While Waiting Review (PC) – Killing Time, Slowly

I keep seeing on TikTok that we are all choosing 2025 to be our era of peace, am I right? I think we all need a little peace and quiet this year. It’s February finally, and waiting for January to end felt like a whole year in itself. Speaking of waiting andchoosing peace, perhaps While Waiting can help? 

At its core, While Waiting is exactly what it sounds like: a game about waiting. Whilst not traditionally a ‘game’, While Waiting promotes meaningful vignettes of short interactions as opposed to fast paced mechanics. There is much in life that we may overlook, and While Waiting provides a simple concept that allows you to find big meaning within the small moments that may pass us by daily. 

Press Pause

Through a series of short vignettes, you turn the most mundane tasks into an action, or something meaningful. While Waiting starts at birth. As you work through the scene, you’ll realise you’re a small ghost in a long line of people waiting to take the leap of faith into the world! The scene will play out if you choose to do absolutely nothing, showing you a patient, short few minutes of mindfulness and inviting visuals to watch go by. 

Here we may instinctively grab our phones, in the age of a five second attention span, or doom-scrolling While Waiting instead invites you to take that urge further. Instead of reaching for your phone, why not jump off the bridge as that little ghost? What happens if you push in line? Will you embrace the scene as it is? Or will you cause maybe a smidgen of chaos? 

These short scenes adopt different tones as you go through, and will cover a lot of the everyday; such as waiting to check out at the supermarket, waiting for dinner to be cooked, crossing the road, or even something as slightly depressing; waiting to forget your ex (yikes, we’ve all been there right?). 

Minimalist Musings

Visually, the game adopts a minimalist aesthetic. Its art style is simple and feels like a snippet from an interactive comic book strip. It evokes the simple or not so simple feelings of capturing different scenarios. There’s little conversation to be had here, with next to no writing other than your pinnacle challenge in the moment. The writing really is in your hands. How will your day/event/mundane moment play out? If you’re looking for something deep, or a structured narrative where every scene will eventually intertwine together, then you won’t find it here.

There’s not necessarily any progression, and the game is akin to the newer side of the puzzle genre, reminiscent to me of games such as ‘A Little to the Left’, or ‘Unpacking’ (but with the puzzle settings turned on). There’s a very loose plot following our protagonist Adam along the journey of his life. My comedy highlight was waiting for the toilet, and having what would soon be in the toilet, represented as spam slowly coming out of the tin. There are some humorous experiences within the scenarios that will be sure to make players smile. Every so often the game will offer a small checkpoint scenario, depicting the next big stage of Adam’s life. From childhood, to leaving college, to growing old. 

There is something oddly peaceful about While Waiting, and I found myself reaching for it during moments when I was having a 15-20 minute break from work. Each scene is a few minutes long and you can either choose to have a mindful moment, or cause a little chaos trying to get every challenge. At the beginning of each scene, you will be given ‘clues’ on how you may be able to change up the different scenes before it ends. Of course, one of the challenges (and a challenge it would be for some people) is to simply ‘do nothing’. 

For completionists, you won’t be able to get every challenge on the first go simply because of that challenge alone. Each scenario has between 1 and 6 challenges to complete. There’s a 100 different scenarios on offer so the game offers some replayability if you’re at a loose end and you like ‘order’. If you want to go back to any favourites, or you want to complete the scene before moving on, you can also select any ones you’ve already played. 

Patience is a Virtue

Each scenario comes packaged with its own little soundtrack, mostly made up of classical sounds to shape the story in front of you. I did notice that I found the controls quite clunky. I imagined this to be more of a point-and-click situation, but While Waiting makes use of WASD and Space Bar controls. 

Whilst this is fine, I couldn’t help but notice it did not feel quite as optimised for WASD. I felt if anything the controls hindered me from doing some of the challenges, whereas a simple point-and-click mechanic would have allowed me to feel more immersed within the game and would have felt more intuitive to some of the tasks. 

If you find yourself itching to complete the ‘do nothing’ for everything, but want to stay focused within the scene; While Waiting offers a small corner fidget toy to play with. This probably wins the most random and most generational mechanic I have ever seen within a game (I see you Gen Z’s). It does make waiting a little more interesting, however. 

Time Well Spent?

Unfortunately, for such a simple game, I did come across quite a few bugs. My game crashed twice within the first 20 minutes of playing. I had two scenarios play over each other at exactly the same time – again a simple restart did fix this. I also came across a scenario during one of the sleeping levels (you’ll find some are repeated but with different objectives). My frame came out of the frame, and completely locked on me, making me unable to utilise any of the controls – and for some reason, I couldn’t wait it out. Again, nothing a restart can not solve and with the short snappy levels only taking a few minutes, you will never lose a significant amount of gameplay time. 

On the contrary, should you want to complete the game paying absolutely zero attention – that is also possible. Whilst a sweet, quiet experience, I found my own attention drifting at times. It made time sometimes feel slower, and other times, feeling as if it was a nice pause from what I was doing. I didn’t necessarily find myself completely captivated at any point. Although I can see how many may enjoy the premise of reflection and patience.

Overall, While Waiting – whilst perhaps not a ‘game’ in a traditional sense, it does offer appeal to those looking for a more casual puzzle experience. Great for a distraction and taking up some time, if you need to kill a few minutes here and there. It’s a unique take on the puzzle genre won’t be for everyone. However, those who enjoy fleeting moments, and a really simple but lovely art style may want to practice their patience on While Waiting.

While Waiting is available from February 5th 2025 on Nintendo Switch and PC via Steam (review platform). You can play the demo now on PC.

Developer: Optiillusion
Publisher: Optiillusion

Disclaimer: In order to complete this review, we were provided with a promotional copy of the game. For our full review policy, please go here.

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