Bad Milk

The Good
It's an ordinary breakfast on an ordinary day. You take a bite of toast, a sip of coffee. You read the paper. Wait… something there. The paper's date! But the milk… it can't be! You've added Bad Milk to your coffee. Suddenly your world slips away and a cell phone rings. You answer it and are taunted by an anonymous voice, challenging you to solve a series of puzzles—the only way you can restore your world.

Bad Milk is an adventure game that combines interactive short video clips, mazes that rely solely on audio clues, and a giant floating head which is also a combination lock. Both wildly original and disappointingly brief, Bad Milk presents the player with nonlinear game play that would probably be described as hypertextual if it wasn't already posttextual.

The game presents the player with a series of menus: usually three or four icons that spin against a black background. There are several levels of these menus—the player descends to the final puzzle—and one icon takes the player to a new menu while another takes a player back one step. The remaining icons represent "puzzles."

The first puzzle is a video clip of a wall. Experimenting with the mouse allows the player to move a man along the wall up to a table with two switches. Solving this puzzle brings the player to a maze—a black screen with four directional arrows. The player then progresses through this maze by clicking on the directional arrows and listening to the audio responses: a loud "whoompf" as the player crashes into a wall, a ringing phone that grows louder as the player progresses, or simple footsteps. Other puzzles similarly challenge the player's ability to manipulate movies and identify sounds.

Bad Milk is too experimental to successfully ascribe meaning to any of the game's situations or events. At times it feels more like an artistic endeavor than an adventure game, which would explain Dreaming Media's firm $20 price tag even though three years have passed since Bad Milk won the Independent Games Festival's 2002 Seumas McNally Award For Independent Game Of The Year and the Innovation in Audio Award. The game does challenge the player's perceptions and conceptions, leading to a completely unique gaming experience.

The Bad
When Bad Milk begins, it begins. There's no preliminary menu—no options for customization or, more importantly, reloading a saved game. Bad Milk is designed to be completed in one sitting, probably lasting between thirty to sixty minutes. There is only one outcome and, when you arrive at it, you will have seen everything there is to see. If you choose to replay the game, there is no variation from the original play through.

Graphically, the full version of Bad Milk has better resolution than the demo, but there is still a lot of pixilation in the video footage. With audio that's dead on, including appropriate campiness, it's surprising that the graphics aren't as smooth. This is no doubt the result of Flash-like layering, but I felt that it was a shortcoming.

Finally, while this is still a wonderful concept that hasn't aged, it seems like bright designers could create a similar experience using web technology. It isn't the game that feels dated, but the thought that you're paying $20 for single CD-ROM with less than an hour of gaming on it.

The Bottom Line
When I played the demo for Bad Milk, I was thrilled that I was playing something so original. With the briefest of setups, Bad Milk is dropped in your lap and you are expected to figure out what is going on. The game invites exploration and experimentation living up to its claim that "[it] is a surprising new take on the wander-and-wonder game genre."

I wandered through dark hallways, fell through trap doors, and was constantly refreshed by how the game combined unique audio and visuals while challenging my imagination to fill in gaps. I wondered at the technical skill that allowed me to interact with a video clip: marveling that so many variations of a single scene were filmed and then layered, presenting the illusion that my mouse clicks and movements were really controlling on screen events.

I still find it hard to recommend this game at its price. I'm telling myself that I didn't just buy a game, but I'm rewarding innovation. I'm not sure if that helps, but it might help to consider that you are also paying not just for the product, but for the time put into it.

The Good
Bad Milk is...well, you see it's...uh, it's this...this thing. Okay, so it's February 3rd, 2000, and the milk you put in your coffee expired on October 25th, 1999. Wow, smart. And so, you wake up floating in the middle of nowhere and there are a bunch of flat video images floating in front of you. Now, isn't that just the most logical, coherent thing you've ever heard of? No, in fact, it's not. That's what makes the game so much fun.

Apparently, you are told by an ominous voice on the phone which just so happens to be floating in the middle of nowhere that you can escape this place if you're clever. If you're not, muahahahahahaha and all that. Each of the images floating around is an interactive video puzzle. Each puzzle has a unique solution, and many of them are quite entertaining to solve. They are controlled quite ingeniously at times, such as one where you must drag a man across the screen to decipher a message. Depending on where your mouse is, the man will be standing erect, standing slightly lower, crouching, waddling, or squatting. It's a very well implemented and innovative control scheme. The graphical effects also wow in other places. One puzzle has a head which has more or less hair depending on where your mouse is on the y-axis.

The audio is extremely well done, especially in the sequences where you are blinded and have to stumble through the dark. All you see on screen are four arrows which you click to walk in a direction. The sound really pulls through here, letting you get the idea of exactly what is going on around you. One of the more entertaining things you hear is when you appear to stumble through glass windows and break them, and then when you walk forward the glass crunches under your feet. It's no wonder this game won Innovation in Audio at the 2002 Independent Games Festival.

Lastly, the interface is pretty innovative. Different puzzles are inside different...rooms? Yeah, that's the word. Each puzzle is represented by a flat polygon textured with a frame from the video, and a door to a different room is represented by a small circle. When you move the mouse left and right, these rotate around, and when you click, the puzzle or door in front of you is activated.

The Bad
I honestly have to say I really enjoyed myself while playing. That is to say...while playing. The game ends very quickly. I think I finished it in two hours. I enjoyed those two hours enough that I don't feel cheated by the twenty dollar price tag, but still, it should be noted.

Also, if you miss one crucial detail at the end of a puzzle, you have to complete the entire puzzle again to hear it again, which is annoying despite the fact that it extends the play time. I also saw another review that criticized the lack of a save feature, though there isn't really one required. The game world is relatively small and all the puzzles are open from the beginning, so all you need to do is pick up where you left off.

Lastly, the main character sometimes speaks. His voice is really annoying.

The Bottom Line
Gameplay: I really can't find a single thing wrong with the game design. It's pure, pure fun! 1000/1000

Graphics: The minimalistic graphics emphasize the videos, and they do their job with that. The videos themselves are pleasing to look at, but some of them are a little grainy. 980/1000

Sound Effects: The voice acting is very nice, except in the final scene. But the way the acting is used in one puzzle, where playing it backwards reveals a message, is just great. 960/1000

Ambient Sound/Music: The ambient sounds in the darkness puzzles are excellent. I have no criticism at all, they just work so well. 1000/1000

Programming: Bad Milk has no bugs, and the video manipulation is extremely smooth. Quicktime has its advantages. 1000/1000

Originality: I honestly can't think of another game like it. Really, I can't. It's just so different. 1000/1000

Emotional Impact: While it doesn't really need any, the game doensn't have much to tie you into characters or things to care about. Even the character you play isn't so well developed. 800/1000

Story/Presentation: There isn't all that much story in there, but the game does just fine without it, and the little bit that's in there really works. 990/1000

Replay Value: This is where the game falters. 2 hours for 20 dollars. That's about 16 cents a minute. Less than your phone bill, but for a game...no. 400/1000

Personal Slant: Despite the length, Bad Milk is a work of art that needs to be recognized. 1000/1000

OVERALL: 9130/10000