According to scientists, there are some species of flies that only live for about 24 hours. Can you imagine having your entire life, your entire existence, summarised into one simple day? You’ll probably have time for just one meal, one egg laying session, you’ll barely leave the place you were born at. Some existence dread, isn’t it? Time Flies, by Playables and publisher Panic (the same folks behind Untitled Goose Game), tries to evoke the same sensation of having your entire life being summarised in just a while, but in a more extreme way. Also a more boring way.

Look at me, I’m basically the arthropod Grandmaster Flash.

The difference between the biological functions of these real-life flies and the flies you control in this game is that the little bugs in Time Flies live for much less time. The game will ask you where you come from, and basically dictate that the lifespan of your playable fly is the same as the average lifespan of someone from your country, the difference being that it will count that double-digit number in seconds, not years. For instance, if the average lifespan of a Brazilian is 72 years, your Brazilian fly will live for 72 seconds. You will then have to complete as many objectives from your personal bucket list as possible, before your inevitable demise.

This is the entire premise behind Time Flies. Fly around a graphically-confusing household (it’s all monochromatic, minimalist, and designed as if it had been drawn on MS Paint), interact with any object you can, and try to complete your bucket list before you die. You also need to avoid falling onto traps, such as a glass of champagne or an actual flytrap. Finally, you can occasionally “cheat death” by interacting with some clocks; if you do so, you might be able to extend your lifespan by a few extra seconds.

You can extend your lifespan by interacting with some clocks. I don’t know why you would want to play this game for longer, but there’s an option…

Completing the bucket list sounds more exciting than it actually is. You might need to touch some ants on the floor – that constitutes “making friends before dying”. Changing the TV channel by landing on the remote is another “challenge”, and so is touching on the foot of a sleeping person, making them laugh. It’s not exciting at all, because that’s all you really do: mundane tasks with the outcome being a monstrously brief animation, and no exciting payoff to speak of. The game encourages you to do multiple runs as well, as one of its very few instances of a puzzle to be solved is the task of looking for a dozen pieces of a jigsaw you can assemble.

It’s not exciting, but it’s one of the few ways you can hear something else other than your buzzes.

As you can imagine, Time Flies is just not very interesting to play. Visually speaking, it’s dull. When it comes to its sound department, there isn’t one – all you’re going to hear is annoying flies buzzing around. The gameplay is as shallow as a puddle, and whether or not this was meant to be comedic or philosophical, it has failed either way. I wasn’t laughing or thinking about the futility of a small amount of time spent alive, even if this was supposed to be one of its (smuggish) intentions – I was just beyond bored. 

Time Flies is available now on PS5, PC and Switch.

Reviewed on PS5.

A copy of Time Flies was provided by the publisher.