Milk Series

Published: 28 Aug 2024
Last updated: 1 Sep 2024

Milk Inside a Bag of Milk Inside a Bag of Milk

Milk Inside a Bag of Milk Inside a Bag of Milk Steam banner

A simple, short and to-the-point VN (20 minutes worth), but a worthy experience at that - with the core backbone being the surreal and highly distorted pixel artstyle, with it all being seeped in a reddish-pink, done in order to portray a world warped by debilitating mental illness. The odd dialogue, off-kilter bleeps ’n’ bloops of music and the simple mundanity of the story that comprise this VN only serve as extra hints at what this girl may be suffering with, but it never explicitly states what. We see that getting milk is one daunting task for this girl, but not exactly why.

The actual visual novel options are rather obvious as an approach, and this game in retrospect looks like a demo/proof-of-concept for the “Milk Outside…” sequel - but this doesn’t at all take away from what is a short, well executed and well presented depiction of mental illness.

Milk Outside a Bag of Milk Outside a Bag of Milk

Milk Outside a Bag of Milk Outside a Bag of Milk Steam banner

If the first game (Milk Inside…) was “inside the box”, helping a girl cope with mental illness and achieve the basic task of getting milk - then Milk Outside… is certainly “outside the box” (hence the name!), instead exploring deeply how said girl is affected by her many mental issues and affectations.

This game both builds on and continues directly on from Milk Inside… with the higher-fidelity visuals, refined soundtrack and the VN formula being augmented with point-and-click sections. The VN itself is just longer, bigger and better and allows great opportunities to be immersed and to deconstruct the warped world that this girl inhabits, done by conversing to her (with VN dialogue options that feels vastly more natural) and helping her getting into a medicine-induced sleep. The dream sequence forms the ending, and what is dreamt up depends on some of the choices you make along the way.

There is a lot of substance presented here behind the surrealism that Milk Inside…. only hinted at, and while I’d struggle to put exactly my thoughts into words reasoning about what is presented and my interpretation of this girl and her situation/what she suffers from - the main strength of this game’s experience is that it offers this opportunity to let the themes sit, to be stewed and mulled over in your mind long after finishing.

Well worth an experience even with a passing interest in psych horror or Visual Novels.