Milk inside a bag of SPAGHETTI

Only played this because my brother gifted it to me. This is completely outside the realm of what I care about in games. I'm not fit to really say anything of substance about it. So, instead I'm gonna use this as a vessel to ramble.

I have a lot of things to say about the state of indie games and there's this new evolution of almost, a 'snapshot' style of game in a sense. Like a piece of art that flies by your social media feed. They kind of defy that cultural necessity for games to be 'products'. We buy a Mario Kart to be the party game our aunts and cousins can get into. We buy a copy of Joe and Mac to get that short thrill ride of beating up big goofy dinosaurs. But these games don't necessarily fit into that mold. It's understandable why they're so increasingly common - easy to make, easy to get people on-board, and most people in our generation don't have time or energy to make something larger or more 'traditional'. And in many ways, because of the budget, uncensored nature of these works, they're much closer to 'arthouse' video games than any Unreal Engine Walking Simulator (tm) will ever be. They are, overall, an 'interesting' case study in video game culture and consumer behavior.

I just, don't care for them beyond being flash in the pan reflections of smaller internet communities.

I guess the core problem I have with them is that they never feel anything more than... facetious? I'd like to make a bold sweeping stroke and say 'pretentious', but that's too mean. It's just, I've seen these dry-ass indie horror games about depression so much and they're virtually indistinguishable, down to the same obsession with shallow 'fourth-wall breaking' and ceaseless other one-dimensional tropes. And I know the 'quirky Earthbound-like' is a dead and tired meme at this point, and it's been unfairly used to throw shade at a lot of games that deserve their praise and cultural investigation. But it's frankly true for so much of the work that spills onto itch.io and steam. Like, I genuinely don't know what to take from any of these experiences other than a 14-year-old adventure time stan looking directly at the camera, painting a red line, saying 'depression exists', then fucking off. If anything, to me, these games are more interesting as a collective than individual pieces, much in the way an art gallery reflects different cornerstones of cultural eras. It's a collective mass of young artists, poets and programmers all finding their own outlets to scream out to the world in a disconnected chorus, 'our generation is hurting'.

So, I don't really have anything to say about Milk inside a bag of milk inside a bag of milk. It was one fucking dollar and likely made in the few slivers of free time the designer had. Trying to get snippy about any one aspect of its design feels akin to irrationally pissing yourself at a single painting in a gallery full of hundreds of other works.

It is neat that it exists.