inside a Bag of Milk" – a short visual novel in the genre of psychological horror, created by our compatriot Nikita Kryukov and released August 26, 2020. The game stands out for its visual style with glitch effects and very large pixels, turning the image into a blood red mess. The oppressive, monotonous, dark ambient coupled with a surreal and not always understandable plot makes the game interesting in its own way. Yes, it is too short and there are more questions than clear answers, but at the same time it remains very aesthetic, conveying the thoughts and feelings of the author.
December 26, 2021 a continuation of the game is coming out from Kryukov in an updated shell and with a deeper plot. In the sequel, the duration of the passage has been increased, and a quest mode has also been added, where you can get to know the heroine and her condition better through personal belongings.
Both games, it seems to me, deserve attention at least for the pleasant text, and this is a very important part of the visual novel. Lots of beautiful descriptions, metaphors, reasoning, comparisons. Kryukov developed the game himself, and the text part turned out best for him, along with other advantages of his work.
Game structure
Let’s start with the first part, and then smoothly move on to the description of the second. So, it all starts with a request on the screen: "Help me buy milk!»
This is a call for help from the main character, and the player himself is her voice of reason or just an imaginary friend. She actively talks to us, asks questions and asks us not to remain silent. At the same time, you can behave either more friendly or not very friendly, assuring the girl of her worthlessness. However, this will not change much, the game will simply start again, and you will have a quick ending.
The game does not reveal the name or age of the heroine. Only as the player progresses does he realize that the girl is very sick, her mental health is severely damaged. A set of social phobia, prolonged deep depression, isolation, obsessive delusions and hallucinations poisons her life. Even a simple trip to the store can make you cry. So you need to carefully repeat one single phrase so as not to make a mistake and not have another panic attack.
The player’s task will be to keep a shy girl company while she buys milk. In general, that’s all. As the story progresses, the girl will share the reasons for her psychosis and will desperately try to explain her eccentric thoughts to the player, looking for support and understanding in her own invented voice.
We see the city and its inhabitants https://bingoloftcasino.co.uk/login/ only in red blurry colors and unnatural shapes. Some creatures cannot speak, some the girl herself does not understand. This only further shows how disconnected she is from reality, we only see hallucinations and cannot appreciate the real world.
The game ends when the girl returns home safely with a carton of milk. But you understand that everything will not end well for her. Conquering your fear people is nothing compared to the problems deep inside. She doesn’t feel any joy from a little success or anything. Only as a new loop of horrors and doubts begins again with a new day. After passing through, it’s as if there’s a hole left in the chest. And not only because of such shortness and such a simple linear plot. Rather, from a strong descriptive part, from the story itself, which the author presented interestingly and emotionally. You are left confused with your questions in the game, having received only vague hints.
"Milk 2"
The updated sequel attracts much more attention not only with a new visual style using beautiful pixel art, but also with a longer plot. If completing the first part with all the endings will take you 20 minutes, then this one will take a little more than 2 hours. The continuation will show new sides of the heroine and will more closely introduce the player to her abnormal world, as well as what happened to the girl in our usual reality. Trauma upon injury, to put it more clearly. And each of them was deeply imprinted on him, forcing him to go through his personal hell every day.
On his Discord server, Nikita Kryukov lets you know a little more about heroin. Her name is Milk-chan, she is 24 years old, did not graduate from school due to her deteriorating mental state. For the same reason I didn’t get it anywhere, it doesn’t work. Lives with his mother in a small apartment, almost never leaving his room. Takes numerous medications and talks a lot about life, death, and more everyday things. For example, how a person’s life and his interactions with society are similar to the state of milk inside and outside the bag? Answers to such questions can only be given by Milk-chan herself.
The game seems to continue our adventures with the heroine, only now the scene of action is her room, cluttered with various personal belongings. There are more dialogues about more everyday things and girl problems. We see how she is terrified of taking her medications, although without them it could get even worse.
How he can’t fall asleep and tries to collect his thoughts, but they scatter all over the room like nimble fireflies. Here is a new task for the player and an element of the quest – to look at every object in search of the girl’s thoughts. In the process, you can learn a little new information both about herself and about the reasons for her precarious mental state.
Of course, everything that is happening continues to seem very vague and unclear. Many of the heroine’s arguments don’t make sense, and the incomprehensible endings confuse her even more. But we can say for sure that all these emotional dialogues and dreams are needed in order to show the player his soul. Don’t try to cure her, help her, give her the right advice, save her and pull her out of depression. The heroine doesn’t even ask for it herself.
She just wants to be close to her, just talk and listen. She just needs to know what still exists. It is not necessary to understand the girl’s state and her thoughts. It is important to simply feel the situation, to feel this difficult moment of loss, hopelessness and acceptance. And then the girl will be happy to some extent.
Gameplay
The game style of the first part is a classic visual novel, where you need to “flip through” new frames and read the text. There is also a lot of breaking of the fourth wall – the heroine constantly addresses the player directly and seems to understand that she is inside the game. She wants to establish close contact with him in order to more easily experience her condition.
When choosing answer options, you can be either kind and understanding with Milk-chan, or rude and critical of her every action. In the second option, she will simply be disappointed in the player and start all over again. So it’s not clear why it was necessary to introduce a split character archetype at all.
In the second part, everything remained the same except for the addition of a quest, which diversified the game quite well. You need to click on numerous objects, completing the task of the game, and at the same time reading the girl’s comments and stories about your life. In this way, there is a rapprochement with the character, the player is in a more comfortable environment, despite the strange behavior of the main character.
I only advise you to save more often, since both the first and second parts often crashed and I had to skip all the lines again.
Despite the linearity of what is happening, you can choose certain actions that will either lead to the girl having an attack in which she “dies”, or hear a different story about yourself. It turns out that this ultimately affects what kind of dream Milk-chan has at the end of the game. Although they are all filled with the surreal, and after each one she jumps up and starts crying. And everything starts in circles for her.
Visual design
The visual of the first part is more of a mess of blood-red pixels. Vague outlines of city and store locations. We are not shown the main character herself, except perhaps the shape of her eyes in the frame at the very end. A tired, indifferent look clearly tells us about humility and hopelessness.
Despite the unclear style, you can feel the tense emptiness of the world through the eyes of Milk-chan. These blurry silhouettes of buildings made of large pixels, in which you can barely distinguish anything. Before his eyes, everything is constantly distorted, blurred and painted in a oppressive red color, and ordinary people take on an indistinguishable disfigured appearance, whose speech is impossible to understand. Thanks to this visual, the player can better feel the heroine’s world. It’s no wonder that she’s only comfortable with the voice she invented in her own head.
The second part will greet the player with a completely updated, even more bewitching style with new interesting visualization techniques. The first person to rush here is Milk-chan herself – yes, we finally have an idea of what she looks like. Now the game looks more like a visual novel with a classic character sprite in the corner conducting a dialogue with the player.
Milk-chan is a young girl with shoulder-length brown hair and red eyes whose pupils dart almost constantly. At home she prefers to wear a stretched sweatshirt and shorts, and on the street you can see her in a skirt, a shirt with a blouse and a cute beret on her head. An ordinary girl who looks much younger than her age, but is still quite cute.
We can now get a better look at the city, in which we can discern the features of Russian high-rise buildings with very atmospheric entrances and corridors. And night lights and road signs even more strongly attune you to the desired perception. Looks like a Russian anime, especially because of the appearance. And from the first part you can’t say that the game is from a Russian about a man from Russia.
The design change definitely benefited the game. The girl’s room is interestingly shown, soulful camera angles are used and visualization of attacks or emotional thoughts. Not only dreams, but also the ordinary things around us are filled with surrealism and a feeling of fading reality.
Thanks to the fact that the player sees the emotions and state of the heroine in front of him, it constantly becomes easier to sympathize with her. At least there will be a more complete picture of what is happening.
Musical accompaniment
The soundtrack for both parts is very oppressive, mostly uncomfortable, with looped or distorted moments. There are more melancholic compositions presented here, as well as completely unpleasant ones with ear-piercing sound. Such dark ambient plays well with the psycho-emotional state of the player, often using low-frequency noises and resonances, deliberate damage to sound, and so on. In general, everything is done to the maximum so that the player feels tense along with the heroine.
Although despite this you can find less annoying compositions, designed to show the girl’s everyday routine and rare moments of calm. As if the heroine is not so bad and still has a chance.
These milk fetch adventures are definitely not for everyone. Especially the first part. It is short and surreal, the second is more atmospheric and, in principle, feels like a solid story, although it has no end, it seems to be constantly going on. Everything is cyclical. The player has no specific goal. Neither help the main character, nor draw certain conclusions for yourself. This simply shows the state of a person who does not see a future for himself, he only wants to share his world and feelings.
We can say that these are games for those who are attracted by the theme of mental disorders and various metaphors in the images of hallucinations. The visuals and soundtrack contribute perfectly to this immersion. Even if only for a short time, you can get inspired by the general events that are happening, even without really understanding what the heroine’s reasoning is all about and how it will all end. That’s the beauty of it: there is no clear ending, it can be interpreted in different ways. And this will show, in a sense, the psychological development of different players. There are few specific answers, you can figure everything out on your own. Why does a girl have such a negative attitude towards milk and why round figures scare her so much?? Milk-chan may or may not have an answer.
After completing it, you should lie down and think. Just don’t lose your thoughts like cockroaches or moths. Otherwise look for them all over the room.