Actuality issues a heck of loads right here, however not in the best way I anticipated it to. Actuality is what I imagine I can see, hear, and really feel. It is the dusty laptop computer the place the code-people who die after I flip it off dwell. It is the cockroaches of my thoughts hiding within the air conditioner. It is the monster holding me tightly because it pierces my pores and skin with a single sharp claw. It is the dwelling corpse within the kitchen that’s positively there till it positively is not. It is all of the issues I must not ever, ever, contact.
OK so let’s attempt to easy this pretzel of mes out earlier than it begins getting complicated: There’s me, writing this text. After which there’s additionally me, the character I am taking part in on this introspective visible novel, and me, the voice inside her head. I attempt to uncover the protagonist’s title within the hope of placing a bit of wholesome distance between the 2 of us, however Nikita Kryukov’s Milk Outdoors a Bag of Milk Outdoors a Bag of Milk, sequel to Milk Inside a Bag of Milk Inside a Bag of Milk, is neither that sort nor that silly. I am simply going to need to learn to take care of the 2 different mes the sport’s introduced me with whether or not I prefer it or not.
You do not have to be aware of Milk Inside a Bag of Milk Inside a Bag of Milk to play this sequel, which is suitable for a story that views a agency grip on actuality as one thing that should be beautiful for those who’re fortunate sufficient to have it. Taking part in the primary recreation additionally would not supply any sensible options to the issue my different selves face right here, and so I watch this new me quickly shift from confidently claiming I’ve no want of any me however my lone self to begging voice-me to remain. Once I get an opportunity to answer as voice-me I’m generally given the selection to be supportive, or imply.
Or I am given no selection in any respect—early on in a dialogue with myself I may select between “You’re mendacity,” “You’re mendacity,” and “You’re mendacity,” maybe reflecting how futile it’s to argue with a side of myself.
Breaking these swirling moments of confusion and contradiction are yawning silences. Milk Outdoors a Bag of Milk Outdoors a Bag of Milk is content material to let me stew in my very own thought-juices throughout uncomfortable stretches of calm, leaving me with nothing to do however ponder the newest “foolish” fear dashing by way of my game-self’s head. I’ve to attend for the subsequent busy thought to eat each cell of this different me’s being because the dreamlike background distractingly shifts—these three mes exist in a single room that’s heat and welcoming but additionally liable to dizzying modifications of perspective.
Medication bottles generally loom so giant in screen-me’s ideas they fill my imaginative and prescient, and generally are so irrelevant I could not let you know the place they’re in any respect. Often little shafts of lucidity pierce the dreamlike haze: I attempt to immediate myself, by way of voice-me, to focus, to have one protected, wise thought and comply with it by way of to its conclusion.
But it surely would not work. As a substitute I get a narrative about this different me’s final day of college, recalled at first as if college merely, abruptly ended. Dad. A automobile journey. Residence. Performed. Additional poking and prodding results in the identical occasion retold. I used to be being bodily dragged out the constructing scratching and biting, and never for the primary time. At this level no model of me, together with the one sitting in entrance of the pc, is aware of whether or not that is the way it really performed out or if I am sliding into one other self-destructive cycle of invented actuality, all the higher to align with the private “fact” that I’m bizarre and a relentless drawback to these round me. All I do know is that I can not discuss game-me out of pondering that manner.
A number of endings conclude this quick and visually placing journey, all of which resoundingly deny me my gamer’s reward, the joyful ending I deserve as a result of I dutifully performed till the credit rolled and did the best issues. Irrespective of how onerous I strive or the place I click on there is no such thing as a reckoning with the shadows on this momentary me’s head. There may be solely one other tomorrow and the information that I, with myself’s assist, have one way or the other made it by way of the day.
This lack of solutions or any insulting magical repair for a severe and all-consuming state of being hit my soul with the pressure of a hurricane. There is a pure urge for outsiders to imagine they might help somebody who’s struggling like this, and maybe additionally to surprise in ignorance why the opposite individual cannot simply snap out of their present state. Milk Outdoors a Bag of Milk Outdoors a Bag of Milk, by taking us on such a private journey from the choice viewpoint—the one too usually patted on the pinnacle and informed to take its drugs so it will probably hurry up and get higher—reveals what victory can seem like when each lived second is a battle, and the huge effort it takes to get there.
Protagonist-me is clearly in poor health in a nonspecific manner and has been for a very long time. However despite that she’s attempting so onerous. She nonetheless desires to seek out her manner on the planet, regardless that she’s past drained and takes drugs by the handful. Though everybody within the retailer treats her as an issue.
Though one thing as “easy” as shopping for a bag of milk can actually be a monumental activity.
