Medium-Well

While We Wait Here takes me back to my days working in the food industry, taking orders and conversing with patrons ready for a hot meal and a good time.  You learn a lot about people over a burger and a beer, and these conversations are a staple to getting through your work day.  You can be a helping hand or a good laugh, and barely, just barely I miss those days over my current career.

For Cliff and Nora, these days are coming to an end.  Working on moving out to the country, or maybe an apartment in the city, they’re settling up The Lone Glass and working towards a new future away from what they’ve known since they were young adults.  Or at least, that’s what they had hoped for.  Now in the distant future you’re tasked with helping a ragtag group of strangers with their issues, with a burger and a beer, as the storm of the century races ever closer to your small restaurant off the beaten path.

While We Wait Here wears many hats in what kind of game it delivers: walking simulator, horror, restaurant simulator, first person shooter, all connected through a group of characters each with a dilemma that finds itself at your tables and bar seats.  When they start to reminisce and divulge their issues, you’re treated to a small flashback scene learning more of their concerns.  How would you handle a man off his meds claiming to have saved the world from aliens?  Or a newly made family man having to choose between a promised family or the love he really wants?  These choices will shape how these characters will go forward with life, and you’ll be treated to specific cutscenes for each customer as the credits roll.

But most of your day will be slangin’ some food, and taking orders and prepping food was pleasantly enjoyable.  Getting the motions down for finding specific pieces of a recipe or making sure I put the glass down in order to pour the drink took a little while to get right, but once I had an hour or two under my belt I was running through orders like a champ.  I never was a big “Simple Task Simulator” gamer but after making some cheeseburgers, milkshakes, and pancakes, I kind of get the allure: easy checkmarking gameplay for that sweet kick of a job well done.

You’ll indulge in the daily happenings of your guests while you take their orders, but I was pulled a little away from the allure by the voice acting.  Cliff and Nora, voiced by Grant Corvin and Abigail Turner respectively, do a great job holding the reins of the main characters.  But the secondary characters felt a bit stiff, in some cases trying too hard to nail a particular accent, some didn’t feel conversational as much as very “read-on-paper.”  There were a good bit of grammatical errors in the subtitles and instances where the voiced lines didn’t match up.

While I won’t indulge too much, the main arc of the mystery surrounding Cliff, Nora, and the Lone Glass feels a little under-delivered when the payoffs start to happen.  It was interesting playing the word of reason for people in their time of need, which gave some nostalgic Catherine vibes throughout, but the overall arc and scenes revolving around the main characters didn’t provide that final blow that I felt would’ve really added that exclamation point to the 2-3 hour story.  I kind of shrugged at the end of it knowing what happened felt pretty understood before it was shown. The brevity of the conclusion didn’t carry that emotional weight it needed.

But I am glad I stuck through and took a day to work at The Lone Glass.  While We Wait Here does a lot within its short runtime, provides a satisfactory experience with all the genres it runs through, and houses a main gameplay loop that I ended up enjoying more than I expected.  Some rough edges may deter your experience but throwing a couple bucks down for a decent story, and maybe a milkshake, could be spent in worse places.

7/10