[SPOILERS] Explanation, Message, Plot (subjective interpretation)

Foreword

In order that you understand my personal logic of interpretation, I would like to tell you briefly some impressions about the both games.

In the beginning, I really disliked the 2nd game, I got even annoyed, as it was supposed to expand and continue the story of the first one and fill the gaps (or at least I had this expectation). Instead, it provoked more opened questions than given answers, plus I really, really dislike it when I can't define the level of depth the game pretends to be:

- "Does moving background is supposed to mean / symbolise something or it's just .. there?"

- "What is this, a developer's photo from his private archive or is it actually connected to the girl or the game plot?"

- "Are those radio tracks just random spoopy ambient or there is something more I can't define?"

etc. etc. yes, classic literature class syndrome. It makes it worse when it's an Indie game because the game logic is rarely seeable and you have no idea how much effort and what ideas were put inside, giving you no clue to dig further or not.

I know most of the people who liked the game connected to it emotionally, maybe they could relate to it in one way or another. Well, I was driven more by curiosity, not gonna lie, and I can't even describe to you how I dislike puzzles and open questions.

And don't even tell me "Everybody will find their own sense in the game and this is what makes it great" - Hell no. First, it makes it horrible for me because I will get lost in interpretations (you will see how far they can come in this guide) and second, if so, then what stands behind the choice of:

- lines

- backgrounds

- music

- actually everything?

Is it supposed to be unorganized and senseless mess and it's your job as a player / reader to organize it it your own way? Why is there a steam description of the game then if you can yourself decide what it is about?

It's the author's job to clearly define the language of communication between them and the reader, and not the reader's job to swim in the ocean of suppositions. The 1st game was much clearer in terms of this language, unlike the 2nd one.

But! Seeing the 2nd game not only as a sequel to the Milk Inside telling us about the girl but as the developer's personal therapy and maybe even a self-dialogue with himself and trying to reach us with his personal stuff helped me to actually give the game the 2nd chance.

Game Files, OSTs And Endings

I did extract some of the game files to have a closer look of them, and didn't regret as I found something I'd totally miss without rotating images or slowing the video sequences.

Files:

In order to access these files (both Milk inside and the Milk outside), you can use a game extractor which can process .rpa files, for example this online one:

https://gameresourcesviewer.ru/tab/rpa-extractor-online

drop the archive.rpa in the extractor, the file is located in:

...steamapps\common\Milk inside a bag of milk inside a bag of milk\game

...steamapps\common\Milk outside a bag of milk outside a bag of milk\game

I recommend keep the game file open to listen to tracks once mentioned, it will be easier than to recall / replay for that scene (do replay the game after this guide though!)

OSTs:

You will also find hidden audio tracks only by accessing the .rpa, these are not available in the official OSTs:

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1593020/Milk_inside_a_bag_of_milk_inside_a_bag_of_milk_Soundtrack/

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1851920/Milk_outside_a_bag_of_milk_outside_a_bag_of_milk_Soundtrack/

I would comment on some track in the guide because they are brilliant keys to understand what's going on.

If somebody has a link for spotify or whatever is now popular and more comfortable to use - please let me know, I don't use any social networks / media services.

Unlock the Endings:

If you didn't unlock all the endings yet and feel totally lost how to, here are some good guides:

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2684970144

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2728910066

I assume you read this guide because you totally didn't get the game.

Milk Inside Vs. Milk Outside

Milk Inside:

The game felt raw and straight-forward with the message, it was also short, more concentrated and fixed about its' topic and environment.

We see the world through the eyes of the girl and experience one single episode from her life

Not really a biggie to undestand and interpret.

Milk Outside:

Second game gave me a strong feeling that the developer put his own fears, concerns, thoughts, vision both in the girl's head and the environment. It's not necessarily only about the girl, I will explain below what made me think so. Only this thought helped me to replay the game again and get rid of the annoyance.

With these two starting points first thing I would like to make a short note on are the games' titles: out is that the "Milk" are thoughts locked inside the head (the bag) in the first game, they are raw, but concentrated, controlled and locked in one simple episode - going to a store and buying milk. The Milk outside represents the thoughts and colors spilled around. These thoughts can be seen by us, readers, they can also be outside the girl's eyes.

Why the title repeats itself? Because somebody likes pyramidal construction of sentences.

Player Figure

The player is just a witness of the girls' thoughts and doesn't really have control. We appear to have choices when she's under some sort of medication. What we can do is to control the flow of her inner-speech - this control is made possible via medication. For us, this medication will also be a door to the girl's choices, and for the girl this door can help her out of the endless loop ("O!" dialogue in the first game, for example.)

She uses self-talk as a "therapy" and a way to answer her own questions, she can "choose" to revive her memories and thoughts or to ignore them.

We as a player can choose to:

extend a thought (" tell me more about it "),

to remind something (" pay for the milk ")

to wake her up / get out of the loop ("story with hamsters, dialogue in a store (1st game) etc.")

or to get to another topic when necessary (" ok, I pretend I understood ")

- all of this are of course her thoughts she'd have normally even without you, your mission (as a medicine) is to direct her by chosing a certain inner dialogue line. In this sense, you bring more structure to her thoughts.

In other words, the choices are defined by the girl but chosen by us.

In the 1st Milk, there are at least 3 hints for the idea that we interact with the heroine with the help of medicine:

Hint No. 1

The game asks you to name yourself, you will see this name later on condition that you failed to help her to buy the milk. I wouldn't call it it Hint unless I played the game in Russian, because in the Russian version of the game the screen says:

The text in Russian says "Type your name (just like on the packet)"

Meaning this [www.google.com] packet. The word can mean " Package ", "Pack" or " Wrapping " in general but in our context it's certainly "Packet"

Hint No. 2

The fail screen saying that <yourname> doesn't help her at all:

meaning the medicine was useless, you won't see the mom scene in which she'd ask you whether the new medicine helped (and you'd answer positively). You'd have to start the game all over again, being less rude and more compassionate to the girl.

Hint No. 3

The moment when she mentions "framework" and removes it - I interpreted as the medicine's effect fading away - she felt too free after that and her voice said to go back. We don't have any control anymore once she enters her appartment.

.. and we won't until she takes the medicine again. Note, that the 2nd game starts exactly when the 1st ends, so it's a straight continuation. We are still able to see her thoughts, but we can't control them. They appear and the only thing we can do is to read them. We can't interfere. The medicine stopped working on her way back (1st game) shortly after the "framework" fell off.

At the same time, she re-enables us to participate in her inner dialogue when she takes pills in front of her mirror in the second game. FIrst she looks at them with disgust but then she uses her imagination so she can take them and "drown in their healing effects" she just invented.

The new medicine she took in the first game, can also be among those she just swallowed. So the player is not exactly the Medicine, we are a consious spark which appears thanks to her taking a medicine. Shortly after this sequence a black screen with "Hey" will appear, clicking on which would mean that we entered the game again.

We still act in the field of her "framework" and fixated on her.

And, of course, she also mentiones that tomorrow she won't take any pills and "we" would ask whether it means "Goodbye", meaning we won't participate anymore and, potentially meaning, the 3rd game won't come out either.

A "problematic" Family

Lets have a closer look at each family member:

-- Mom

Our first encounter with the girl's mom happens in the end of the 1st game.

What we see is a creepy lifeless, symmetrical humanoid face without any wrinke or emotion on it, with empty black eyes. Not the closest possible description of the term "mom" usually used by people lol. In the 2nd game we see an extended version of mom - big formless creature with tentacles - still, doesnt sound nor looks better ..

.. but don't forget that we are only able to see mom with girl's eyes - in both games, and we can't really know what she said in the 2nd game when "a sharp tentacle" pierced the girl's veins.

I really want to emphasize the speech sounds:

in the Milk Inside:

"- Did you bring milk?" / "- Did your new medicine help?" / "- Go to bed."

Neither of those were said in capital letter, there was no screen / text shake, so I assume the girl heard what the mom actually said. Yes, the mom's words were slowed down but I'd put it on the girl's fear: when you are afraid, you take every single syllable with attention, and while you are expecting something bad to happen, especially from this very person standing in front of you, you would listen intensely, so that it appears almost in slow-motion.

Mom's phrases in the Milk Inside are dry, short and straight to the point, they didn't come necessarily to me as super-hostile.

My guesses are:

- She chosen those words because they are easy enough for the girl to be properly processed and understood, so loops like that happened in the store don't occur.

- She, as well, is devastated by her situation: husband commited suicide, daughter - has numerous severe mental illnesses. She doesn't see any way out of it and understands there is no real perspective and possibilities to fix things. She is sick and tired, and has an emotional burnout.

Even psychiatrical professional can develop such type of fatigue, say, if they work on daily basis with the mentally challenged people, they will have to take a leave to preserve their own sanity and restore.

But at least it's the job they've chosen and they can take a leave. Now imagine being a mother of a child with numerous conditions, you can't take a leave, your husbad suicided, you know different types of therapies, hospitals, drugs, other things were tried - all in vain. The girl's mental state seem to be deteriorating or stagnating, in the best case.

The only "leave" you can allow is to put on an emotionless mask just to keep going, because investing emotions and feelings would mean an inevitable mental breakdown crysis.

Unlike some people think, mentally challenged children do understand, realise and can distinguish when somebody cares about them, has interest, they can feel joy, excitement, participation, as well as the opposite of all these.

The mother doesn't show anything, for her own sake, the girl won't realise it, and in the Milk's eyes it's just a monstrous formless "creature" she developed fear for as she can't read her. Unknown = bad, scary.

Milk also mentioned that their family was a "problematic" one.

in the Milk Outside:

She is presented in a most monstrous possible way in the Milk Outside, and her appearance accompanied by a very violent, dark, doomed soundtrack which gave me a feeling that I was hit in the stomach by a sledgehammer.

^ If you ever want to describe unwanted hugs, here is a nice example how

Note that this time her speech box is in caps and shaking, my guess is that that's not what she was actually saying but how the girl was percieving it at those moments.

The Milk-Girl mentiones "Just like last time", meaning this procedure could be a routine, which would also explain this great fear she developed for her mother. Since it's nothing pleasant, shocking, stressful and horrifiyng, and the mother has to do it, no wonder the mother turned out to be a "monster" in the girl's eyes.

"Throws itself in anger .." - could be that she just quickly reacted ("the creature notices it") to the girl's vomit reaction

"..grabbing me by the throat.." - mom held her in a way that she doesn't choke with her vomit

Fever and vomit mentioned in the game are actually common reactions for anaphylactic reaction (= a term for allergy reaction) which happens after a few minutes of exposure.

The "long claw" was:

(most likely) an allergen shot (being part of allergen immunotherapy, a regular procedure)

(not-so-sure) an emergency injection (epipen)

-- Father

Honeslty? I think I totally failed to understand what happened, so I gave up and believed the heroine that he commited suicide.

I doubted because in the 1st game she said "well, at least some of his parts" - what ♥♥♥♥♥♥ parts, he is made from bones and flesh and not porcelain, not that he'd literally fall into pieces once he hit the ground.

I'm aware of the fact, that during a fall, especially from a very high building, your limbs can go off once they have contact with something on your way to the ground, especially with sth thin and metallic, it doesn't even have to be sharp to dismember your body but in Milk's case he'd had to hit many of them to be later called "some of his parts"

As for "the last day at school" story:

She mentions that on their way back " the father bought milk, again "

and that the " mom wasn't at home, again "

"You are annoying" is the name of achivement after finding the firefly in her school backpack. Probably with these words she was pushed in the car.

- I assume, the father was sick of his "retarded" daughter and wanted to end her life by forcing her to drink milk in crazy amounts in her mom's absence. Which either developed an allergy or caused the allergic reactions.

Since he was doing it regularly, the girl's psyche would develop compulsive drinking (she would start drinking milk without any physiological stimuli, uncontrollable)

This compulsive drinking would result in a girl's death sooner or later, assuming she already had an allergy and would look like "she died because she had no idea"

My guess is that on the last day he forced her to drink tons of milk and then jumped out of the window, because he couldn't see any other way out and bear this life anymore.

In the end for everybody it would look like he suicided after he found his daughter dead.

This would also explain the amount of milk packs under her sink and the glitch effect + sound once hovered - something really bad associated with those in her mind. She could also be aware of her negative allergic reaction to milk but since she clearly has an OCD condition, the drinking may have gone out of control.

My other theories were:

- The girl pushed him out of the balcony, while she had a hysteria seizure similar to that on the very last day in "school". Everybody agreed on "suicide".

- Mom pushed him because he mistreated the girl (and the girl saw that or she knows it).

- Mom killed him, dismembered and put some parts in the kitchen.

(that's why she has a feeling there is a deadman in da house)

..and many other ridiculous ones I'm even ashamed to mention.

Again, I decided to believe her, that he jumped out of the window and not to dig further.

What matters is the event and the fact that he is dead, this event had an huge negative impact on the milk girl and her fragile, already damaged mind.

She might hook all of her "problematic" sides she's aware of and consious about to this event, saying that she's like this because she had to experience the death of her father.

-- Milk-Girl

I think it would be a mistake to start analysing the girl's "deviantions" in order to understand her, the point of the game is not to understand the girl through her symptoms. Most obvious condition she has is autism, do we need to name the rest of the diagnoses? I don't really see the point in that unless you have to perform a dry psychoanalysis of a fictional character, in addition to that you'd need a special knowledge in the field, I don't think the game's target audience is supposed to have it.

What you can do, though, is to understand her from any ordinary human point of view:

- she takes her distorted perception of reality as real

- you can see that she's craving for a friend and communication, she feels isolated

- she feels betrayed by somebody

- she is in pain, both physical and psychological

- she is not fully aware of her condition:

- she is sensitive and compassionate (the way she treats milk ("sorry, poor milk!" and fireflies)

- pay attention how in the first game she thinks it all happened because her father suicided - I think she just needed an explanation for her mind, maybe a justification to get rid of the guilt which could possibly appear

- in both games we see that she exaggerates when she talks about time (it took two days for the cashier to finish)

She is also not a reliable narrator and uses phrases she picked up from her other people ("you are being annoying", "paraphrase, normal people don't talk like that!", "act normal")

As for deceases, again, probably several conditions but the most obvious are:

- She's on the spectrum

- She has an OCD (counting steps, avoiding "wrong numbers", rigid rules for placements of objects etc..)

I don't think finding and naming them all matter much.

^ the pullover designates two things (again, I'm not pretending it's the truth but these make sense for me):

1. It's a common prohibition sign telling you what is prohibited to do or shouldn't be here - she bumps into that sign during the "Are we friends?" Ending at the same time when the session with the bot time-outs. She is left alone there, alienated. The sign on the pullover doesnt have the subject of prohibition behind the red line, making her to be the subject, "you are not welcomed here" as a mentally challenged person, and "you don't belong here" / "you shouldn't be here". "Here" means her social environment. This thought is better explained in the "You won't get it" Ending.

I also would like to point out, that Russia sucks in terms of helping, noticing, respecting and providing help to people with conditions, and the environment is often very hostile towards them.

2. It's an empty set. This feels more far-fetched but I still put it here since the sign is 1-to-1 to that on her pullover. Probably meaning that her personality is getting destroyed, trauma after trauma, and she only consists of her fears, hallucinations and fatigue.

or it's just an " 'O!' sucks!" in the end

About The "O!"-Dialogue And The Black Circle.

Remember the 1st game the dialogue with the "Monster" when she also mentioned that the "O" scares her?

The letter reminds her of the circle, and eventhough we shouldn't believe everything she says and sees, I believed her here.

The "O!" from the "monster" in the first game was a more detailed sentence from a stranger which her perception interpreted as "O!", we will also see the proof of that later.

Since she was "rehearsing her speech" for a simple task like buying milk, we can conclude she has serious problems with social communication. If she doesn't hear something she is ready for, (read: the situation will be more complicated that she expected) she will panic. One of the phrases during the 2nd games also proves this point as she says she "starts to panic once there is multiple choice", panic can be "loud", e.g. crying, running away, repeating something obsessively or quiet, in a form of stupor (we see stupor reaction in the "You won't get it" ending)

You probably remember that scene. Same goes for the cashier scene, but the reaction is slightly different, she hears key content of the phrase said by the cashier in an abrupt, cut-off and appearing-to-be-rude form, it scares her but she succeeds in the end (we as a drug, also helped her). The music in the cashier scene is the reversed track from the "O!-monster" scene, btw.

Note: the font size is changing during that episode, supposedly representing the volume / pitch of the conversation, some part of her is able to hear it and respond, or how some would say, "monkey", in the same manner, but the contents of words and the meaning seem not to reach her.

She was trapped in a "loop", caused by social interaction, triggered by a response from a stranger. My guess, that the stranger's first words were "Excuse me, what?", which in further served as a starting point for panic (social anxiety) and as a result (defensive mechanism) - endless loop fixated on this one phrase. We (the medicine) help her to ignite a spark of consiousness during the loop and remind her that she has to do something to get out of it.

If you ever happened to be around mentally challenged children, you could easily read what that scene was supposed to show.. from the child's point.

So, to summarise, the "O!" was nothing else as her interpretation of the phrases told by the stranger, she heard sth else because she panicked in the moment, panic is a negative emotion, so something bad came to her mind and the "O" fits in as it reminds her of the death symbol, which is negative:

Big circle filled with black color personally reminded me a black hole from space, right away.

Note, that nobody really knows how the black holes look like, the images you find would probably be based on calculations or simulations. But this is the image you would probaly find on the web while researching the topic.

You may also fall into existential dread while reading what happens inside a black hole, starting from spaghetti effect and ending with seeing your home universe behind, falling into an infinite nothing and staying there forever without a 0.000000000000000001% chance to get out. (assuming you remain whole and still able to see stuff ofc)

So, what it reminds me of, is a black hole, and if we look metaphorically at this phenomenon, it can also be called death - nothingness, blackness, unrevealed uncertainty, an infinite void - we could also describe death in these words, so she's afraid of the death, the big black circle is the symbol of it.

The Girl's Room

^

Girl's room with highlighted "fireflies" locations, fireflies are memories and associations which have significance and meaning to her (and maybe make what she consists of), at the same time not being necessarily positive:

Pills - she has to take them everyday, something which is hard to separate from her routine, she doesn't like to take them, but knows she has to otherwise "the mother will be angry".

Instructions - containing the dosage and timings, probably written not the first time by the mother as she fails to take them in the right way. In the very beginning we can see how she neglects the instructions.

Laptop - at first, she used to play around with calculator, 3-d modelling (kind of activities which require to concentrate and, even "fixate" on something, especially notable at such young age), later she had not the best experience online, presumably betrayal and stalking - traumatising events for everyone, not to mention for somebody hypersensitive as Milk. Could be a possible cause of paranoia and her constant feeling of somebody's glance on her.

Sketchbook - I didn't get what significance it was, can only assume that her drawings weren't approved because they weren't "normal", that's why she'd avoid it and not because she'd run out of pages.

School backpack - apparently she used to go to school. She also happens to remember her last day which if of a great significance for her (eventhough she tried to pretend it wasn't that important), it's the second time throughout the dilogy when she mentiones her father.

Overall the room is a total mess, even for a teenager, but the mess is an organised chaos for the Milk girl. There is a sink in a child's room which is not really a usual thing to see? Probably to avoid those panic episodes which may happen on her way to other rooms. There is no desk, and there is a sleeping bag instead of a proper bed - my guess because the "soft beds" she "liked" so much in "school" were used to tie down patients to them.

The Instructions for the pills are written with "claws" of her mother, either she can't really read properly or the mother wrote them 1232130th time hoping that this time the daughter would carefully follow them.

The balcony will be accessible upon a special dialogue choice and will trigger a story about an online friend. Once outside, we will see the big black "O" in the sky resembling a gigantic eye with fat red blood vessels.

We see that the house has a donut-like structure, which, tbh, is pretty frustrating, if you are unlucky enough to have your windows facing this inner side of the building.

Radio

^

Locations of radio sets in the room.

Why there are 3 of them? Maybe milk wanted to make something louder than voices in her head or they would start sounding "distorted " for her, she'd call them broken and ask for a new one. Every Radio set will most likely play a distorted music piece or dark ambient - don't forget you are listeting through the girls' ears, so the sounds coming up from radio can have nothing common with reality.

Every radio in the room has a hidden track (a nightmarish monologue) not available in the OST, you can find those by using any .rpa extractor, and 1 track is accessible only via the OST DLC:

Radio 1

audio/radio/radio1/1.ogg --- find in .rpa, a reversed monologueaudio/radio/radio1/2.ogg == radio1_1.mp3

audio/radio/radio1/3.ogg == radio1_2.mp3

audio/radio/radio1/4.ogg == radio1_3.mp3

audio/radio/radio1/5.ogg == radio1_4.mp3

audio/radio/radio1/6.ogg == radio1_5.mp3

audio/radio/radio1/7.ogg == radio1_6.mp3

audio/radio/radio1/8.ogg == radio1_7.mp3

audio/radio/radio1/9.ogg == radio1_8.mp3

audio/radio/radio1/10.og == radio1_9.mp3

audio/radio/radio1/11.ogg == radio1_10.mp3

audio/radio/radio1/12.ogg == radio1_11.mp3

audio/radio/radio1/13.ogg == radio1_12.mp3 - sounds like a poem in Russian

audio/radio/radio1/14.ogg == radio1_13.mp3

audio/radio/radio1/15.ogg == radio1_14.mp3

Radio 2

audio/radio/radio2/1.ogg --- find in .rpa, a reversed monologueaudio/radio/radio2/2.ogg == radio2_1.mp3

audio/radio/radio2/3.ogg == radio2_2.mp3

audio/radio/radio2/4.ogg == radio2_3.mp3

audio/radio/radio2/5.ogg == radio2_4.mp3

audio/radio/radio2/6.ogg == radio2_5.mp3

audio/radio/radio2/7.ogg == radio2_6.mp3

audio/radio/radio2/8.ogg == radio2_7.mp3

audio/radio/radio2/9.ogg == radio2_8.mp3

audio/radio/radio2/10.ogg == radio2_9.mp3

found only in the OST == radio2_10.mp3audio/radio/radio2/12.ogg == radio2_11.mp3

audio/radio/radio2/13.ogg == radio2_12.mp3

^ this nightmare fuel reminds me of очищающий, исцеляющий и благодатный колокольный звон c прямого эфира канала "СПАС" Russian ortodox church bell ringing (the link is not the exact same melody it's just to give you an idea) - I have a bet the developer doesn't like the way it sounds that's why it's not even so much distorted. Even without any effects, I can relate to that as this "music" sounds rather unsettling than "healing and purifying" - the way it's supposed to be or sth. The bass line is genius and adds up great to the rest of the track.

audio/radio/radio2/14.ogg == radio2_13.mp3 - D'n'B spiced up with distorted noise?

audio/radio/radio2/15.ogg == radio2_14.mp3

Radio 3

audio/radio/radio3/1.ogg == radio3_1.mp3

audio/radio/radio3/2.ogg == radio3_2.mp3

audio/radio/radio3/3.ogg == radio3_3.mp3

audio/radio/radio3/4.ogg == radio3_4.mp3

audio/radio/radio3/5.ogg == radio3_5.mp3

audio/radio/radio3/6.ogg --- find in .rpa, a reversed monologueaudio/radio/radio3/7.ogg == radio3_6.mp3

audio/radio/radio3/8.ogg == radio3_7.mp3

audio/radio/radio3/9.ogg == radio3_8.mp3

^ If you understand Russian, you can clearly (well, somewhat, lol) hear "Good evening, comrades" in the very beginning of the track which points us to year before 1991. This addressing used to exist in the USSR and would be considered either comical or outdated nowdays. The track is nothing more than a weather podcast with recognisable music. which tended to be a visit card for a weather podcast back then. What kind of relation the Girl could have to this? I have so no idea but I could think of the developer who put it inside the game because it means something to him.

- So, yeah, one more track which makes me ask myself whether it has any personal significance to developer or somehow indicates us a certain year it was heard by the girls (her childhood? present doesn't fit since there is a laptop in her room - it would be unthinkable to have in the USSR)

audio/radio/radio3/10.ogg == radio3_9.mp3

audio/radio/radio3/11.ogg == radio3_10.mp3

audio/radio/radio3/12.ogg == radio3_11.mp3

audio/radio/radio3/13.ogg == radio3_12.mp3 - sounds like a choir

If you are really interested what is there, let me know, I will leave a section in the end of the guide describing what I heard with an English translation.

Ending: Is Anyone There?

.. was anyone there?

I. B-Side, The Room

"I look around without standing up: there's no furniture, just naked walls, and a single door. I can hear muffled sounds coming from the other side of it."

The very first screen in this scene reminds me of a seclusion (isolation) room in a psychiatrical asylum - this room will have a square-ish form and have no furniture in it, there will also be a door - it has a tiny round window so the docs can check on the patient and go away / see whether it's safe to enter.

These rooms are also called "silence rooms" or "time-out rooms", a "nice" way to shut up someone annoying is to throw them inside this room once you ran out of your helping methods.

I assume this scene happened before the father died as we don't see everything in red-pink tones. (in the Milk Inside she mentiones she started to see in red tones after he died, so I decided to believe her with that one as well).

So for the Milk girl instead of silence and "time-out" the room would provoke fear, panic and isolation - something she would need the least in her condition, which as a result give just another traumatic and devastating experience.

"The room is pretty spacious, but I still can't shake the feeling that I'm trapped inside a suffocating casket. And the faint blue glow that sneaks in through the keyhole only adds to that feeling."

^ the translation into English here wasn't actually exact:

"Комната довольно просторная, но меня не покидает ощущение, будто я нахожусь в тесном гробу. А слабый голубоватый свет, проникающий сквозь дверной глазок, лишь усугубляет это ощущение."

the blue light was coming through a "peephole", not a "keyhole", I tought it could be important because of this background (upsidedowned) somebody is looking through it:

The music you hear in the room would be describe panic, tension, anxiety, irregular, heartbeat, the urge to to go out of the room, pay attention to the abrupt tempo of the track.

She tried desperately to get out, injures herself, and in some moments, the door opens ..

II. A-Side, The field

Once she finally reaches the door, she opens it and finds herself laying in a field. But what does it all mean? In order to understand that, how about we separate these two again and have a closer look at the dialogues and thoughts (many details were omitted, I recommend to replay this episode after reading, so you have a better idea of how to approach this part):

As you can see, this ending shows how she fell into a perpetual nightmare loop. In both parts she is adressing to herself, without understanding, in the first part she desperately trying to reach herself and doesn't understand why that person behind the door doesn't help. In the second part, she is, on the contrary, running from herself. Probably being in an isolation room left another deep trauma.

And again, it's a loop.

The tracks for the both episodes are called " 'side a' and 'side b' " respectively. If you ask me whether this detail has a connotation with Vynil A/B-sides, I don't know.

One more image making me think we talk about an asylum here:

Ending: I Look Down

.. Please, make it stop

I'm 146% certain, the girls re-experiences her hypnotherapy session here.

If you dont know what it is, this type of therapy allows the patient to focus on inner experiences

The therapist will "lead" your mind and keep it focused on something, making you go "deep" into your thoughts to reach a particular memory or experience something again. Normally you 'd be asked to imagine stairs and go down till you reach what you're looking for.

"It was just a matter of time before my short term here will end. My mind will melt and my body will turn to dust."

^

"Short term" = therapy time

"I try to erect a mindblock, but to no avail. My brain is already at the mercy of the supercreature. A moment passes, and I realize that my body doesn't belong to me either anymore. My legs start moving on their own, the only thing I can do is choose the direction. Up, down, or..."

^

"Supercreature" = the therapist who defined the mind vector

It also can be harmful and doesn't fit everybody. Apparently it didn't turn out to be a proper treatment for the girl as she'd had thousand of stairs to go down and she didn't feel relaxed and safe enough to "go down" in the first place. Instead, she was scared to death during the seance.

One more hint could be music for this Episode:

- in OST the titles are named as written here

- in .rpa: see the the files in ../audio/lest/ folder

("lest" stand for a part of Russian word "Stairs", btw):

Step 1.mp3 - Even in the very beginning, at her very first step at this stage we hear that the music is quite unsettling, and she doesn't really feel eager to go down, it doesn't feel like it would help. Noise accompanied with alienating metal sounds, all this wrapped in very low notes changing each other and stretching in odd, warning manner.

Step 5291.mp3 - We still are able to recognize the sounds of the track before with the difference that some sharp, shrieking sounds are now louder and the volume of the bassline increases, the music also shows we are going deeper and approaching a very uncomfortable place.

Step 79365.mp3 - here the doom steps into the mind, she reached something dreadful, all we see on the screen are the phrases from the therapist and, I assume, some background noise which was happening at the moment (Berg's "Wozzeck" on TV, Radio?)

I'm personally aware of 10-steps method, starting with step 1 you should reach the target "place" by the 10th step - the Girl will need.. 79365? Could also indicate how deep her trauma lays. Maybe you know the stair can be longer than 10 steps in this therapy, let me know.

The symmetrical lines and silhouettes reminded me of the Rorschach test, she might have taken it in the past. These are used to examine one's personality basing on the descriptions the testee gives.

I have no idea whether it was an appropriate method to help the Milk Girl in her condition but again, it seems like it didn't and it resulted in adding one more traumatising experience to her mind.

Which, in its' turn, can far-fetch the following point out, that:

a) The help she received wasn't much of a quality, perhaps the therapist was an amateur or lacked qualifications. Could be an amateur home-made "therapist", since we heard some background sounds as well.

b) Parents tried everything they could, including physiotherapy mentioned in the 1st game. These and other endless and fruitless efforts led to father's suicide and the mother's compasion fatigue mask.

Ending: Are We Friends?

.. So that's what friendship is like

We see the girl from 3rd person's perspective, the colors are also there.

Somewhere she found pizzeria's phone number, she reaches it and starts to chat, not realising that the service is automated and not noticing that the pizzeria's answers are absolutely irrelevant.

She's wandering around for hours, without having taken a medicine, and, as a result of the latter, falls into a loop trap during her inner speech.

During this episode we see that she actually knows that she's susceptible to fall into such loop but she can't do anything about it. She says, it would be easier, if there was a door. She "tried to find it" but "it turned out to be a waste of time", she says.

She falls into the same loop 7 times during this episodes, and each time, new thoughts and conclusions will come to her head. A key phrase for the loop start will be similar to "I don't feel particularly good or bad"

^ [ZOOMABLE] Some parts of her inner speech, just to show you what I meant by loops and new thoughts.

Replay the Ending once again, now having this vision and pay attention to the direction and change of her thoughts.

How she starts with thinking that she is a part of the void and her thoughts are her entertainers and how she end up saying that the world may not be so empty, she is whole and separate, and she has a lot of thoughts in her head, which don't seem to get enough place.

The scene end with her standing surprised (fell out from the loop) with eyes wide-opened and a mouth half-opened.

The scene stops at the "Prohibition sign". We don't see what exactly is prohibited, we just see the "template", the line which normally covers the subject.

At the same time, session timeout happens as the bot doesn't receive the answers it can process.

Ending: You Wont Get It.

Ok, just a friendly reminder, that everything written in the guide is something I agreed on with myself and I don't pretend that this is the end-truth. All of this is just a theory which fits and makes sense to me.

To the "You won't get it" Ending:

Have you ever heard of a therapy method to work on your traumatising experiences when you imagine you go to your past self, take your hand, and lead away from that situation? Not sure what's the term of it, but it could be psychodrama (drama in a sense of "play", "film", "pretend"). You can either do it alone or with a therapist. There are different tricks you can apply there such as mirroring and role reversal.

I think this episode was supposed to be a session with a therapist, featuring mirroring technique when you go back to a particular event you want to work on, and take a 3rd person role. You will also be asked to act / describe what you see.

So, the session will be set by the therapist, they will assign the roles and explain the plot, it could look like this :

Therapist: "Let's say, I will be just a boy who needs to go to a store and buy some milk. You will help me with that. I will be waiting for you in the park. And you will describe what happens later, ok?"

Milk: "Ok!"

Now basing on this theory let's have a look at the episode again:

Here is the thing: it can be that if you ask an autistic child to imagine something in front of them, say, a flying pikachu, they will say "but I don't see it!". You repeat "Yeah, that's aiight, just imagine it, use your imagination!", they will still reply "but I still don't see it!".

-- or, "Pretend you are a turtle! - "But I am not! I am not!" - you really may get this.

-- or, one more example from the first game: when we ask her to cancel her last step and say "ugh, ok from the beginning: Step one - take a step back (...)" she would say "Wait how is this step one? It's the step fifty-second!"

^ tbh, I think a great job was done there to describe what can really happen once talked to somebody on the spectrum

Like, they will take it black and white and straight-forward or logical, if you want, they don't have a flexibility in this sense.

So the Milk-Girl, eventhough she was given these infos a couple of seconds ago and agree to play the game, will suddenly drop "Who are you?". Even though she is supposed to know who is the boy. The therapist says "we won't get far away like this", sighs, tries again by saying she's late (immersing in the role) and nods in satisfaction when the girls finally seems to be inside the "game".

Note:

there is no "framework" = no medicine in action

the session took place after her father died because of the colors

etc. etc. if you look at this episode through this prism, it makes more sense (does it?)

What I'd like to point out here is the attitude of the people in the store: neglecting, not attentive and even aggressive, and I'm not only talking about cashier who asks to pay a fee for our "retarded" son, the very first encounter with the stranger's words "Is he yours?", "If he's yours please put him away from me" - shows that it wasn't a place to seek compassion or understanding:

He would also not try to talk or comfort the child, or at least address to him first, instead he would get disgusted by having to participate in such a disgusting (for him) episode.

The people will nod in agreement - nodody understand what's actually going on because seeing a "crazy" person is not something you want to deal with when you do your buying chores, moreover, can't say for other countries but in Russia people with conditions are stigmatized and avoided because they're considered mad psychos who have to be isolated.

The boy smiles in the middle of the cashier scene because of the tautology he finds funny:

[...]

- And the waiting fee!

- W-what?

- You heard me.

- I did, but that's unheard of!

-Treska starts giggling all of a sudden.

Russian:

[...]

- И издержку за ожидание!

- Ч-что?

- Вы слышали.

- Я-то слышала, но это же неслыханно!

- Вдруг Треска начинает хихикать.

Once they leave the store, they walk silently for a while until Treska breaks the silence with a question about the icecream.

^ Screenshot from the first game where we get to know interesting details about proportions of air, water and milk for a cubical cm, and as a bonus how the way back from the store looks like for the girl.

Back to the 2nd game: Once one of the charactes says that they don't like icecream, Treska seems somewhat sad, then runs away, saying that we didn't seem to help him. Maybe he actually wanted to talk more and we weren't interested, just like in the Milk Inside, the game would terminate once you've given enough of wrong answers.

It seems like the therapy didn't help?

Ending: Everything Is Fine

Don't you see?

I'm certain we see another trauma here connected to her school.

First things first, I'd like to point out the following:

Eventhough she says "It doesn't define you at all", I think it's not her words, it could be the words of her parents after she told them about her worries. She picked up that phrase and tries to calm herself down with it, replaying this dialogue inside her head.

"It's not that I care too much" - she did care. She thought her face is "stupid" from the very first day.

Not to mention her mental state when she was anxious and thinking that it was her first day at school every day.

Now the meaning of the images: what she sees in the mirror is her image she picked up from other's words. Presumably from her classmates, you know how cruel and insensitive children can be once it comes to bullying.

So the way she looked like (what she saw as her reflection) was defined by others, and, since, she is a very sensitive child with a fragile personality, she believed the cruel words and associated herself with them. Due to her autism, she wouldn't know how to react and would probably allow this to continue but with each day her mental state has become worse and worse, which you can hear through the music.

The exception is the 10th day when she decides she doesn't have any face which is logical enough for her to be able to ignore provocations, but, as we all know, children also lose interest when there is no "proper", alive reaction to their actions, especially bullies who expect the victim to react in a certain way. In the end, her classmates or whoever were surrounding her, lost interest and started to ignore her (turned away face on the last day).

In the below images I gave crude examples of what she could hear, so you can get my point better:

Morning 1

Goodmorning1.mp3 - We can clearly hear the motif, rythm and the structure of the track. Uprising notes, coming up and down represent the anticipation.

Morning 2

Goodmorning2.mp3 - The track sounds slower and somewhat weird, it sounds wrong as the motif and the mood the motif represents, chosen fits more to a higher bpm rate. This variant, on the contrary, already sounds somewhat wrong.

Morning 3

Goodmorning3.mp3 - The track keeps going lower on pitch and also keeps getting slower.

Morning 4

Goodmorning4.mp3 - Together with further slowing and lowering, background noise and distortion appears

Morning 5

Goodmorning5.mp3 - Distortion seem to be louder than the main motif now

Morning 6

Goodmorning6.mp3 - Some alien-like synth sounds and non-consistent bass lines come into play

Morning 7

Goodmorning7.mp3 - You probably wouldn't be able to correctly reproduce the original motif of the track if you didn't hear it in the beginning

Morning 8

Goodmorning8.mp3 - not only it's extremely slowed down, you can now hear sharp guitar shrieks, piercing your ears, reminds less of a music but rather an ambient piece

Morning 9

Goodmorning9.mp3 - total noise with hardly heard shards of something left from the original sound

Morning 10

Goodmorning1.mp3 - We hear the track from the 1st day. The "problem" seems to be solved.

Morning 11

Goodmorning10.mp3 - total noisy mess, everything is distorted, even the noise, original melody changed so much that it sounds evil now, if you actually are able to hear it again

The title "Everything is fine" is also indicating how neglected she was by the adults, she clearly needed more attention and a better treatment to help her go through such difficulties. Nobody noticed that, everything was "fine".

Not pretending it's the truth, but the bullying topic does make sense to me. Yet another trauma for the poor thing and a nightmare to wake from.

Game's Message And Topic

I think this game is an audio-visual messenger showing us the horrors of mental illness and how doomed and stigmatized the people who have these problems can be.

I'm really glad this game is not romantising attention-seeking self-diagnosed teens who feel "depressed" and "desperate", living in their parents' appartment located in some 1st world country, and thinking they have zero perspectives or hope.

Don't get me wrong: I know you can feel depressed in your penthouse having a couple million on your bank account as well, this doesn't cancel your "right" to be depressed or sth, that's not the point.

I appreciate this game for an attempt to raise sympathy towards the girl who'd be called "hard", "annoying", "retarded", "imbecile" and "sick" by some who can't even imagine what she and her mother has to go through on daily basis, not even mentionning that she's still a human being.

It lets you inside the room of this exhausted, tortured, devastated person, maybe to take a lillte glance at what's happening in her head and how she sees the world with her eyes, what can worry her, reminding it's also a person, just like you, but in case with Milk - different in her own, unfortunately, dreadful and horrifying way.

Updates:

Keeping track of future guide updates here, should there be any

Source: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2742656234					

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