Please Hold is an interactive, story driven game that is experienced through an analog telephone. The user interacts with and speaks into the phone to solve puzzles, find clues and advance the story. Please Hold examines human nature through interaction with archaic computational devices and their associated ingrained social constructs.

“Thank you for purchasing the Inter-Tel 2040, the newest in trans-dimensional, trans-temporal communication devices. Press 1 to begin setup. Thank you. Please hold for further instructions.” --- And so begins the player’s interaction with a labyrinthian narrative that combines traditional call-center tropes (frustrating navigation, pleasantly unpleasant hold music, push-button choices, etc) with delightfully obtuse interactions (manipulative sonic landscapes, an AI ‘friend’, text-to-speech conversations, hidden mini-games, choice-driven story-telling, and more). The player’s perceived goal is to activate their phone, and this goal is hindered/helped by the various hidden narratives and objectives that they encounter, including tests of memory, an AI that doesn’t know they’re not human, relaxation ‘channels’, a call-center employee trying to choose between boyfriends, and others. These side stories, which seem at first as a distraction, become more and more intriguing, guiding the player into a beguiling world with a familiar-yet-passe interface.