I didn’t expect a brief game about flies to make me emotional. But when I finished Time Flies, I nearly began to cry.
Time Flies initially seems very silly. You play as a little buzzing fly that has to try and accomplish a bucket list of tasks before it, well, kicks the bucket, something that happens in a matter of seconds. The tasks are vague, with titles like “Just Roll with It” or “Meet Your Biggest Fan,” and the goal of the game is to zip around each level, generally cause mischief to complete the tasks, and finish an entire stage’s bucket list to move on to the next one. (Naturally, the last task of each list involves dying in some way.)
The task titles are usually a joke or a pun of some kind, and a lot of the fun is finding objects around the levels and messing with them to see if they fit. Unrolling an entire roll of toilet paper completes the “Just Roll with It” task. You “Meet Your Biggest Fan” by turning on a fan.
When you’re flying around from place to place, things stay zoomed out and the fly is just a tiny speck. When you approach something of some significance, though, the game will zoom in so that you can more easily hop on that roll of toilet paper or grab the fan’s chain. The tighter perspectives are also generally a clue that you’re interacting with something that’s part of your list of goals.
