While Waiting is already a standout game for 2025. Optillusion wonderfully captures life’s ups and downs with whimsy and grace. It’s a game that tests your patience but equally rewards you. It teaches you things along the way you might already be aware of, but puts it within a practical application to understand it deeper. While Waiting makes the mundane tolerable and entertaining as it tasks you with acceptance.
You’ll experience an entire lifetime, watching this boy become and a man, and then some. It explores a wide range of emotions, from joy to elation to sadness to anger, and everything inbetween and beyond. I would have liked to have seen the same series of events from other characters perspectives, but it largely would have been the same game
At its core, this is simply a game where you must do something, or do nothing. This is easily the hardest, and only the most patient will “do nothing”. Any given level could take one to two minutes before it moves on. My first playthrough was never touching the controller, and completing the game took about 3 ½ hours. Even the credits are a level to interact with, or not. In order to get the true ending, you simply have to let it play out for the game’s 100 levels, and that’s not an easy ask for a gamer.
For those who can’t help themselves, there are optional, side goals to take part in if you choose to do so. Each level has several activities you can do that essentially alter the intended experience. An early level has you making toast, but you can burn the bread. Or in school you can play Tetris with your books or solve a maze puzzle. This is really not the intended way to play the game, but there is an achievement for attaining all the stickers from all levels in the game.
If you don’t want partake in the missions to get a sticker, you can simply pull out a fidget spinner in-game and play with that until you’ve waited for that level to finish. I should note that this does not count as “doing nothing”, it just helps you bide your time until the level is over.
While Waiting is a literal waiting game. For rain to stop, for commercials to end, for a baby to be born, for the results of a surgery, or traffic to clear. It’s all relatable, and there might even be some shared experiences.
Now, choosing to interact is the game’s way of being a game. Otherwise this would be a waiting simulator, and there’s entertainment in that alone. But I’m glad the developers included actions and activities to take part in giving you reasons to revisit levels and make it more than how it was intended to be played.
There’s some genuine moments in While Waiting that can pull at your heartstrings, where no words are ever spoken. But emotions are conveyed eloquently with no interpretation. It’s hard to sit back and let things play out, because everyone wants to control the uncontrollable. But that’s life, you don’t get to shape how things go every time. While Waiting is a true exercise of patience, understanding, and acceptance that you should experience for yourself.
A Steam code was provided in advance by the publisher for review purposes