PC User Reviews

Not much ****. You have 10.5 minutes to click on one image in each of about 80 sets of three images each. Once you've done that, it tells you what types of images you clicked on. That's it, nothing more.

Retention has a very interesting idea behind it but executes it poorly. The gameplay basically consists of going back in time and choosing one of three pictures for each block of memory, and hell knows if you got any of them right, it's literally impossible to tell which one is the correct one. And at the end of the game (for me literally 10 minutes after I started), depending on which pictures you randomly chose, there are multiple endings, the one I got said that the guy who you're trying to recover his memories for would have permanent memory loss for the rest of his life; I didn't help him. How was I supposed to know which ones to pick? But after playing it a few times it gives multiple endings each time you complete it, and I'm not sure which ones I actually got and which ones are sneak peaks at the other endings. It's a very confusing ending screen and doesn't really wrap anything up like a game's climax should. There's very little feedback, when you select a picture it will expand it and show you the full snapshot and give you a one-sentence explanation of how he remembered it. Though more often than not the description doesn't even make sense, and sure everybody thinks, remembers and associates things differently, but some of the descriptions basically have nothing to do with the pictures. I'm not entirely sure if this game is even complete, it feels very "early-access" to me, as if some stuff was left out. It runs 10 minutes, or a full half hour if you play through it three times, which you will have to do if you want to see all of the pictures and erroneous descriptions. Though it only costs $0.99 and I got it 15% off so I suppose I didn't loose much. It reminds me a lot of TRUAMA, minus the obnoxious narration. Do I recommend Retention? No. It's basically a slideshow with very unfitting music, especially when focusing on the feelings it's trying to evoke. The music doesn't fit the game at all (the second song mostly) but in the very least the game does make you think a little bit about your past and your memories and how dear they really are to you. And if that was the goal of Retention then I suppose it achieved it's goal, albeit in a very flawed way. At least the photography was quite pleasing.