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While Waiting

While Waiting is a lovely puzzler that embraces patience and offers a tonne of fun if you let your curiosity go wild while you wait. Its variety, replayability, and charming style make it easy to recommend.
While Waiting Game Cover
79%Game Brain Score
Most mentioned positive aspects:humor, gameplay
Most mentioned negative aspects:stability, grinding
86% User Score Based on 73 reviews
Critic Score 72%Based on 10 reviews

Platforms

Nintendo SwitchPCMac OSSteam DeckWindows
Buy Nowfrom $17.40
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While Waiting Game Cover

About While Waiting

While Waiting is a single player casual puzzle game with horror and comedy themes. It was developed by Optillusion and was released on February 5, 2025. It received mostly positive reviews from critics and positive reviews from players.

Presented by the team behind critically acclaimed "Moncage", this is a transformative adventure exploring the art of waiting. Clear the game by doing nothing, but discover the power of acceptance and patience in numerous situations from birth to death. Learn to embrace life as you wait.

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While Waiting screenshot
While Waiting screenshot
While Waiting screenshot
While Waiting screenshot
While Waiting screenshot
While Waiting screenshot
While Waiting screenshot
While Waiting screenshot
While Waiting screenshot
While Waiting screenshot
While Waiting screenshot
+5
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Reviews

86%Audience ScoreBased on 73 reviews
humor19 positive mentions
stability1 negative mentions
  • The game features a unique and creative concept with over 100 varied mini-games reflecting different life waiting scenarios, offering high replayability and creative engagement.
  • Beautiful and charming art style combined with relaxing classical music creates a cozy, emotionally touching, and humorous narrative experience about life's in-between moments.
  • The gameplay allows players to choose between simply waiting or interacting with puzzles and tasks, providing a relaxing yet sometimes thought-provoking journey through life from birth to death.
  • Controls are often clunky, slow, and frustrating, with some players finding movement painfully slow and interaction buttons imprecise, which hampers enjoyment especially under time constraints.
  • Some levels and puzzles can be overly difficult, obtuse, or boring, leading to frustration and repetitive gameplay especially for completionists aiming for all achievements or stickers.
  • The game is relatively short for its price and has UI/UX issues such as inconvenient level restart mechanics, lack of quick retries, and missing features like mouse support and adjustable movement speed.

  • humor

    19 mentions Positive Neutral Negative
    100% positive mentions, 0% neutral mentions, 0% negative mentions

    The game's humor is generally clever, lighthearted, and occasionally hilarious, providing a charming and relaxing experience with thoughtful, often cute illustrations and pop culture references. While some find the humor mild compared to other comedic games, many appreciate its balance of wit and poignant moments that add depth without detracting from the fun. Overall, it offers a humorous, casual adventure that entertains and gently challenges players while delivering subtle life lessons.

    • “The game’s sense of humor kept me smiling, and the variety kept me entertained.”
    • “✔️ Well-placed humor: the game balances its poignant moments with humor, adding a lighthearted touch without detracting from the overall narrative.”
    • “The 100 minigames offer plenty of variety – even if some of them add to the boredom rather than disperse it – and the overarching story will tug at your heartstrings and tickle your funny bone.”

  • gameplay

    18 mentions Positive Neutral Negative
    39% positive mentions, 44% neutral mentions, 17% negative mentions

    The gameplay is characterized by simple yet diverse and engaging mini-games that creatively reflect different life scenarios, offering a fresh experience with each interaction. While some find certain mechanics repetitive or lacking in complexity, the blend of humor, puzzles, and thought-provoking moments makes it addictive and replayable. Overall, it combines charm and creativity to deliver a unique, enjoyable, and emotionally resonant gameplay experience.

    • “While most games re-use mechanics to get value, I really respect the developers for keeping me on my toes by making no two interactions the same.”
    • “✔️ Diverse mini-games: the game offers a wide array of mini-games, each corresponding to different life situations, keeping the gameplay fresh and engaging.”
    • “The puzzles in each level are entertaining and often funny; the story you build gradually seeps into your emotions, the relaxing music perfectly accompanies the game, and the gameplay overall becomes very addictive with great replayability.”
    • “I only played half of the game before dropping it, which I feel is important to note. The game consists of levels of the same type of gameplay, and I don't think my opinion would have changed by the end.”
    • “The gameplay itself is okay.”
    • “Very simple gameplay, with a surprisingly touching story.”

  • story

    17 mentions Positive Neutral Negative
    35% positive mentions, 47% neutral mentions, 18% negative mentions

    The game's story is widely praised for its emotional depth and charming portrayal of everyday life, conveying a touching and relatable narrative through simple yet meaningful snapshots. Its blend of humor, unique art style, and variety in presentation effectively engages players, making the storytelling a standout feature despite some pacing issues. Overall, the narrative resonates personally and enriches the gameplay experience.

    • “Simply an amazing experience, I felt genuine sadness seeing myself reach the end of this game. It is polished from start to finish with a charming story and a lot of humour; the art style is very unique and I love it.”
    • “✔️ Narrative depth through snapshots: by presenting snippets of Adam's life, the game weaves a compelling story that resonates on a personal level.”
    • “While following the story of a random individual from birth to death across 100 levels with little to no words, the visuals and environments in the scenes effectively convey a great deal.”
    • “This game seems to think its story/writing is one of its strongest features.”
    • “A story game where you don't have to do anything!”
    • “The 100 minigames offer plenty of variety – even if some of them add to the boredom rather than disperse it – and the overarching story will tug at your heartstrings and tickle your funny bone.”

  • music

    9 mentions Positive Neutral Negative
    44% positive mentions, 23% neutral mentions, 33% negative mentions

    The game's music is largely classical and calming, perfectly complementing its relaxing and chill atmosphere. While some players appreciate the soothing soundtrack and its fit with the game's vibe, others note issues with music being flagged on streaming platforms and suggest a streamer-friendly mode would be beneficial. Overall, the music enhances the game's mood but may feel repetitive for some.

    • “The music fits the vibe perfectly, and I absolutely loved how relaxing it is to play!”
    • “There's still more to brag on about this game, like the beautiful art direction, the calming (classical) music, or the references to certain video games (scenario 24 in particular).”
    • “This is complemented by soft classical music in the background.”
    • “A very chill game with some really chill music, although a lot of it was getting flagged on Twitch and YouTube, so be aware if streaming or recording.”
    • “You can turn music down or off, but it's not clear if there is a streamer-friendly mode yet; it would be a great addition.”
    • “There is no voice acting, just sounds and music.”

  • graphics

    8 mentions Positive Neutral Negative
    38% positive mentions, 62% neutral mentions, 0% negative mentions

    The graphics feature a unique, charming cartoon art style that enhances the storytelling and humor throughout the game. Visuals are polished, simple yet expressive, with plenty of clever details and Easter eggs that enrich the overall experience.

    • “The art style is very unique and charming, providing an amazing visual experience.”
    • “Fantastic visuals with great attention to detail and references.”
    • “The visuals and environments effectively convey the story across 100 levels with little to no words.”

  • emotional

    7 mentions Positive Neutral Negative
    100% positive mentions, 0% neutral mentions, 0% negative mentions

    Users found the game to be unexpectedly emotional, with a touching story that evokes strong feelings especially towards the end. Despite simple gameplay, the experience is described as a heartfelt journey that resonates deeply.

    • “I felt the experience and journey they set out for me, and was feeling a bit emotional at the very end of it.”
    • “Very simple gameplay, with a surprisingly touching story.”
    • “While Waiting is an innovative indie game that transforms life's quietest moments into an emotional journey.”

  • replayability

    5 mentions Positive Neutral Negative
    60% positive mentions, 20% neutral mentions, 20% negative mentions

    The game offers high replayability with 100 unique levels representing different life stages, providing varied challenges and fun options. However, once a level is completed, players cannot revisit it to explore alternate objectives, which may limit full exploration for some. Overall, its variety and depth make it especially appealing for completionists.

    • “There are 100 replayable levels, each representing a life situation from childhood to old age, offering diverse experiences.”
    • “I thought the concept was straightforward, but the options and possibilities in each chapter made it immensely more fun and definitely replayable, especially for completionists.”
    • “Its variety, replayability, and charming style make it easy to recommend.”
    • “Limited replayability: once a level is completed, there's no option to replay it afterwards to explore different objectives, which might hinder full exploration for players who have a particular way they like to play.”

  • optimization

    1 mentions Positive Neutral Negative
    100% positive mentions, 0% neutral mentions, 0% negative mentions

    The game's optimization is hindered by frequent bugs during level resets, especially when retrying challenging tasks that require perfect performance, causing frustrating restarts and improperly reset levels.

  • stability

    1 mentions Positive Neutral Negative
    0% positive mentions, 0% neutral mentions, 100% negative mentions

    The game's stability is poor, with significant bugs that negatively impact the player experience. Players find it frustrating and feel that charging a premium price for such an unstable product is unjustified.

  • grinding

    1 mentions Positive Neutral Negative
    0% positive mentions, 0% neutral mentions, 100% negative mentions

    The grinding aspect is seen as time-consuming and potentially tedious, prompting reflection on the passage of time and the challenge of finding meaningful ways to spend it.

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Critic Reviews

72%Critics’ scoreBased on 10 critic reviews
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Play Times

15h Median play time
15h Average play time
15-15h Spent by most gamers
*Based on 1 analyzed playthroughs
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Frequently Asked Questions

While Waiting is a casual puzzle game with horror and comedy themes. Common tags for While Waiting include indie, linear, psychological, narrative, wholesome and others.

While Waiting is available on Nintendo Switch, PC, Mac OS, Steam Deck and others.

On average players spend around 15 hours playing While Waiting.

While Waiting was released on February 5, 2025.

While Waiting was developed by Optillusion.

While Waiting has received mostly positive reviews from players and mostly positive reviews from critics. Most players liked While Waiting for its humor but disliked it for its stability.

While Waiting is a single player game.

Similar games include Labyrinth City: Pierre the Maze Detective, WYRMHALL: Brush and Banter, The Gardens Between, Wind Peaks, PEPPERED: an existential platformer and others.