Time Flies

One of the things I love most about video games is their capacity to help us interactively experience life from new perspectives and to thus generate empathy and cognitive compassion for others. At their best, games can be empathy gyms. 

These thoughts occurred to me as I played through Time Flies, in which you are a humble fly, perhaps one of the most maligned of all the creatures we share our planet with. Who hasn’t swatted a fly away? Or ushered them out a window? Or worse? The phrase ‘they wouldn’t hurt a fly’ – a person so gentle they wouldn’t even hurt the most odious and insignificant of creatures – hints at the lowly status of our sometime housemates. They are pests to be gotten rid of. By having players become a fly – and not in a horrific Jeff Goldblum kind of way – Time Flies invites us to empathise with them. But could my narrow, biased net of empathy be extended to include these buzzing nuisances? What could I have in common with such detestable life forms? The answer – which Time Flies explores with subtlety, depth and humour – is, it turns out, rather obvious: our shared mortality. 

On the opening screen you are confronted with a stark announcement of your life expectancy, based upon the country in which you are playing. In Japan, I was told, it is 84.5 seconds. Seconds! A footnote clarifies that the figure, taken from the World Health Organisation, is actually in years for humans. You can change the country and be shocked, although perhaps not surprised, at how life expectancies differ dramatically depending on where you live in the world. (I don’t think I’ve ever seen social commentary in a drop-down menu before). However, in this game about the fleetingness of life, you are a fly, and your lifespan(s) will be counted in tens of seconds. A striking metaphor for the ephemeral nature of all life, including humans’.  

Despite this heavy main theme, the first thing I noticed when I became a fly was the joyful, light, flitting sense of movement. This game is all about the simple but effective flight mechanics. No button inputs are required; you guide your fly around using only the joystick or D-pad. It’s an effortless, hypnotic, topsy-turvy dance that really draws you in. Being a fly in this game just feels so good, so right; for instance, when you bounce repeatedly off of a window or float your way up to a ceiling and likewise off a light bulb (with tragic consequences). Time Flies is, among other things, a wonderfully inventive flight simulator. The fun and freedom of the movement create a satisfying counterpoint to the weighty existential themes at play in the game. 

These playable flies are perhaps the smallest character sprites I’ve ever had the pleasure of guiding across a screen. Their innate propensity to buzz about here, there and everywhere, along with their diminutive size, opens up unique perspectives and vantage points – new ways and angles to look at and interact with everyday objects that we perhaps don’t always notice. It turns out that a fly’s view of the world might help us to see again and notice how marvellous and interesting the quotidian really is. A fine lesson in the importance of empathy. 

Each of the short but densely packed levels/locations (there are four, which are best kept as a surprise) is beautifully designed and a pleasure to traverse and explore. But you only have a finite amount of time (in my case, 84.5 seconds). Life is short, and there’s much to do. Unlike artist and game designer Michael Frei’s previous projects, Plug and Play (2015) and Kids (2019), which play rather like short experimental interactive art pieces, Time Flies has clear goals, objectives and challenges. It’s also more accessible and fully realised – certainly, in terms of game mechanics – than their previous work. There’s a bucket list of challenges, goals and achievements to tick off in each location. These seemingly fun activities lead to existential questions around what it means to live a ‘good’ life and how best to spend one’s brief time on this planet.

You are always under time pressure, as the punning name of the game suggests: time flies. The riddle-like bucket list has you interacting with the world as a fly might, and the solutions-in-action to the riddles are often rather funny. ‘Explore sexuality’, a bucket list item in level two, is a particular favourite of mine. In order to cross off all the items before your time runs out, you must plan out the optimum route across each location. An apt metaphor for the paths we choose to take through our lives.  

The starkness of the game’s message is reflected in the exquisite hand-drawn art style, which is simple but remarkably detailed. Indeed, the world is surprisingly dense, with lots of nooks and crannies to explore and secrets to discover. The black and white line drawing is elegant and spare, and the animations of the flies, especially the wings and legs, are painstakingly precise and delicate. A special mention for the elegant and playful use of public domain music. Listen out for a Chopin piece playing in the most unusual of contexts. The sound design is excellent too: the buzzing of flies’ wings, the pitter-patter of their feet on furniture, and the constantly ticking clock, counting down the seconds to your death. 

To complete a level, you must die, death being the final thing on each of the bucket lists (a playful and thought-provoking subversion of what it means to ‘win’ at a video game and of how we as humans view death). There are ways to prolong your life, but you can’t outrun, or in this case out-fly, death. It is everywhere. The dead bodies of flies from previous runs (or flights, I should perhaps say) litter the world like memento mori. There are many ways to die before old age, and even if you make it there, only death awaits. As it does for us all.

Time Flies is certainly a game full of existential dread – time is always running out, and death is chasing you down – but it is also full of wry, life-affirming humour in the face of the inevitable. (Also, there’s some rather funny toilet humour). Yes, you have to die, but why not have some fun on the way out the window? Time flies when you’re having fun.