Games like Retention

If Retention left you wanting something emotional and minimalist, you have options. These games keep things close enough to feel familiar.

Hindsight
What if the physical objects of everyday life, the possessions we hold close, were actual windows to the past? Peer into distant memories and unseen futures in Hindsight.
Also in Visual novel · Emotional, Story-driven, Atmospheric
80% of 151 Steam reviews are positive$14.99
SEASON: A letter to the future
Ride a bicycle through a world on the edge of its final season, photographing, recording and writing down everything before it is gone. A gentle, story-rich trip through beautiful landscapes, meeting people who each have one story left to tell.
Also in Visual novel · Emotional, Story-driven, Atmospheric
93% of 1,848 Steam reviews are positivePlayers online now: 5$24.99
Until Then
Mark is a regular high school student until a meeting sets off a chain reaction: people vanish, memories stop adding up, and something is very wrong beneath the everyday. A pixel-art narrative adventure from the Philippines that starts as a warm coming-of-age story and turns into a mystery you will not put down.
Also in Visual novel · Emotional, Story-driven, Atmospheric
96% of 16,233 Steam reviews are positivePlayers online now: 149$19.99
OneShot
A child named Niko carries a lightbulb through a dying world, and you are the god who guides them. A surreal puzzle adventure where the game talks to you, uses your actual computer for its puzzles, and asks choices of you that sting. Short, strange, and hard to forget.
Emotional, Story-driven, Atmospheric
98% of 60,002 Steam reviews are positivePlayers online now: 126$5.99
Once Again
Make up for lost time with Once Again, If you could travel through time, who’s the first person you’d meet? An interactive story about a boy who spends his summers wandering between past and present... After meeting her, summer will never be the same again...Who is she, and what journey awaits you?
Also in Visual novel · Emotional, Story-driven, Atmospheric
90% of 951 Steam reviews are positivePlayers online now: 1$3.99
UNREAL LIFE
A girl wakes with no memories and one name: Miss Sakura. Her only guide is a talking AI traffic light, and her only tool is a strange gift: touch an object, see its memories. A quiet, blue-toned pixel adventure about following clues through a dreamlike night city, solving gentle puzzles and finding out what really happened.
Emotional, Story-driven, Atmospheric
95% of 1,880 Steam reviews are positivePlayers online now: 2$19.99
Journal
Enter the pages of the hand painted world of Journal. A journey through the life of a young and troubled girl as she tries to face up to the choices and responsibilities that come with childhood. An experience that questions the reliability of how we choose to remember events and explores the truths hidden within our dreams.
Also in Visual novel · Emotional, Story-driven, Atmospheric
78% of 316 Steam reviews are positive$9.99
Denpa Nightmares
No matter how long you’re gone, there will always be a girl waiting for you in the same place. This is a story about forgetting, and about waiting. After countless restarts and countless memories lost… how long will you stay with her this time?
Emotional, Minimalist, Story-driven
92% of 187 Steam reviews are positiveFree
Life Tastes Like Cardboard
A game about boredom and self-pity. It's about myself mostly. You walk around and press the 'interact' button. Sorry for making this.
Emotional, Minimalist, Story-driven
95% of 339 Steam reviews are positiveFree
Indecision.
A haiku platformer. It's short and vague.
Emotional, Minimalist, Story-driven
86% of 439 Steam reviews are positive$2.99
MEMENTO
A paradise lost; an island full of memory. Those who forget the horrors of the past will pay the price... Relics of war are now living, breathing creatures, out for revenge for memories forgotten... Can you escape?
Emotional, Story-driven, Atmospheric
79% of 81 Steam reviews are positive$1.19
One Last Memory
One Last Memory is an emotional story driven exploration game about an old man who re-discovers his own past and lost memories on his journey through the beauty of nature. It is an adventure filled with joy, sadness and breathtaking locations and environments that are waiting to be discovered.
Emotional, Story-driven, Atmospheric
68% of 31 Steam reviews are positive$9.99

Cheaper than Retention

One Night Stand

After a night of fun, passion, and one too many drinks, you wake up the next morning to find a complete stranger lying naked beside you in bed.

$0.74

Sumire

One Day, One Life. Sumire is a magical narrative adventure about choices made, and dreams lost and found.

$5.99

My Dream is a Lost Memory

My dream is a Lost Memory is a short interactive story about having Déjà vu, realizing that this Déjà vu came to you because of a dream, and then…

$0.99

Love Stories: When Pastel Meets Grotesque

Some Scary Love Stories is a visual novel game with option branches Players tap the screen to read the story and make their own choices, eventually…

$1.99

100$

Money rules the world! This is a casual puzzle for all who loves to get his wallet full of cash.

$0.49

Sarcophag

Casual game for attentiveness

$0.99

TABLE GAME END

After school today, I talk with her again. Through the window, I see the sunset and someone playing in the schoolyard.

$0.66

Suicide Guy

Solve surreal physics puzzles by putting yourself in harm's way, then wake up somewhere stranger.

$5.99

Little Adventurer III

This is a first-person casual game that focuses on going home after helping the little girl, and a few mini-games.

$0.90

Umfend

The glass sphere burst in the night of 1996. The world of distortion opened its gates and took away from you someone very important.

$0.89

Wire Lips

Leta’s life changed in one moment. She and her friend Lina found an old music box in the mountains... and soon Lina disappeared, leaving behind only…

$0.89

Dark Lore Mysteries: The Hunt For Truth

A violent murder has awoken a small town with a troubled past, they thought that chapter was over with, but has it returned?

$0.79

Hidden gems like Retention

Burden Street Station

A surreal, narrative adventure game where you shapeshift during conversations to uncover how God went missing.

$14.99

Forever Ago

Drive an old man north to keep a promise to his late wife, photographing the journey and reliving the memories it stirs up.

$19.99

Eternal Afternoon

Spend one last afternoon exploring your childhood neighborhood before the world ends at 6:38 PM.

$8.99

Denpa Nightmares

No matter how long you’re gone, there will always be a girl waiting for you in the same place. This is a story about forgetting, and about waiting.

Free

My Beautiful Faraway, Please Don't Be Cruel To Me

A slow first-person walk through a dreamlike nowhere where lost inhabitants trade regrets and half-finished sentences.

$10.99

memories

Pick an outfit, unlock a memory, and piece together a love story told backwards through clothes.

Free

SEASON: A letter to the future

Ride, photograph and record a fading world at your own unhurried pace, one story at a time.

$24.99

Title_Pending

Congratulations! You've been hired by an up and coming Game Development Studio to play-test their New Game (which as of now does not have a title).

$9.99

Hazy Mind

You can't remember anything, and all you can see is HER. Delve into your story and uncover the truth behind what happened to you and your parents.

$9.99

Once Again

Make up for lost time with Once Again, If you could travel through time, who’s the first person you’d meet?

$3.99

"LIFE" not found;

This small Narrative Point & Click (Puzzle) game is about the mental health struggles of a adolescent high school dropout who's lost at life.

Free

Until Then

Follow Mark through school days, first love and a mystery that slowly unravels everything he thought he knew.

$19.99

Games like Retention

Cheaper than Retention

Hidden gems like Retention

Newest games like Retention