A delightfully relatable game about doing nothing
So much of our lives now are filled with multitasking. We’re watching TV and surfing social media. We’re working at the office and watching a stream. We’re podcasting and playing games in the background. We don’t get the chance to focus any more — that’s kind of been lost as a part of our lives. Being in the present is difficult. Being bored is not even possible any more.
Optillusion’s While Waiting is about being in the present, in a way. It’s about the short minutes waiting for something to happen, and everything we do to avoid realizing that.
The game is sort of set up as someone’s life story, and about the little experiences they have that make up those in between moments as they grow up. It actually kicks off with a soul waiting in line in heaven (or wherever) to jump into a body on Earth. We can just wait, endlessly getting pushed forward until we make our leap, or we can bounce up and down, or jump off the bridge, or cut in line or play with a fidget toy. We can wait, but we don’t want to. We’re sort of conditioned, right away, to not wait, to rush, to do something. Because we can? Or because we can’t. Or both, really.
The full experience is a series of mini games, around a minute or two each, and it’s controlled with just the left stick and one action button; we also have a fidget toy button to give us something to mess with if we don’t know what to do next. In each game we can either wait for the clock to tick down (just wait and do nothing, the game reminds us) or do something to get a sticker (a sort of achievement/star system). These situations are familiar, usually incredibly mundane moments that we come across in our daily lives, but the game wants us to play with that mundanity, asking us (or teasing us) to push past time. There’s one where we are waiting for a bus to arrive, so we can stand there or pet a dog or mess around with a billboard. In another we’re in a class room and we’re waiting for our teacher to grade our test. We can wait, or sneak around and look at the other kids’ papers while trying to avoid the teacher’s gaze. Another one has us waiting to refill our hearts in a mobile game; we can wait the 1:30 or watch a dumb ad to refill gens which we can use to buy hearts quicker. Another has us waiting for a commercial to pass, so we can turn up the volume really loud and knock a bunch of stuff off of a wall. We can wait for mom to make dinner, or we can walk around our house and walk through a Gulliver Tunnel to shrink in size and go find a mouse in a hole in the wall.
While Waiting is weird and goofy, but there’s a real heartfelt meaning behind the concept. It’s a mirror to how we are in real life, to how we approach moments. I admit that I never really notice myself fidgeting, but playing this game has made me more aware that I’m always trying to do something with my time when maybe I just need let time go by on its own. It’s so on point with its message, in fact, that the whole game can be completed without doing anything — just basically set it down and let it play out on its own for a couple hours.
Maybe that’s the whole point, in a way. Just let it be. If you can, that is.
This review is based on a Nintendo Switch eShop code sent to SideQuesting by the publisher. It originally appeared on The SideQuest Live for February 17, 2025. Images and video courtesy publisher.
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