Milk inside a bag of milk inside a bag of milk, made entirely by Nikita Kryukov, is a short visual novel with horror elements. It focuses on a mentally ill girl struggling with agoraphobia as she walks to the store to buy milk. Milk inside of a bag’s narrative breaks down the fourth wall completely, acknowledging its player as a figment of the girl’s imagination - someone she’s created to help her complete this seemingly small task. Someone to perform for in her mind, to try to keep her thoughts in check and focused.
It’s a small, neat story about the difficulties of interacting with the outside world when you’re not doing well. The girl’s perception of reality is heavily skewed; she views the people around her as monsters that are, in her words, ‘probably more scared of her than she is of them’. She speaks often of the endless stream of medications she’s taken in both the past and present to try to help her conditions. The very first time we meet her, she’s rehearsing her script for buying milk for nearly the twentieth time. The girl even exhibits symptoms of OCD; for example, counting her footsteps, getting upset when she walks ‘incorrectly’, and taking a dislike to the letter ‘O’ because of the intrusive thoughts it gives her.
Throughout the game, the player will be given the chance to comment on the girl’s train of thought or outward actions. Sometimes, there’s only one option, simply serving as a way to keep the dialogue flowing. Other times, you’re given two (or more) options - usually to either direct the girl’s thought process and actions, or to senselessly degrade her. However, if you choose to be mean too often, you’ll earn a ‘game over’ accompanied by a small jumpscare where the girl asserts that you’re not helpful to her. You may then restart (and choose to be nicer this time!)
Milk provides a very interesting take on having both a mental illness-focused narrative and an unreliable narrator. It may not be saying anything particularly new or groundbreaking, but the lens through which its story and main character are expressed is enough to make it feel fresh. A huge part of this is because you never once take direct control of the girl herself, instead acting as nothing but a voice in her head the entire game - the player to her visual novel protagonist, as she puts it (a role you’re also filling literally.) The way the girl perceives the world is captivatingly surreal and uncanny, including her largely self-contained interactions.
But Milk’s charm is not only due to good writing, but also beautiful art (and sound direction.) The top half of the screen serves as your view into the girl’s world. Its pixel art is intentionally minimalist, to the point of being near-obfuscated; its color palette is made up entirely of dark red, bright purple, and black. The environments depicted are mundane in their normalcy - a street, a light stop, a store - yet they feel so strange under this presentation. They’re the half-skewed world of someone struggling to separate their mind from reality.
Peppered throughout this seemingly rather normal town are fascinating horror elements which lean much further into the unknown. While at the store, the girl interacts with a few monsters who challenge the bravery she’s drummed up to go out and interact with the world. Yet, easily the most disturbing parts are the imagery revolving around her own home and family during the latter half of the game. But I won’t reveal more than that.
Just like how these visuals merge reality and delusion, the sound design does the same. A detail I found interesting is how Nikita chooses to apply the classic audio ‘babble’ to only select portions of the girl’s inner monologue. Lines meant primarily to describe the girl’s surroundings and actions may also be interspersed with her thoughts on what she’s observing; yet she clearly stays silent while doing so. Conversely, during the meager amount of dialogue she has with characters outside of the player, she’s accompanied by a chiptune ‘babble’. What’s notable is that this ‘babble’, along with quotation marks, are also applied to certain thoughts of hers - but only the ones directly addressed to the player. AKA, the voice in her head. This implies she may be speaking to herself out loud, a common symptom of the sort of hallucinatory mental illness the girl exhibits.
Most environments are accompanied by their own unique music, but the overarching style is droning and repetitive in a uniquely unsettling way. The tracks evolve over the course of the game, drowning out and coming back into focus between scenes. Eventually, when the girl’s medication starts to wear off, the noise is replaced altogether with wind. In stark contrast from the rest of the game, the last few minutes are completely silent.
As you can see, there’s no shortage of thought put into all of Milk’s small details. It manages to tell a captivating story in the span of only 20 minutes, filled to the brim with character and intrigue. There’s a perfect balance of half-explained story threads and vagueness to really engage the player, who can come to their own conclusions about many parts of the narrative. This is one of my favorite flavors of horror worldbuilding - abstract, strange, compelling you to fill in the blanks yourself.
Milk is absolutely worth a play for me. I’d definitely recommend it to anyone who enjoys psychological horror - and possibly also to those who want to try out some new kinds of visual novels. The jumpscares are light and manageable, yet the atmosphere remains consistently thick and creepy. Good writing, great visuals, and equally great sound design combine into a disturbing, unique experience that I loved.


Visuals: 4.5/5
Sound: 4.5/5
Story: 4/5
Gameplay: 2.5/5
Worldbuilding: 4.5/5
Overall Game Score: 4/5

thought i would be more annoyed at the meta elements, but theyre surprisingly affecting in how laser focused they are on the processes of overthinking and dissociation, keeping everything at a safe enough distance to be understood as an abstraction, with the only thing that can bring it crashing down being like...anything that requires something Other then thinking. i yearn for the seeming lack of stakes of navigating the internal world. climactic conversation gives me slight laura palmer feelings....horrific vouyerism subverted into an angelic Being The Only One Who Can Hear And Understand

Definitely epitomizes the gripping anxiety I have whenever I think to myself that I should go out presenting femininely. I once decided to myself to go get some food in a skirt and a wig, and I figured if I could do that for myself, then I could do anything.

What happened was I starved myself all day in my dorm room alone to try and force myself out. As I did so, it almost felt like a million eyes were on me. There were families walking along the sidewalk and it felt like they were judging me, bringing their children in close.

My vision was narrow and tunneled in. I didn't dare look around for fear of catching a monster's eye. As such, every memory that I have of that moment feels covered in a layer of Vaseline. I could barely hear the people at the food place call out my name. While nothing happened to me that entire time, I sure as hell felt like I could've died at any moment. And you know what? I could've. The world can be dangerous sometimes, and I don't blame the protagonist for what she's thinking based on what she went through.

I can't really derive any greater meaning from this game other than it did an amazing job at bringing back those heebie-jeebies that I got from my time in the past. I wish it was a bit longer so it could potentially stick with me better but hey it was only 50 cents for me. I recommend!

um jogo que não dura nem 10 minutos se você fazer as opções certas de uma vez, mas que entrega um produto maravilhoso e reflexivo

Mostra aqui que uma simples tarefa como comprar um leite na vida de alguém com depressão e com transtorno anti social se torna uma aventura desafiadora pra caramba, onde pessoas podem virar monstros na cabeça da protagonista, onde todos parecem te odiar, onde qualquer ação da pessoa é até sufocante pra ela pois a tanto tempo sem sair de seu quarto, o mundo inteiro parece hostil e qualquer ação sua parece que vai ter julgamentos alheios.

seu papel no jogo? uma voz na cabeça dela que é colocada lá por medicamentos, essa voz que simplesmente é uma tentativa de retornar ela gradualmente as rotinas diarias, pois depois de uma leva de episodios traumaticos, ela se fecha pro mundo inteiro vivendo a base de remedios, não só isso, mas a mãe dela no jogo parece ter criado uma personalidade bem possessiva e tóxica, onde claramente podemos ver no diálogo final, que depois do episódio traumatico que sua familia teve, a relação mãe e filha é claramente esquisita.

no geral, sim. é um jogo super curto, mas vi muita gente falando que a protagonista é "irritante" e "insuportavel", mas é pra ser mesmo, é uma personagem toda traumatizada, inclusive no jogo temos opções de dialogo que depreciam a personagem como "você é estupida", "todos te odeiam", fracassada" e afins, nós não estamos la para resolver o problema da personagem, queremos sempre ser o heroi das historias por ai, nesse caso, somos apenas um ombro amigo dentro da propria cabeça dela, tentando fazer ela retonar a uma vida comum, mas com enorme dificuldade, vindo de uma relação tóxica com sua mãe e um evento traumatico envolvendo o seu pai

tem muito amor nesse jogo aqui, gostei muito da experiencia, comprei a sequencia e logo logo jogarei porque quero me aprofundar mais nesse universo de Milk Inside a Bag

9/10, queria que tivesse um dialogo maior na reta final do jogo, queria muito muito mesmo saber mais dos pensamentos dessa personagem, mas tudo bem

No siento que su forma de comentar como estamos interactuando con su mundo y la naturaleza de las novelas visuales sea algo verdaderamente nuevo o incluso que lo que la novela transmite sea algo que conecte del todo conmigo, pero lo que si defenderé de él y es la razón por la que no quiero descartar esta experiencia e invito a otros a experimentarla también es a su protagonista, la cual es una niña a la que acompañaremos a comprar leche, lo que es una tarea fácil para muchos para ella es algo aterrador y muy complejo, en general muchas actividades se le dificultan a ella y poco a poco nos haremos una buena idea de porque ella es como es, esto es lo que me cautivo de esta experiencia, el cómo en tan poco tiempo tuvimos la oportunidad de ver el mundo que solo ella puede ver, incluso si elegimos opciones de dialogo que sean desagradables para ella, terminara enojándose con nosotros al punto que no podremos seguir acompañándola y tendremos que comenzar desde el inicio, si llegamos al final de esta novela ella nos agradecerá por pasar el tiempo con ella y ayudarla en su tarea, eso es algo que verdaderamente se quedo conmigo, sinceramente siento que este juego no funcionaria para nada si durara mas, la belleza que encontré en esta experiencia esta en el poco tiempo que podemos pasar aquí.
Habiendo dicho todo eso recomiendo darle una oportunidad a esta novela, puede que para algunos funcione como para otros no, pero siento que casi todos se podrán llevar algo de aquí, tan diminuto como sea.

Should I even write a review? Milk inside a bag of milk inside a bag of milk will take you, at best 20 minutes to complete, meaning anything I say will inherently emit spoilers.

As someone who isn’t a big fan of VNs, I found myself strangely drawn-into the world crafted by Nikita Kryukov, and it’s really saying something when a short indie title does a better job tackling mental health issues than some of the bigger games I’ve played.

The mucky claret art style works towards the game’s psychedelic nature, though I wish some images were less blurry (the in-game explanations coming across as much like excuses as legitimate rationale). Likewise, I would’ve appreciated a little more SFX despite the writers, again, technically providing a reason for the reliance on music. That said, the tunes Kryukov has assembled here befit his moody product quite well.

There’s honestly not much more I can, or rather should, say - at a $1.00 asking price, you’ll get your surreal experience for sure.

A short and sweet visual novel about schizophrenia, anxiety, and the horror that can be experienced even doing simple tasks like going to the store to purchase milk.
You are one of the voices inside the protagonist's head, and you are struggling through this horrifying world, trying to make sense of everything around you.

The game itself is a pretty straightforward visual novel which can be completed in about 15-20 minutes. The game offers horror elements like spooky character designs, but also some more lighthearted jokes. It's pretty good for what it is, and only costs about a dollar. Definitely worth your time and money.

What is it like to see the world with my eyes?