Life is expensive, and the seconds we have alive are the currency. Whether we are spending them on work, hobbies, or family, those seconds can tick down quickly. Developer Playables, creators of 2019’s incredible KIDS, has decided to tackle those seconds in a much more apparent way. What if you’re a fly, with a bucket list, and your lifespan is mere seconds?
To Do or Not To Do
In Time Flies, you are exactly that. You play a fly with a to-do list, and you’ve only got a set number of seconds to do all of them. While a housefly in the real world usually has 15 to 30 days to get its chores done, you only have seconds. And those seconds are decided entirely by where you live.
Living in the United States, where our average life expectancy is 78.4 years, means my fly has just 78.4 seconds to complete its little tasks. These tasks range from “Getting Drunk” and “Making Friends” to “Finding Beauty” and “Traveling the World.” What does it mean to get drunk as a fly? Or make friends? Or explore sexuality? Well, that’s up to you to figure out! And not a lot of time to do so! Perhaps you buck the list entirely, and spend your seconds playing guitar or golf. It really is all up to you.
You control the fly with the left stick, and that is all there is. Every interaction with the world or change you make is done via that one stick. You can throw your tiny body against bottles to roll them, or fly across a canvas covered in paint to make art, all in that single motion. Everything else is up to you to discover. When you do find something that is interactable, the timer stops briefly to let you experiment. And there may be other ways to add time too! Who knows!
What Does a Fly See?
On the graphical side, Time Flies is a very simple game. Backgrounds exist in white, with the world superimposed in shaky, black lines. Everything has a pencil-esque touch to it. No line is truly straight, pain-stakingly hand-drawn by the art team. I loved the simplistic view of everything, especially once certain lighting elements begin to flip the scheme.
The only complaint I took from Time Flies’ presentation was that certain room transitions were hard to find in the simple space. Especially when it comes to moving between floors, the backgrounds can be finicky about where you’re allowed to go up, and where you’re not. But this is a very minor nitpick in an otherwise very striking game.
Prepare To Die
In Time Flies, you have to be prepared to die. A lot. Across four different maps, and four different bucket lists, I died 33 times.
I know this for two reasons. First, the game reminds you at the start of each run what number fly this is. No Jerry the Fly, or Perry the Fly, or Juniper the Fly. Just Fly #18 and Fly #22. Your lineage is nothing but a number, even if parts of the world remain persistent between runs. This includes the crumbled corpses of your former attempts, scattered about the map.
Looking at my second map, I can see where many of my runs ended as I sprinted from one side to the other with the seconds ticking down. My fallen wings, crumbled into wine glasses or spinning endlessly on a vinyl. A memorial of my failure. Or perhaps my success?
Final Thoughts: So, What Is Time Flies?
“Time Flies is a little adventure about our limited time in this world,” claims Playables, but Time Flies is much more than that. It is a mirror held up to our own experiences, about how the choices we make influence our time. While we can make lists and plans, sometimes we just run out of time due to factors outside our control. Sometimes it’s better just to learn a little, finish a little, and then spin on a record for a while. Enjoy the last little bits of time we have with each other while the seconds tick down.
Or we can snort drugs in a museum and party for no reason other than to party. Whatever passes the seconds.
Score: 9.0/10
Time Flies, developed by Playables and published by Panic, releases July 31, 2025, on PC, macOS, PlayStation 4 & 5, and Nintendo Switch 1 & 2. MSRP: $14.99. Version reviewed: PS5. Playtime: ~2 hours.
Disclaimer: A review code was provided by the publisher.
Gary is a jack-of-all-trades video game enthusiast based in Boston, MA. A semi-professional fighting game player, even less professional Apex Legends player, and even less professional adult, he spends most of his time poking at strange indie gems and reading about the need for more diverse voices in gaming criticism. He invites anyone to recommend anything he's missed in the gaming world via Twitter or BlueSky, where he can found under the username @grtnpwrfl. When he isn't spending his time playing games, Gary is an avid New England Patriots fan and frequent hiker.
