Retention

This game has already ruined my life, so I'll just eat a spoonful of cinnamon for every like this review gets

https://youtube.com/watch?v=33-5bsbQj-w&pp=ygUaaG93IHNvb24gaXMgbm93IHRoZSBzbWl0aHM%3D

Good and another underrated game. It is short, but allows you to look through the eyes of someone who trying to remember the past. Need to choose one of the three frames and the ending depends on it. Relaxing and interesting experience with nice instrumental music.

There are no words to describe how crappy this "game" is. I won't even bother myself to write a polished, detailed, and well-written review, this "game" does not deserve any effort, any consideration. It's just pure garbage. This thing should never have been produced for the dignity of the concept of videogame. Actually, I consider myself scammed for how bad it is. Even if it were free, it would still be scam. The only reason to play this garbage is if you are getting paid, otherwise it's not worth it, nothing can justify the purchase. Unfortunately, Steam did not grant me refund, so I have the moral obligation to warn you about this fraudulent thing (I refuse to call it a videogame). I do not recommend this "game" to anyone.
Describe this game briefly: Disgraceful, disgusting, deceitful, disappointing, distasteful, delusive, deplorable.
Score: 0/10
P.S. If you have made the error of buying it, I suggest you to play it the bare minimum to receive 3 trading cards and compensate the waste of money.

well, i'm really mad cause of the potential that's wasted here.

retracing back memories is a solid idea indeed. but i cannot find any correlation between most photos between the character and what they may represent. Most of the time i am choosing a photo just randomly. I do sincerely want the creators to remake a game with a similar concept with consistent photos/memories between the main character and game's endings.

Retention is a game made by russian developers / artists,which is about...getting your memorise back!

You fall of your bicycle and memories just came up in your head,and your goal,is to get those back before the times up.
Let's be honest,this is a okay plot,really intresting.

My biggest problem with this game...well,for me it's not feels like a game.You are watching photos and choose 1 of it from a group of 3 photos,and try to get a stable memory,while your time is limited,so you most likely going to click furiously.There are total of 4 endings,however that's not true either,because you can get other variants of endings...what I found out,there are 16 different endings which sound cool actually...but you most likely won't even bother with those,because you will get bored,either confused about this product.

The pictures actually looks okay,there are some really beautiful ones.A big negative point to the windows mode,because you cannot put this game to full screen.

The music was just weird for me,to be honest,I never heard anything like it...I didn't enjoyed it.

I played this game through once in 10 mins,but it felt like half an hour.I like story based games and choices matter games,this kinda like those "tags",but for me,it's just kinda confusing and not understandable.Don't buy it,not even worth it,only if you want relaxing or watch some photos,or get confused by the music...but atleast the steam badge levels for this game looks nice.

Basically a bunch of random pictures, not even a game.
Powerpoint simulator with steam trading cards.

THIS IS NOT ART IT’S TRASH.

Imagine paying a garbage man to collect an extra bin on his rounds through and instead he just dumps it at your feet with the words 'Enjoy' and then drives off. Welcome to Retention...

Here are the garbage collectors... http://www.sometimesyou.com/about_en.html I did not actually know this but it appears that anyone can now invent a game. Yes... even people who have just graduated to the extent of being able to use Instagram can now create games. Oh joy, Facebook the game is just around the corner. Can't wait for the sequel to this game called Flickr.

Anyway let’s begin to sort through this Instagram Trash and see if there is anything good about this game!?

The story is you have to help a complete nutcase who has somehow got himself buried under his bicycle? He requests that you help him regain his memory? He's smart enough to recall three similar images and you have to pick out which one is the right image? Is this guy for real? And you have to keep doing that for 10 minutes and 30 seconds or his brain will explode painting the inside of his skull with multicolours or he will stand up and remember everything???

I'm not sure what message the developer is trying to get across? I assume it's the noble message that your memories are one of the most important thing to you and you should spend time creating good ones and cherish them. If that was his intention then he is a complete and utter cough drop in how he has tried to get that message across. Apparently when our life is on the line we will spend most of time imagining pointless dribble like an old guy who we don’t know sitting on a bench or a grave or a butterfly which he claims in game as a insect that cannot see its own wings. This statement is false butterflies have 360 vision which only further proves that we are helping an idiot. There is only 1 slide of his mum and dad a couple slides of a girl he once knew and about 350 of a feline, in fact he spends most of his time thinking about felines than anything else and I hope for his sake he actually owns a feline. If not, then not only is he an idiot, but he is also creepy, and i hope someone pours concrete over him and uses him as a future speed bump.

The game must be awarded for not making any sense at all, using dull uninspiring photos and picking music that is not fitting in any shape or form. Seriously the music is so odd like it was completely performed by those doing work experience.

There are 8 endings to the game. You’re presented with 1 set of four depending how you finish the game. Why? Who knows, doubt the developer himself knows. There are 4 good endings which are the ones where he just stands up and remembers (that's debateable) and 4 bad endings where he suffers brain damage for the rest of his life (see what I mean these seem like so much better endings). The endings consist of a singular photo with a subtitle and nothing more.

For complete novelty reasons here's a few more endings you could have added Mr Developer but forgot....

He remember he is actually a character in a really bad game and not a real person and that everyone hates him.

Someone rings the ambulance, but because it’s dark the ambulance accidentally runs over him four times.

The feline he remembers, eventually finds his body and has a feast.

Taking his medication for his multiple personalities, the 3 slide delusions eventually fade away.

This game is POINTLESS, MEANINGLESS, and PRETENTIOUS, DRIVEL. DO this world a favour DO NOT BUY. DO NOT GIFT. LEAVE!

Someone else’s funny review below as a sample…

https://youtu.be/vPSUnoZy50k

If you enjoyed reading this review please subscribe to my curator page. Thanks...

http://store.steampowered.com/curator/6843548/

Wow!Just wow.
After reading some negative comments,I purchased the game,thinking that all the negativity is too harsh for such an interesting idea.I really wanted to like the game and put a positive vote.
After playing the game and finishing it in less than 10 minutes with random clicking on meaningless photos,which had no connection,I feel that I have lost some part of my mind.

It would be interesting if it was some kind of psychological test,but the real test here is to see if you have the mentality and strength to finish the game.I haven't,so after a while I started clicking on photos without thinking and i got the lost your memory result,although it felt like lost your mind result.

The only reasons to purchase is the low price,the trading cards and to give support to new,different ideas.

I thought this was a horror game

-Watching 240 pictures, Not a favored passtime
-Wasted 15 minutes of my life
-Wasted 0.99 cents on Google images
-"buried beneath his bicycle.", How does one bury themselves beneath a bicycle

+Good for going afk for 9 hours and getting 4 trading cards

It's at times like theses that I really wish there was a mixed review option.

Where the part of me that thought "It's cheap, give it a chance, despite the awful reviews it had/has" is kicking me for not listening, the other is glad that I did at least give it a go. I believe everything deserves a look see, it's how you find amazing things afterall.

Moving right along, story wise you play as a man who has an accident and has his memory stolen from him, he runs in search of finding out who he is, about his past, the people he knows and his present. Now, at this point it gets a little confusing for me, as it's never explained anywhere if he is stuck under his bike looking through a photo album to regain his memory or if they are just pictures the player chooses to flash before his eyes.

Whilst it does somewhat try to give an opportunity to tell a man by his memories in the form of a photo album that the players personality can cause change to, it really fails to get any kind of story or meaning into it due to lack of depth or explainations, bar one liners on each picture.

Now, don't get me wrong, I do appreciate the idea of giving the player a kind of power to affect what the man will remember by them choosing a picture out of three in a set of 80 that may simply attract them, or one that they connect to. If they're a photographer, maybe one will stand out due to how the photo is put together or something along those lines. I also personally enjoyed some of the art and music in this photo album simulator, but anything more than that, it falls down miserably.

Russian pseudo psych quiz with images. Recommended if you like that sort of thing.

Do you know these psych quizzes you can find online or in magazines? You answer a bunch of questions with a), b) or c), and in the end the answer key tells you what kind of person you are, or what popular series character, etc. Retention is much like that, except you get no questions, instead your life is flashing before eyes, and the answers are images: 80 choices of 3 images each, and in the end your "life" is judged to be retained or forgotten, full of friendship or solitude, colorful or monochrome, and your memory of it is clear or corrupted.

The problems with Retention are numerous:

• The set of 3x80 images is the same for every playthrough.
  
• The game is Russian-made, and it shows in the selection of images.
  
• The English translation seems badly done: the "corrupted memory" ending is called "feculent"? and the image descriptions that pop up on your choices seem badly translated, too
  
• You may have problems running this at low resolutions, or if your Windows dpi setting is not 100%: the image positions and sizes don't work properly in that case.
  
[*]There are no game mechanics beyond picking images and reading your evaluation afterwards, hence all the hateful reviews

Do you enjoy looking through old scrapbooks? Do you wake up and wonder where the money in your wallet disappeared too? Do you ever thing I want to buy a game that really isn't a game.... If you answered yes to these questions, Retention is a great choice for you. For the rest of us, who don't enjoy throwing out money in the trash for no good reason we should avoid Retention..

This game isn't a game at all, in fact the first time I fired up the game I assumed it was one of those choose your own adventure games... It wasn't. I thought maybe all these pictures have some hidden meaning..... they didn't. Surely this game has to have a point.... It doesn't..

What about the gameplay! Surely the game play is unique and that uniqueness will make the game be an experience.... It's the equivalent to doing a google search for random pictures... If you value your sanity, money or your game library... avoid this game at all cost. When you see it sitting there, smiling at you with it's tiny price tag don't be fooled, save the .99 cent and buy some petroleum jelly to give to those of us who did... we need it, we took a real pounding on this one...

A 10 minute game does not /have/ to be awful, but this one deserves that label. There is little to no sense to it. Even with the super low price, Retention is not worth aquiring (let alone retaining).

I would suggest that you save that 67p for an actual game. I bought Retention thinking that it probably isnt an amazing game, but often small, cheap games are enjoyable, and it looks like it would have a nice story behind it. I was so wrong. If there is a plot, I could not see it at all!

This "game", if you can even call it that, involves selecting one of out three pictures, over and over and over again, in order to get a short summary of that picture, which I kind of already understood from just looking at the photograph. I got to the end of the game after about 15 minutes of tedious clicking, and was given a vague ending of some sort that didn't seem to mean anything at all!

Just don't buy this game. it's really not worth your time or money.

Beautifully frames the essence of both Microsoft PowerPoint and the nihilistic existance of office workers everywhere and combines this with the self hatred and loathing by an uninspired emo Instagram worshipping teenager.

10/10 Would recommend

Cons:
No achievements

Pros:
Minutes of playtime filled with dreariness

Retention, hmmm, what can I say, apart from it's not really a game, just a series of images that are supposed to be flitting through an injured cyclists mind as he waits at the site of his accident. Speaking from experience, no imagery passed across my mind at the time of my serious cycling accident apart from images of being run over while I lay in the road and wishing the pulsating pain in my back would go away. That said, I quite enjoyed working through all of the images. It took me a couple of goes to see them all, and I spent quite some time looking at some of the images as I do love photography. The only point if interest I see in this game (apart from the actual value of looking at the images) is seeing which outcome you arrive at once you've worked through the images for the first time. I lost my memory on my first go, lol.

Even though I enjoyed this experience, I wouldn't call it a game nor can I recommend it to my friends or any one else. It was not a waste of money for me (unlike that aweful Lord of the Rings bundle, which was removed from Steam within a day of it going on sale), but I reckon if you must buy this, it is only £0.67p at the time of writing (with 15% off). You, could more or less create something like this yourself using a free slide show program and images taken from the internet.

First off, DONT GET IT, i thought that for the price it cant be that bad, but that was not the case, it was not enjoyable what so ever, all you do is click a bunch of pictures to recover his memory. ITS NOT WORTH IT, trust me if you do buy it you will soon realize you wasted your money. the only thing good about this "game" is that there are a few fappable pictures but nothing worth the price though. Go ahead buy it but youll soon find yourself writing a bad review. i cannot stress this enough very few people if any will enjoy this so one last time, SAVE YOUR MONEY PLZ theres no story exept a guy is buried under his bike and has picture memories.


0.5/8 NOT WORTH IT-IGN

This is one of those rare instances where I wish I had done as the negative reviews had suggested and not bought the game.

Sadly I thought that, because Retention was so cheap, it would be worth the risk of buying it. That did not turn out to be true. Now normally I enjoy games that go out of their way to be different and try something new. While it is safe to say Retention is something different that does not make it good in any way. A big problem with Retention is that it promises a story that never happens. The game description says you're given the 'opportunity to tell a man by his memories', but I found that this just amounts to you picking one picture out of a group of three and then being given a small one sentence summary of the picture (as if you already couldn't tell just by looking at most of them). The ending you recieve after picking one picture out of all 85 groups of 3 doesn't help clarify the story in any way. I've played through it multiple times now and I still can't decipher how or why I unlocked certain endings (and you can unlock multiple ones at once) and not others.

Confusion is honestly another reason why Retention is not a good game. Again this is a game which in the description promises a 'user-friendly interface'. I did not find that to be the case. Right from the start the only helpful information given to you is how to move between slides and that you have to pick one picture out of a group of three. The problem is that the game starts you at the very moment when the man presumably got into his biking accident. You must then go back through all 85 of his memories (the pictures you'll get tired of looking at because they never change). There are many problems with this. First is the fact that it's very hard to tell what picture group you're on. It took me way too long to figure out that the only thing indicating what group you're on is a thin strip of white that appears below the square of film you're on. Second is that if you somehow miss a picture group you're kind of screwed. The only thing that separates picture groups you've selected a picture from, from ones you haven't is a tiny (very easy to miss) + sign. Those two things coupled with being forced to flip through all the pictures you've already selected and seen to see if you've done enough to achieve an ending and in the end being denied one because you missed one group (out of 85) is downright frustrating.

In the end the only good thing I can say about Retention is that it has some pretty pictures and okay music. There is also the fact it has cards, but even those can't make up for the fact that Retention is bad game.

87 cents wasted. I would give it away just to remove it from my collection if I knew how. I keep looking for the next "Dear Esther" but am about to give up the search. Retention just a bunch of pictures with stuff written to make them seem profound. This is the type of _retention_ that one goes to a doctor for when their bowels are impacted. Also no full screen.

No.

Maybe it is interesting (though very strange) experience, but I can't call it a game.
So, no - don't buy it unless you are in a search of something very unusual.

As taken from Webster's Revised Dictionary, January 2015 edition:

Pre`ten´tious (adjective)
1. Having or showing the unpleasant quality of wanting to be regarded as more impressive, successful, or important than someone/thing really is
2. Having a feeling of superiority that shows itself in an overbearing attitude
3. A thankfully inexpensive (yet still arguably overpriced) video game which cobbles together a bunch of photographs taken by a fifteen year-old girl with a Facebook account and attempts to pass them off as something resembling a "narrative" or "story", eg. Retention, released 13 Jan 2015 on the Steam format for the recommended retail price of $0.99 USD
4. Some wanker with the cowardly "alias" of rjmacready who fancies himself a "critic" on said Steam format, leading him to purchase said game within minutes of its release because: a. it is on "sale" for $0.84 USD, b. it's a rare opportunity to be the very first review to appear on said Steam format for said game, and c. it has Steam trading cards, so even if the game is a total bust, it will have effectively cost even less than $0.84 USD and who knows, if there's a "foil" card in there somewhere he might even make a small financial profit

Verdict: 3/10 (0.5 for the pretty pictures, 0.5 for the nearly-but-not-quite groovy music, 1 for the trading cards, and last but not least, 1 for at least not being as shitty and mind-numbingly condescending as The Way Of Life, even if that game at least had the common courtesy to make itself mercifully FREE of charge).