As I sat down to jot down this evaluation, I typed ‘What’s the lifespan of a housefly?’ into my search bar. It’s not a query I ever actually contemplated previous to my playthrough of Time Flies. By some means, this minimalist indie puzzler bought me curious sufficient to surprise. I can’t say there’s ever been a chunk of media that’s ever piqued my normal curiosity in a pest in fairly the identical manner.
That’s as a result of Time Flies’ protagonist is a fly, they usually made him cool. That’s not how I believed I’d be anchoring this evaluation, but it surely’s the reality. Very like how the goose in Untitled Goose Recreation wins hearts by being a chaotic menace, the fly is an existentialist insurgent worthy of an Albert Camus novella about, say, the absurd seek for that means in a life measured in seconds.
That’s primarily what Time Flies is all about. Developed by Michael Frei and Raphaël Munoz and revealed by Panic (of Untitled Goose Recreation fame), the sport places you in charge of a tiny housefly with a bucket checklist of cheeky to-dos to finish. The catch is that, relying on the place you reside, you’ll solely have round a minute and a half or much less to tick all of them to progress.
Utilizing information from the World Well being Organisation’s life expectancy figures, your in-game lifespan (measured in seconds) is tied to the common life expectancy of the nation you are in. In my case, Singapore’s 83.9 years afford me 83.9 seconds of playtime, after which your little fly drops useless and you start anew. You’re free to set any nation as your location forward of every ‘run’.
There aren’t any button inputs; solely the management stick is used to manoeuvre round with buttery easy flight physics. Exploration is the secret. You’re given a vaguely phrased checklist of goals like ‘Get Wealthy’, ‘Begin a Revolution’, ‘Go With The Stream’, and so forth., and it’s as much as you to experiment with the world round you thru trial-and-error.
For instance, in case your purpose is to ‘Study an Instrument,’ you possibly can strive buzzing across the strings of a guitar. Duties are by no means too cryptic and sometimes play out in ironic or surprising methods with a deadpan supply that lends the sport a particular comedic tone. Instances Flies by no means tells you what to do, opting to allow you to poke round and determine issues out by yourself.
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Knowledge by Household Gaming Database
Regardless of the small measurement of every of the sport’s 4 areas, there’s loads to find. The digital camera zooms in once you’re close to sure objects, which is often your cue that there’s one thing to work together with. Time pauses throughout these moments to allow you to prod, which as a rule results in the quiet satisfaction of ticking one thing off your bucket checklist.
Unlocking a brand new stage requires you to tick off all area-specific goals inside a single life, which is simpler mentioned than executed. Thankfully, you’re in a position to purchase your self some further time when there’s a clock close by. You actually flip again the clock to realize treasured seconds wanted to finish your duties, which provides a layer of technique to the gameplay.
There’s additionally a bigger achievement checklist to chip away at as you play, together with 12 hidden puzzle items scattered all through the sport. These collectibles are impressively well-hidden, requiring cautious commentary to smell out and exact timing to entry. Trying to find the final puzzle piece stored me invested and discovering it made me really feel mighty intelligent.
The sport’s visible aesthetic gained’t be for everybody, but it surely completely lends character. Settings are imperfectly hand-drawn but slyly expressive, rendered in black and white with no gradients or shading. It’s unpolished in a deliberate manner, touchdown someplace between doodles on the margins of a scholar’s philosophy pocket book and early Macintosh aesthetics.
Time Flies equally makes use of sound design sparingly however successfully. All through the sport, two sounds persist: the regular ticking down of the clock and the tender buzz of your wings. Ambient particulars like dripping water, the crackle of previous jazz information, flickering TV channels, and even a tunable radio add allure and atmosphere to the world.
If Time Flies has a weak point, it’s one the sport totally owns: it’s brief. The sport might be accomplished inside two hours or so, and when you’ve completed it and picked up all its secrets and techniques, there’s little incentive to return. The builders clearly anticipate criticism of the sport’s size and, at one level, even break the fourth wall to softly rib themselves.
Its creators know precisely what sort of recreation they’ve made, they usually lean into it totally and keep dedicated to the bit. Time Flies feels just like the lovechild of Untitled Goose Recreation and Minit, mixing checklist-based mischief with intelligent time constraints. However the place the goose is gleefully anarchic, the fly revels within the shortness of life and is dedicated to having fun with the journey.
Only a warning, the sport does depict nudity and drug/alcohol use, so it’s not one for the children. Instances Flies runs flawlessly on each the Swap and Swap 2 with no discernible distinction in efficiency aside from barely speedier load instances on Nintendo’s latest console. Oh, and should you had been questioning, houseflies reside between 15 to 30 days. Now .
Conclusion
Time Flies is a intelligent puzzle-exploration recreation and a playful meditation on life’s brevity. Its gameplay mechanics don’t evolve dramatically from one stage to the following, however that by no means felt like a hindrance. It’s a good, centered expertise that delivers its core concepts with confidence however doesn’t essentially push past them. That mentioned, Time Flies by no means appears like an idea stretched too skinny, and it bows out earlier than overstaying its welcome.
