[b]Reviewed On: September 4, 2026[/b]
[u][b]Overview[/b][/u]
Remember the good old days of the 90’s where video rental were all the rage and people actually wanted to go out and check out what the latest VHS was? Well this is what Retro Rewind allows you to relive, though instead of being a customer, you’re instead the store owner on a mission to become the number one store to go to.
[u][b]Visuals[/b][/u]
Retro Rewind leans more on style than raw visuals, but even then it’s still a good looking game. World textures are appealing to the eye and bring that 90’s look to them. Movie posters give players that some what over the top design that was favoured back in the day when people actually tried to be unique in their designs and maybe a little bit out there. Character models can be a bit of an acquired taste. Weirdly they kind of remind me of Schedule 1 character models, just a little bit more refined. Some of them are pretty standard looking while others have a goofiness attached to them. Overall nothing bad, they had a particular style that they wanted for the game and to me it succeeds.
[u][b]Audio[/b][/u]
There isn’t too much on the audio front. The NPCs that you interact with make noises from time to time to give you an indication of whether they’re happy, disappointed or annoyed. Objects that have audio attached to them give a good indication as to what they are while in use and some of them will hit players with a sense of nostalgia if they grew up in the 90’s and were exposed to it. There is some music in the game, but very limited and on perpetual repeat. It can be a little bit subtle, but it’s otherwise a pleasant background noise that may or may not get stuck in your head after a few hours of play. But it certainly gives that retro vibe lingering in the background.
[u][b]SteamDeck[/b][/u]
The game runs well on the SteamDeck, maintaining the 40FPS that I have as my baseline without me having to tweak any settings. However the game doesn’t have native controller support as of this review, so you have to rely on community made layouts (or create your own if you’re experienced with it) and will have to remember what each button does as the game won’t change the glyphs from mouse and keyboard icons to controller ones. Fortunately most of the game is simple enough that there’s few buttons that you really need to remember. That said, I did find that using the track pad kind of helped with some situations, particularly when doing returns, makes things snappier and faster to complete.
[u][b]Story[/b][/u]
There really isn’t any story in Retro Rewind, it’s a simple simulation game where your whole goal is to build up a rental store and you play it at your own pace, no real objective outside of that.
[u][b]Gameplay[/b][/u]
Gameplay starts off pretty simple and kind of stays that way as you progress depending on how you want to run your store. At the start you just have a single room for customers to wander around looking for things to spend their money on. You as the owner need to set up stands to place movies and then stock them with what ever movies you can get your hands on. Back in the staff section you have access to a computer that will allow you to purchase a variety of movies, but are limited to bundles and specific movies that are available daily, unless you happen to know what a movie’s SKU number is, then you can purchase that particular movie directly when you want, but that requires knowing their number (which there’s are dedicated locations you can find on the web for said numbers). It’s also where you purchase the new release movies when they come up. With shelving and stock, turning on the open sign light will officially begin your day (time doesn’t move until you open your store and stops at the end of the regular store hours, but you can still go about your business regardless of how long it takes). Customers will come in, browser your stock and bring what they fancy to the checkout desk where you will then run their goods through, take their money and give them any change they may get. Come your second day you start to handle returns, late fees and broken videos. Depending on how you handle fees for late returns and broken videos, customers can get angry and will start tossing stuff around. I personally never experienced this while handling customers, only when staff have, but you also reach a point where the fees don’t really net you much when compared to how much you get from your daily rentals and purchases. So while it’s good to charge those fees early game, it’s up to you whether you want to continue to do so when you start to have good daily profits.
Now the way progression in the game works, aside from income, is through levelling up your store via experience points. Actions that you do by ringing up customers and handling returns nets you a small bit of experience, this also applies to when your staff are doing those tasks. When your store levels up you then gain access to new items, movie genres and the ability to hire staff members. Currently you can only have up to two employees. They can only do two tasks, checkout and returns, you can assign them from the table in the staff room or by talking to them directly. There’s a few things that you need to be aware of when hiring staff. First applicants change daily, they also have different stats for checkout and returns. Sometimes you get lucky and an applicant can do both jobs fast, but other times you’re biding your time hiring or replacing. They also come with traits that can be helpful, especially if you find an applicant that doesn’t need to rest or use the bathroom, then they can work the entire time. Otherwise, they’ll wander off to the bathroom or you will find them sleeping somewhere in your store and you have to wake them up. Employees also don’t exactly do a good job at putting movies away, at least if you’re particular. So while a shelf will get labelled by the genre of movie that’s on it or labelled as mixed if you just throw stuff onto it, they don’t look at the bits about the movie being old or having a good or bad critic review, nor do they try and keep them together alphabetically, they just take it to the appropriate shelf and deposit it. So if you’re someone who likes to be very organized about your shelves, they’ll drive you nuts. But if you just want your junk on the shelf, they do a good enough job.
[u][b]Is it worth it?[/b][/u]
Retro Rewind is a game that brings the nostalgia for those of us who grew up in the 90’s and got to experience all of this and want to be able to revisit it. It does a good job at giving you that experience (from the owners perspective anyways) and maintains a very “play at your own pace” feeling, asking little (sorta) and giving you that dopamine that you may be craving. So it’s a good game to relax to, though some people may be turned off by it either because they just don’t see the appeal of the 90’s or because the game is a solo experience instead of a co-op like a variety of other games of the genre go with (for better or worse). So I do recommend picking the game up, both because it is a relaxing and enjoyable game, but also because it’s fairly cheap for something that is still (slowly) expanding.
