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Another evening in the life of a child, waiting around while Mother cooks dinner. Dad’s on the couch watching the television. With both parents occupied and you left waiting, it’s time to be bad. You grab a bowl on the table and begin to catch the shrimp tempura your mother tosses behind her to serve for dinner, sneakily letting the vegetables fall to the floor. That’s fun for a bit, but dinner still isn’t ready. I wonder where the light from the fridge goes when I close it… no, I know what I’m going to do. You head over to the living room and go through the shrinking device, head into the mouse hole, and say hello to your friend Jerry! These are all the activities you can do, While Waiting for your mother to finish dinner in While Waiting.
While Waiting
Developer: Optillusion
Price: $20
Platform: PC(Reviewed) and Nintendo Switch
MonsterVine was provided with a Steam code for review
While Waiting is a fairly simple title offering a range of simple to complex things to do While Waiting for something to happen. A small list of objectives you can accomplish while a timer slowly ticks away in the background that you’re vaguely aware of. On the simpler side, there are things like turning the volume up all the way on the TV While Waiting for the commercials to end. On the more complex side, you might try to escape a meeting your boss is running and end up in a Temple Run style auto-runner dodging office workers and trying to escape your PowerPoint toting boss.
100 Ways to Pass the Time—From Fun to Pure Mischief
The crux of While Waiting is what we do While Waiting for something else to happen. The game is cute, and as long as you don’t think too hard about it, While Waiting is about a child-like sense of wonder that isn’t going to let something like waiting bring them down. In While Waiting you’re playing the same person, from the cradle to the grave, you’re playing the same man. And If you do decide to think about it too hard, instead of seeing someone with a whimsical sense of mischief and inquisitiveness, you see someone who takes the world and the people around them for granted.
Our protagonist does cute things like petting dogs, butt-hopping along the luggage carousel, and playing arcade games. But there are other things he does at the expense of others that kind of makes him a dick. One level has you waiting for the rain to clear and a bipedal creature walks by with a giant leaf on its head to protect it from the rain. One of the objectives has you simply… take it. You’re the main character here, you shouldn’t be wet, they should! While Waiting for your AP to replenish in a mobile game, one of your objectives is to spend entirely too much of, presumably, your parents’ money on in-game currency. Dick move!
Chaos is created by the protagonist of our story in ways that we can’t possibly imagine. At one point, in an elevator, I hit all the buttons and was brought down to floor -666 and had to play goalie while demons punted human skulls at me. While Waiting for software to respond on the protagonist’s computer, I was able to reboot my cubicle neighbor’s computer. While Waiting presents itself as kind of a neutral “oh silly me” style game but it’s pure chaos! The protagonist is a being of malevolence looking to mess up everyone else’s time.
Which is, of course, fine. None of these people actually exist. And these situations range from silly to boring anyway. What’s more impressive is how many situations the developers were able to come up with, as examples, that we sit through out of boredom. There are 100 levels in While Waiting and some of them are absurd, but some of them are things we do in our everyday lives. We’ll just sit there, waiting for a thing like we’re supposed to do. Our protagonist is actually making fun with all the time he has, maybe that’s why he’s an artist, a creative type.
A Clever, Playful Game That’s Perfect for Quick Sessions
As our protagonist grows up, he deals with some trials and tribulations that are struggles many of us have gone through. We have to deal with the sadness of loss, either from a bad breakup or a loved family member. We have to wait for someone to wrap-up in a public bathroom as our own need to use the toilet grows more serious. We have to wait to grow up. I know for certain I haven’t made the best of my time in my life, but that’s part of life. As an existentialist, While Waiting isn’t what we do While Waiting, it’s life itself.
And if you’re like me and you decide to think too much about what’s happening on screen, one of the objectives in every single level is to simply do nothing. In fact, you can just leave the game running if you prefer and our protagonist will simply wait, as they’re supposed to. It’s boring, and certainly not the most interesting way to play While Waiting. But there’s a level of sincerity in playing this way. You can cheat at mahjong or… you could just play mahjong. You could reset the computer of the person next to you or… you could just wait for yours to finish updating. You could force open the stall door or… you could just shit your pants.
The Final Word
While Waiting is a cute, fun, and simple pick-up and play style game. A perfect title for handheld gaming that offers some replayability. The art style is very cute and the objectives are usually pretty interesting. While Waiting is most assuredly a well-crafted game I think most people would find enjoyable.
MonsterVine Rating: 4 out of 5 – Good
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