Retention Review

Retention is a game developed by Sometimes You, a company mostly making PC titles that go for a minimalist style in both gameplay and graphical styles. Retention is a mash of Choose your own adventure and “Story Game” which delves into someone’s past with fractured memories that you must piece together.

Story

Retention lacks a lot in the story department, the game begins with a few frames of a man riding his bicycle then telling us how to play the game. You are then dropped straight into it, at memory 85 and being given the choice to move along the film roll to look at all the other 84 picture choices as well as the endings. You choose the memories the man will remember, though only 1 of them will be “correct” and have been something he experienced.

If you leave the game running or simply take too long, after 10minutes and 30 seconds, or 630 heartbeats, the game will end with the man’s memory not being restored. If you try to complete the sequence it won’t take longer than half that time. I’m not too sure on how many endings there may be as there are 4 sides to each one, for how well you did piecing back the memory, how colourful it was and who was beside you in your life.

I spent several playthroughs of this game trying to figure out the correct path, with all left, middle and right side answers, then going for full on companionship and so forth. The correct choices felt very random and not a lot of continuity helped when selecting them. It would have flowed better if there was some form of knowing that a memory was true or not besides the end slate. Though I can see why that wasn’t added due to the nature of the game and how we remember events in our heads.

Gameplay

Again, Retention lacks a lot in this department, you simple press left or right on the arrow keys to move along the slideshow and select between 3 pictures to be the one memory you think to be correct, though this choice has no hint or reason behind it sometimes and can be a game of try and try again. Once you select an image with a left click of the mouse it is locked into the man’s memory and we are given a sort of caption to the photo telling of what is in the photo or the emotion it means to portray.

Along the way the pictures will be shown in Monochrome or full on colour as well as clear one picture or several chaotic pictures which could allude to whether they are correct or not, but not much is given to tell us otherwise. At the end you are given a ”score” for 4 parts of the ending; the first part is if you completed the sequence in time or not, the second is if you selected photos that showed companionship or not, the third depicts how colourful the memories were and the fourth depicts if the memoires were correct.

Overall Thoughts and Feelings

The music in Retention follows in suit with the story and gameplay with its low quality tunes and emptiness of the tracks themselves. Though it’s how they use the music that makes it so much better, the music starts off calm and collected with it becoming slightly darker then very broken up with an out of tune guitar that really shows how the man’s memoires are becoming more and more shattered and unreturnable.

I’ve played many games that were all about the story; I am even one for promoting story over graphics in a debate about games. Retention has only its story to stand up on, going for a deep examination of ones mind, but the way it goes about it is all wrong, it doesn’t pull you in, it doesn’t get you invested in the character of his circumstance and there is no emersion to be felt. The sequence that Retention puts before you feels as if it is better suited to a website or flash game format and not a full on release through Steam.

I give Retention a 1/5, there is little to the game besides clicking a picture and the only replayability is to read the one liners on the different picture choices and seeing how they affect the end cards. The minimalistic style the game is going for was not pulled off correctly and makes the game feel cheap and boring for the most part. Sound design is done somewhat well, though it leaves much to be desired. 5 minute game life and looking at pictures isn’t really something people come to expect from a game, but at less than £5 it isn’t asking much.

Disclaimer:All scores given within our reviews are based on the artist’s personal opinion; this should in no way impede your decision to purchase the game.