Time Flies is a clever little puzzle/adventure game that likely isn’t what you expect it to be. For one thing, despite its black-and-white simplicity, it isn’t for kids. On the other hand, it’s much more thoughtful than it looks.
You are a fly. And you’re going to die: repeatedly and rather quickly.
That’s the overarching modus operandi of this perception-shifting insect puzzler. You’ll begin with the abilities and expected lifespan of a common housefly, based on where you might be buzzing about in the world. In the U.S., that mortal timeline is a total of 76.4 seconds. On the other hand, in Japan your fly can live to the ripe old age of 84.6 seconds.
Within those time limits (which can be slightly adjusted if you know your way around a clock), your buzzing braveheart has a bucket list of activities that he must accomplish while avoiding any sticky, drippy or otherwise life-ending hazards. Your task as a player? To experiment with your 2D line art world in search of ways to make those tiny dreams come true.
Objectives such as “read a book,” “travel around the world” and “find God” are a few of the items you pursue. And you must bee-bop about the environment—filled with various rooms, keyholes and hidden spaces—to fulfill the entire list before your time runs out.
Sometimes you’ll land (literally) on a solution quite by accident as you realize, for instance, that “make someone laugh” is as simple as buzzing about the bottom of a sleeping man’s bare foot. Other times a given bucket-list checkmark will involve more heady experiments.
For every potential solution, there are also incinerating bulbs and lit candles, drowning pools of water, sticky flypaper traps and other hazards that can cut your exploration short. Eventually putting together a perfect list-checking route through the environment’s contemplative quandaries and gooey traps will allow you to start a new fly’s life in a new location.
Time Flies is a single player game played from a third-person perspective. And it does not require an online connection to play.
This is an engaging, low-stress game that rewards players with a feeling of accomplishment when you figure out its puzzling objectives. And gameplay can be limited to short bursts of seconds rather than long video gaming hours.
Despite some of its silly and slightly off-color visual humor, this game might also challenge players to reflect upon their own use of a limited lifespan. How do we fill our seconds and try to create a sense of order in a chaotic world? What populates our bucket list of hoped for achievements?
Again, as cute and simple looking as Time Flies appears to be, it’s designed for an adult audience. The little fly protagonist is required to “get drunk” by sipping up a drop of spilled booze, for instance, and to “go on a trip” by gobbling a crushed pill left on a bench.
There’s also some strong toilet humor in the game involving fecal waste, feminine hygiene products and a flower growing out of a dead corpse’s backside. And in terms of more M-rated content concerns, we’re also exposed to some bare genital and backside nudity in other parts of the line-drawn world as well.
Players might see this clever game as a puzzle adventure or even a thought-provoking visual novel, depending on their gameplaying perspective. Just keep in mind that Time Flies’ 2D, line art visuals come with enough adult content to earn an M rating.
After spending more than two decades touring, directing, writing and producing for Christian theater and radio (most recently for Adventures in Odyssey, which he still contributes to), Bob joined the Plugged In staff to help us focus more heavily on video games. He is also one of our primary movie reviewers.
