History Main / WaitingPuzzle

** At the end of the Healing Room escape sequence, D-Team is presented with a [[BigRedButton Big Blue Button]] [[SchmuckBait warning them to not press it]] and a timer counting down. [[spoiler:Pressing the button leads to a sudden EverybodyDiesEnding, while letting the timer expire opens the exit.]]

* ''VisualNovel/ZeroTimeDilemma'': At the end of the Healing Room escape sequence, D-Team is presented with a [[BigRedButton Big Blue Button]] [[SchmuckBait warning them to not press it]] and a timer counting down. [[spoiler:Pressing the button leads to a sudden EverybodyDiesEnding, while letting the timer expire opens the exit.]]

* In ''VideoGame/SpiritualWarfare'', there's an old woman on the casino strip who quotes a Bible verse about how you should wait patiently if you want what you don't yet have. If you take her advice and stay put for about 15 seconds, a car will pull out and drive off, revealing a hidden shop where you can get more '''[[MundaneMadeAwesome Mighty Grapes]]'''.

-->-- '''Hint room''', ''VideoGame/TheGuardianLegend''

The waiting puzzle is a StockVideogamePuzzle which the player solves by simply remaining in a certain area for probably at least 15 seconds. This often turns into a serious GuideDangIt if no hints are given that the room is special and it's not obvious what impasse would be removed.

* ''VideoGame/{{Braid}}'' has a hidden secret that involves a cloud drifting for up to ''two hours'' to get from one side of the level to the secret.

* ''VideoGame/TheWitness'': A few optional puzzles require you to wait on a moving platform of some sort while other elements of the puzzle move in and out of view. [[spoiler:One requires you to complete the Challenge (or obtain the reward through other means), and wait through the entire reward.]]

** Blue attacks in the game are a variant of this - they only hurt you if you're moving, so in order to avoid them, you just have to keep perfectly still and let them pass you. Orange attacks do the opposite - they only damage you if you're standing still.

** In a way, [[spoiler:the fights against Toriel, Papyrus, the Mad Dummy, and Muffet are this, assuming you want to solve things peacefully. For Toriel, you explicitly have to Spare her multiple times before she stops fighting, but for Papyrus, the Mad Dummy, and Muffet, you just have to wait and survive their attacks until they give up or something else happens[[note]]although in Muffet's case she can be spared sooner or even skipped if you use an item from the Spider Bake Sale in the Ruins during the battle or buy one of the overpriced items from her own sale respectively, and if you lose to Papyrus three times he'll let you skip the fight.[[/note]]. Doubly so for the Mad Dummy as this is the ''only'' way you can beat them - they're immune to your attacks and cannot be Spared.]]
** An alternate way to disable the final forcefield in the CORE if you can't complete the Gauntlet area or solve the shooter puzzle is to [[spoiler:go to the forcefield in question and wait for it to go away.]]

* The fanfic ''FanFic/HitmanMiami'', written as a walkthrough for a fictional game, parodies this by having the player wait at a bus stop "for thirty-five real-time minutes". Later on, this is parodied again:

** The Japanese version of ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyRecordKeeper'' has a special holiday "fight" against Gilgamesh once in which he had massive amounts of HP and all attacks did only 1 damage. The only way to win was to "skip the fight" by hitting the skip button to cycle through your active character about 7 times.

[[quoteright:256:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/wait_for_shadow.png]]

** Pictured is ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyVI'', which has a moment where you can leave the FloatingContinent as soon as you reach the airship... and you'll [[PermanentlyMissableContent leave Shadow behind on the falling island.]] He arrives at the airship with 5 seconds remaining in the clock.

** The Japanese version of ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyRecordKeeper'' had a special holiday "fight" against Gilgamesh once in which he had massive amounts of HP and all attacks did only 1 damage. The only way to win was to "skip the fight" by hitting the skip button to cycle through your active character about 7 times.

[[folder:Action Games]]
* One of the microgames in the ''[[VideoGame/WarioWare WarioWare Inc.]]'' stage of ''[[VideoGame/SuperSmashBros Super Smash Bros. Brawl]]'' requires you to stand completely still for a few seconds, in the middle of a fight, to receive a bonus. It is a re-creation of a genuine microgame from the series proper.
[[/folder]]

* In ''VideoGame/MetalGearSolid3'', you can defeat one boss just by waiting out the battle due to the boss being so damn old. Alternatively, just save, change your [=PS2's=] internal clock to a week in the future, load your save, and pat yourself on the back.
** Similarly, you can "defeat" a later boss by just waiting while underwater, thus drowning yourself. It's a ''MindScrew'' boss, but it's expected given the series title.

* In the ''VideoGame/HenryStickminSeries'', you sometimes get timed choices. 99% of the time, letting the timer run out results in failure, but to get ''Fleeing the Complex'''s [[spoiler:Presumed Dead]] ending you need to let the slowly-depleting timer run out at the final choice without picking any of the options that appear.
** Additionally, in the "Stickmin Space Resort" route of ''Completing the Mission'', the second correct choice is to, again, let the timer run out while dealing with two Toppat guards. Henry plows right through one of them and continues up the ramp to the rocket.

* A puzzle in ''VideoGame/RivenTheSequelToMyst'' requires you to ''slowly'' advance on some seal-like creatures. Since movement in ''Riven'' is punctuated, not continuous, this means you wait ten seconds... then click... then wait ten seconds... then click...
** Luckily it isn't entirely necessary for the plot that you complete it, it only gives you an extra hint to another puzzle (there is an immobile hint in the same area for the same puzzle).
** There's also an animal trap in the game. To catch something in it, you put a piece of bait in it, lower it (make sure it's both powered and opened!), then wait for it to catch something. The time this takes varies, and you can choose to stay put and wait or go somewhere else in the meantime. Like the above example, it's not required, but simply gives you another small hint.

* The climactic puzzle in the single-player version of ''VideoGame/{{Uru}}: The Path of the Shell'' requires that you stand on a particular spot without moving for fifteen minutes. There are only very subtle clues that this is what you need to do. The multiplayer version has a different path to this ending which doesn't involve waiting.

* In the beginning of ''Videogame/FarCry4'', [[PlayerCharacter Ajay]] is told by BigBad Pagan Min to sit at the dinner table and wait a while as he goes off to interrogate a prisoner. If the player actually waits long enough (15 minutes), [[spoiler:this triggers a secret ending in which Pagan returns and takes Ajay via helicopter to fulfil his objective of putting his mother's ashes to rest in a specific graveyard way across the game map, all without getting involved in the civil war which would otherwise be the plot for a normal playthrough, while Pagan casually reveals several major plot points and twists during the trip]].
** This Easter egg was repeated in ''VideoGame/FarCry5''. There, [[spoiler:the Deputy decides that attempting to arrest Joseph will not end well for anyone and decides to simply call off the arrest.]]

* ''VisualNovel/ChoicesStoriesYouPlay'' often has timed choices. 99 percent of the time, letting the timer run out results in a bad outcome and sometimes even a GameOver. Very rarely, though, the correct choice it to let the timer run out. In ''VisualNovel/{{Bloodbound}}'', one of the stories where this happens, the game gives you a hint by telling you that if none of the given choices work, then "perhaps there is something else you can do, or ''not'' do".

* ''VisualNovel/ChoicesStoriesYouPlay'' often has timed choices. 99 percent of the time, letting the timer run out results in a bad outcome and sometimes even a GameOver. Very rarely, though, the correct choice it to let the timer run out. In ''VisualNovel/Bloodbound'', one of the stories where this happens, the game gives you a hint by telling you that if none of the given choices work, then "perhaps there is something else you can do, or ''not'' do".

* ''VisualNovel/ChoicesStoriesYouPlay'' often has timed choices. 99 percent of the time, letting the timer run out results in a bad outcome and sometimes even a GameOver. Very rarely, though, the correct choice it to let the timer run out. In ''Bloodbound'', one of the stories where this happens, the game gives you a hint by telling you that if none of the given choices work, then "perhaps there is something else you can do, or ''not'' do".

* A variant in ''Film/SawIV''. Rigg is instructed by a tape that he has a timer of 90 minutes to get to the room where his colleague Eric could potentially die in. When he gets to the entrance and goes through it despite Eric's plea for him not to do so, Rigg finds out that the timer referred to the time he had to wait in order to enter without worrying about Eric getting killed.

!!Non-video game examples

[[folder:Fan Fiction]]

* There are several hidden object games that have an award for taking ''more than'' ten minutes to complete a puzzle (Often in the same game that has achievements for completing X puzzles in a row in ''under'' three minutes, and barely enough puzzles to go around). This generally means finding all but one of the hidden objects and then finding something else to do for several minutes before clicking on the last one.
* The text adventure game ''Timequest'' by Creator/LegendEntertainment has a puzzle where you are required to meditate. Simply typing "wait" results in a message telling how your character fidgets around while passing time, and the proper way to do it is to type something like "sit still". Or, if you simply wait around twenty seconds without typing anything, which accomplishes the same thing. Therefore you might easily ''accidentally'' solve this puzzle while you are trying to think of what you are supposed to do!
* In the ''VideoGame/HenryStickminSeries'', you sometimes get timed choices. 99% of the time, letting the timer run out results in failure, but to get ''Fleeing the Complex'''s [[spoiler:Presumed Dead]] ending you need to let the slowly-depleting timer run out at the final choice without picking any of the options that appear.
** Additionally, in the "Stickmin Space Resort" route of ''Completing the Mission'', the second correct choice is to, again, let the timer run out while dealing with two Toppat guards. Henry plows right through one of them and continues up the ramp to the rocket.

* In the beginning of ''Videogame/FarCry4'', the player is told by BigBad Pagan Min to sit at the dinner table and wait a while as he goes off to interrogate a prisoner. If the player actually waits long enough, [[spoiler:this triggers a secret ending in which Pagan returns and takes the PlayerCharacter via helicopter to fulfil his objective of putting mother's ashes to rest in a specific graveyard way across the game map, all without getting involved in the civil war which would otherwise be the plot for a normal playthrough, while Pagan casually reveals several major plot points and twists during the trip]].

** ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyVI'' has one of these as well. You can leave the FloatingContinent as soon as you reach the airship... [[spoiler:and you'll [[PermanentlyMissableContent leave Shadow behind on the falling island.]] He arrives at the airship with 5 seconds remaining in the clock.]]

* ''VideoGame/{{Undertale}}'' has one in the form of the FinalBoss of the [[KillEmAll Genocide]] run, [[spoiler:Sans. His "special attack" involves doing absolutely nothing, trapping you in his turn forever, without letting you have yours, since he knows that on one of your turns you'll kill him. The solution is to simply wait until he falls asleep, then push the box over to the FIGHT command so you can finally kill him. If you try to move the box before he falls asleep, he just resets your position.]]

** Same thing in ''VideoGame/{{Portal 2}}''--you get an achievement for waiting in [[spoiler:Wheatley's]] first puzzle room and refusing to solve it.

** Similarly, in ''VideoGame/{{Journey}}'', you get a trophy if you and your companion sit down facing each other and meditate for 20 seconds at any point in the game.

* ''VideoGame/EarthBound'':