This excellent game about waiting is the anti-WarioWare

digitaltrends.com:

How much of your life is spent waiting? Think about it. Waiting at the DMV, waiting for a train, waiting for an important phone call, waiting for your perpetually late friend to show up, waiting to grow up. Life is a long endurance test of patience.

That’s the simple thesis of While Waiting, a new puzzle game that’s deceptively emotional. On paper, it sounds like a one-note gag. It features 100 bite-sized levels, each tossing players into a familiar life experience that requires some form of waiting. It’s like the anti-WarioWare, swapping five second microgames for drawn out ones that require virtually no reaction time. Don’t let that light premise take your guard down, though: While Waiting is an ingenious bit of video game storytelling that’ll stick with you so long as you’ve got the patience to see it through.

While Waiting is unassuming at first. I’m quickly tossed into levels with mundane objectives. One requires me to wait for the bus, milling around for a few minutes until it arrives. Another has me waiting for commercials to pass on TV. Each level can be completed by doing absolutely nothing. It’s a high-concept idea that might leave you wondering just how much a studio can do with that premise.

A lot, it turns out. For one, each level has a couple of objectives players can complete while waiting. In one puzzle, I’m a kid waiting for Santa Claus to deliver presents on Christmas. I can just lay in bed and pretend to sleep for a few minutes if I want, earning me a badge for simply waiting. I can also get out of bed and mess with the big guy by turning on my fireplace or switching out my stocking. Others are more imaginative. When I’m waiting for a rainstorm to pass, I can dip into a cafe and look out the window, which becomes a screen on which I can play an arcade game with the falling raindrops. Each level is a clever surprise that gives me a reason to replay them and find each hidden objective.

• Castl