Our review of Time Flies, developed by Michael Frei and Raphaël Munoz (and released by Playables). Available now for Steam/Deck (reviewed), Windows, Mac, PS5, and Switch.
WHAT IS IT?
An itty-bitty adventure with an itty-bitty protagonist.
IS IT GOOD?
It’s quietly amusing, and mercifully short enough not to overstay its welcome.
WHO SHOULD PLAY IT?
Air travellers.
PRETTY FLY
Time Flies has a delightfully simple premise and even more delightfully simple gameplay: you’re a fly, you’ve got a life expectancy ranging from roughly 54 seconds to 85 seconds, and you have a laundry list of mini-quests to solve before the timer runs out.
Most of the offered hints are fairly oblique – “Start a Revolution”, for instance, is triggered by a silly pun – though the good news is that you largely solve them by trial-and-error. Since all your fly can do is, well, fly – literally, the only control in the game is your joystick, there are no buttons to press – the point of the game is simply to explore the world, interact with the environment until you trigger something fun.
Spread across four environments, Time Flies is a goofy little experiment. Each time you set out, you explore a bit more of the given environment, learn more about how to check items off your task list, then promptly die and reset so you can do it all over again. Structurally, it’s not unlike Majora’s Mask or Outer Wilds; games where you’re constrained by a timer which resets all your progress after each attempt.
The goal, then, is to become more and more efficient, so you can quickly tackle everything before your fly dies of old age. (There are, of course, other ways for your teeny little protagonist to meet his mortal end; you’ll have to discover those on your own.)
BY THE SEAT OF YOUR PANTS
Time Flies is, by design, a bit stressful. While it’s basically a comedy game, the challenge of chasing down tasks before the timer runs out can border on frustrating, especially when you’re literally within reach of your end goal. That said, the missions are so short and reset so quickly that each failure is little more than a lesson in increased efficiency.
The fact that the lifespans are indexed against real-world human lifespans – a fly “born” in Canada will have a life span in the 80s, compared to, say, a fly from Somalia – adds a slyly political element to this. While you can make the game easier for yourself by choosing a country with a higher lifespan, you’re forced to confront the fact that a shocking amount of the world’s population is born with a lifespan in the 50s.
ON THE WALL
Time Flies pads out its brief runtime with twelve hidden puzzle pieces to track down, plus a bevy of discoverable environmental interactions which don’t actually check any boxes on your mission list, but which are fun to play around with. (Try changing the channels on the television, for example.)
Time Flies also gets exponentially stranger as it progresses, with the developers baking in various in-jokes and strange asides for those who stick through it to the end. If you think you’re going to simply be tickling the toes off giant humans, Mister Mosquito-style, rest assured, Time Flies has a lot more in store.
***
Final score: 8/10 Jeff Goldblums.
Visit the official website for Time Flies here.
