while waiting
while waiting is a game I finished in 4 hours that felt way way longer.
part of this is implicit to the premise of the game: while waiting is a game about the moments where you're waiting for something else to happen. waiting for the elevator, the bus, the results of job application.
it's a neat conceit that delights in absurdity: what if you were so bored at your high school graduation that you walked on stage and took your diploma ahead of time? there's lots of cute moments - paired with the saccharine of first loves, growing up, trying to make ends meet, and so forth.
but for every good idea - what if I slapped my friends' hands the entire time we were trying to play Uno? - there are three or four levels with lackluster ideas, or ideas that are hidden behind obtuse, unclear environments and interactions. by limiting the controls to WASD and Space Bar, the player is forced to guess at a lot of what a level's potential can be. and because so many of the ideas in the game are absurd, lots of the interactions are not straight-forward or obvious. did I mention you're playing against a timer? after all, everything you're doing is literally killing time while you're waiting.
it would be one thing if only half the levels in the game were good, and it had been a straightforward affair to play them all. but there are so. many. levels. 75 or so individual sequences charting the course of your life, from babe to student to adult to elder. is it comprehensive? surely, although the jump from being 35 to 70 seems to happen instantaneously. did even the developers realize the game was getting a little long in the tooth?
maybe they could have stood to kill some of their earlier darlings, when they made that realization. it is not enough for a game to have a good idea; it must also execute on that idea in a way that's fun or interesting or at least worthwhile, in some way.
since starting the game, the developers have released two new mechanics: one, a way to outright skip levels, and two, a way to fast-forward time. I'd have rather they spent the time ahead of release figuring out if I was spending my time well, rather than giving me tools to move on.