Review: Time Flies (Nintendo Switch)

Time Flies is one of the simplest games I’ve played. It also happens to be one of the most creative games I’ve tried this year. It follows the adventures of a common housefly. Actually, multiple flies. Turns out, they lead interesting lives. Short, but interesting. And that means every second counts.

Gameplay involves taking control of a single fly, navigating various environments and exploring the world around you. You begin with Fly #1, starting with about 80 seconds to live. A handy timer in the top-left corner counts down to your impending demise. Once you perish—either by time running out or environmental dangers—it’s back to the beginning as you take control of Fly #2. If you revisit the area in which Fly #1 bit the dust, you’ll see its body where it expired. It’s a small but neat touch that adds to the realistic feeling of controlling an insect with a short lifespan.

As you soar through each room of a house, you’ll discover objects to interact with. These creative scenes serve as simple puzzles to solve. Thankfully, your short lifespan pauses while you solve them. It makes the game feel relaxing despite the pressure of dying in just a minute or two.

Speaking of lifespan, Time Flies begins with a list of every country in the world and the average lifespan of a fly in that region. It defaults to your profile’s country, but you can change it. I recommend using Japan, which has one of the longest I could find in the list. It’s an odd little addition that I loved scrolling through.

Another touch I enjoyed was the addition of a bucket list. The solvable puzzles are ticked off a literal list as you complete them. For example, switching on a record player and standing on the record as it revolves ticks off “Go on tour”. There are ten such items to discover. The goal is to complete them all with a single fly. You’ll likely work through many flies to find each puzzle then speed run your way through them all with a single fly once you’ve figured things out. Once the list is complete, you move on to the next scene.

There are four environments to explore, giving you a couple of hours’ worth of gameplay. Additionally, there are 12 puzzle pieces to discover, adding some longevity to proceedings. At $14.99, it borders on being too steep for the amount of content. Thankfully, the creativity and fun help negate that issue.

Time Flies sports a simple black-and-white aesthetic, depicting how a fly might view the world. It’s probably not how they view the world, but the line-art style is different enough from our own outlook to make it stand out. Coupled with that short lifespan, it just feels like this could be a fly’s world. Well done.

One thing players should be aware of coming into Time Flies is its mature rating. Personally, I didn’t find anything offensive on display, but there are scenes depicting drug and alcohol use. If substance abuse is an issue for you, even though we’re talking about insects here, then steer clear. More noticeable is the nudity, with several depictions of human bodies in some of the rooms. For example, there’s clearly a naked statue at an art gallery. Again, if these scenes offend you, steer clear.