In Time Flies complete your bucket list — as a fly

One of the weirder games revealed during this year’s Summer Game Fest was undoubtedly Time Flies. It appears that it is a time management game. You explore houses and attempt to reach as many objectives before you die. Every run takes between 1 and 2 minutes.

But the reveal trailer’s whimsical music belied the nihilistic tagline that appears at the end like a mic being dropped: “You are a fly. You have a limited life. Take advantage of every moment you can. Because we are all going to die.”

“I was interested in having a fly as being something meaningless, almost annoying,” Swiss designer and animator Michael Frei, one half of the game’s development team (along with programmer Raphaël Munoz), told me. “And to do to do something meaningful as a fly in the world with a bucket list […] I think that’s something we ask ourselves every day, like, ‘What is meaningful to me? What should I do with my life?’”

Time fliesYou take control of the fly and explore a minimally drawn world. The demo featured several rooms within a home or apartment. As you explore each room, opportunities arise to check items off the fly’s bucket list, while trying to avoid an abrupt ending to the critter’s already brief life. Flys dream of being drunk before they die. If you dive into the wine glass, your life is over. But if you alight near the droplet, it will make your list one less. It’s simple, but entertaining gameplay that encourages players to explore the house and find interactivity points.

Frei said that’s one way to play, although just as in real life, flitting around and dying without accomplishing a single meaningful goal is just as valid.

“I guess it’s up to the player in the end,” he said.

Image: Michael Frei, Raphaël Munoz/Playables

There’s another wrinkle: Your allotted play time varies based on your geographical location. After comparing your IP address with a country’s list of expected life spans, the game assigns you a time limit of approximately 30 seconds. The game will give you more time to explore countries that have better health and are less polluted.

“You know, depending on where you live, you’re more lucky or less luck in life,” Frei, who lives in Switzerland — a country with one of the highest life expectancies in the world — remarked.

Time flies appears much less abstract than Frei’s previous games, Plug & Play 2015. For Kids2019), that are more interactive than short movies. They involve pushing, pulling and prodding characters through black-and white environments. Time fliesIt is his first attempt at a game with any sort of traditional goal or gameplay. That’s not to say you’ll be leveling up your fly’s skill trees, but it’s an evolution nonetheless.

Visually, Time fliesThis was the inspiration for GliderAn old Mac classic game. “It was the first video game I ever played, on my father’s Mac Classic, the first Mac you could buy in Switzerland,” Frei recalled.

This is the original idea which evolved into Time fliesThe browser extension summoned buzzing insects to hover around websites that tracked you. The character he created was based on a single pixels rather than an animated fly. It seems like every somewhat recognizable element of the game was sculpted from the clay of a stranger, less accessible idea, and the result is something that we can’t quite predict. Frei said there are facets of the game he hasn’t shown yet and won’t discuss.

“I’m kind of lucky in a way to be able to do projects on my own terms, which is, I think, kind of a big privilege,” he said. Each project he’s done has just barely funded the next. “I have creative freedom,” he continued. “I don’t have to comply to anyone’s expectations. And that’s interesting to me.

“Also to play with the expectation of the audience. That’s always pretty interesting.”

They also did research on what bucket lists people typically keep. “That was a very depressing endeavor, because most people that publish their bucket list online, these bucket lists are more about bragging rights than about meaningfulness,” Frei said. “I don’t have a bucket list. I just hope I won’t have too many regrets when I’m dying.”

Time fliesIt is expected to release on Mac, Nintendo Switch and Windows PC by 2023.