Milk inside a bag of milk inside a bag of milk

I lied, I’m doing one more review this year. Maybe just a short one, because here we have a short visual novel, about 15 minutes long depending on how fast you read. Don’t worry about the game’s store page making it sound like it’s some genre that doesn’t exist, it’s a visual novel and there’s nothing wrong with that.

I also didn’t really know what this one was about going in, but it seems it’s more so about a girl that everyone calls Milk-chan because she has no name, who has some variety of mental illness. Poor thing. The author of the game probably doesn’t know because she says she’d rather not share her diagnoses, though I guess maybe they just didn’t want to stigmatize whatever it is.

It’s hard to review because it sort of feels like the concept of the game is the plot twist? Kind of. I think I’m allowed to say that Milk-chan talks to you, personally, as the player, and then things go from there as she attempts to buy milk from the store. It’s supposed to be a horror game, but I’m not so sure? Maybe I just personally didn’t feel that way. I don’t want to be all like “to me, this is just an ordinary trip to the store”, it’s just that I moreso thought it was an interesting and touching story, and I’m not sure what I’d be scared of. I didn’t feel like Milk-chan was creepy or anything. If anything it was almost relatable, except for the hallucinations.

At some point Milk-chan says she is scared of the letter O, and I typed O on my keyboard just to see if anything would happen, because I am a terrible person. It doesn’t do anything, though. It’s not really the point of this VN to fuck with her, though if you want to you can do that by choosing the obviously wrong dialogue options. So yes, dialogue options. It’s not a kinetic novel, but it might as well be for all intents and purposes. You could say the game over screen is an alternate ending and not a game over screen? If you really wanted.

Maybe that is just another way in which I felt like I experienced this game differently than most others, judging by what I’m reading in Steam reviews. Maybe there are people out there who are like aaa! I don’t know? Should I be mean to her? Obviously not, but like who knows what other people think. There’s also like “wow this is such a sad story because unlike other games it makes you face the harsh reality that she’ll always be living with mental illness” and I’m like ???? Seems like a happy ending to me, I mean like you do get the milk (at this point saying that’s how the game ends isn’t even relevant to your experience so it doesn’t count as me spoiling it), so I think that’s a job well done, and I think that’s just fine and it’s kind of mean to be like “yeah but she’s still schizophrenic though!”, who cares? Life with mental illness is about taking the victories that you can take, and if you can get the milk, and accomplish your goals every day, then that seems positive.

Am I missing the point? Probably. I like to think Milk-chan is plural and you’re a headmate helping her through trauma, or something, but that’s probably not what was intended. But that’s also up to interpretation. Anyway, I thought it was pretty cool. I think for its length, I can give it a 7/10 at most, I want to see more of it and there is a sequel so I will be playing that one.