While Waiting

Have you ever thought about how much time you spend just waiting around? I’m talking about waiting for the bus, waiting for a game to download, waiting for the shower to heat up and waiting for your favorite show to come up back from commercial break. That’s the conceit of the new game While Waiting, the sophomore release from California-based developer Optillusion Games. They’ve turned the very concept of waiting in line into an inventive puzzle game that takes us through the highs, lows, heartbreaks and successes of one man’s very average life. Come and find out why this surprisingly emotional adventure game is worth the wait when I review While Waiting, out now on PC and Switch.

I want to call While Waiting a graphic adventure game with puzzle elements, but that doesn’t quite do the game justice. While Waiting is more than that. It’s the story of a simple man’s entire life, as told through one-hundred moments when he was stuck waiting for something to happen. Those moments when he’s waiting in a lunch line, waiting for a job interview and waiting for the girl he likes to text back. The waiting may not stop as he gets older, but what he’s waiting for is more serious and important. You’ll be there as he waits for roadside assistance after his car breaks down, as he anxiously waits for his next paycheck to arrive, at the very moment his wife gives birth and as he grapples with old age. When I say that the game covers the man’s entire life, I mean it. From the beginning to the bitter end.

As we wait, each of the one-hundred stages will want the player to complete a series of simple (albeit sometimes obtuse) tasks before the wait is over. For example, let’s talk about the Christmas Eve level, which starts with the boy tucked in bed and unable to sleep. As he gets up and roams around the room, he’ll swap out different stockings to complete a quest, as well as work on this puzzle involving ornaments on a Christmas Tree. And if that wasn’t enough, the game also wants you to bully Santa, making it hard for him to get in and deliver presents. Or, if you really wanted to, you can do absolutely nothing and the level will end when the boy falls asleep.

What makes this game stressful is that you go into each level not knowing what the game wants from you, all while simultaneously not knowing how much time you have to complete the tasks. You don’t have much time to not only memorize the missions, but figure out how to solve them. Sometimes this will be obvious, while others will have you thinking way outside the box. And even if you figure it out at the last second, when your time is up, the game is going to move on to the next puzzle, whether you like it or not.

In that sense, this is the kind of game where you can practically beat the entire game without actually doing anything. There are a few stages that will require you to actually “do something” (in the loosest sense), but most can be completed by simply waiting. Of course, that’s not fun, and the different tasks are what make this game entertaining. You’ll never really know what the game will have you do next, as we’ll go from simple point and click-style puzzles to platforming stages to what is probably the worst way possible to play Tetris.

For as much as you’ll want to solve every puzzle and complete all of the tasks in your first playthrough, that’s just not going to happen. No matter how good you are, there simply isn’t enough time to do everything. This isn’t so bad, because the one-hundred stages will take players more than five hours to complete as it is. You’ll get a few extra hours of fun out of going back into each stage and solving all of the puzzles. Best of all, after you’ve beaten the game, you’ll feel oddly nostalgic as you revisit a lot of the early stages with the boy and college student.

From a storytelling perspective, there are some extremely clever elements here. The game hits most of the common beats, but not necessarily in the way you would expect. A great example of this comes right after the college kid’s first real heartbreak, where his friend gets him drunks so that the player can quite literally wash away the memory of the ex-girlfriend. Of course, love doesn’t work like that, and the game does a good job of working that painful reality into the puzzle.

On paper, the protagonist of this game may seem too boring to be the star of a video game, but that’s one of the narrative choices that I love about While Waiting. This isn’t the story of a hero who goes on an unbelievable adventure and saves the world, but rather it’s about a guy who is relatable. He’s just a normal guy. Even if your life doesn’t follow his beat-for-beat, you’ll recognize a lot of what he goes through and connect with his struggles. Without speaking a single word of dialog, we feel like we get to know everything there is to know about this man, all from watching him wait around. This is a masterclass visual storytelling.

Sadly, there are a couple of gameplay decisions that ended up getting in the way. One of the issues is that you can sometimes get stuck in a puzzle inside of another puzzle. Because of the limited gameplay, you will sometimes need to rely on visual prompts to get you into and out of pop-out puzzles. The problem is that sometimes they won’t let you out, forcing the player to manually restart the puzzle.

You’ll also run into a few puzzles that simply take too long to complete. There were times when I would complete all of the tasks and then still have to wait several minutes for the stage to end. It’s a shame that there isn’t a way to speed things up when you’ve done everything you can possibly do in a stage. Thankfully, this isn’t a problem that pops up too often, but there’s one stage towards the end where this is a real issue. It was so bad that I started to wonder if the level was ever going to end.

Visually, While Waiting looks great. The story is told through a series of simple graphic novel panels, always in a hand-drawn style. There’s just enough detail to the stages to convey what is needed, and that’s it. I also love how this aesthetic ultimately ties into the character’s career and passion. Like the man the story is about, the graphics aren’t needlessly flashy. I find that strangely comforting.

Even without the waiting conceit, the story here would be strong enough to sustain pretty much any puzzle game. There’s a lot to like about the characters, the setting and the events that playout over the course of the one-hundred stages. I love how all of this is built around the many things you end up spending your life waiting for. It’s funny, clever, nerve-racking and, in the end, an emotional roller coaster ride. While Waiting truly is a special game.