time flies

time flies (2025) is a fun little game by Michael Frei and Raphaël Munoz about being a fly. it's amazing and i loved playing it.

the premise is that, as this fly, you live downwards of 100 seconds in which you must accomplish an array of tasks to complete your bucket list for that level and move on to the next. it's a kind of sisyphean act to play through it, because you will die and start over again many times as you figure out what you must do. but it's not frustrating at all. on the contrary.

the world that we, as the fly, inhabit is full of mundane absurdity and fun little gimmicks that make you smile and giggle. and it is wonderfully reactive and continuous -- like every time you die you leave behind a little fly corpse that you can find again in your next life.

one of my corpses to be seen on the floor there, left of the wheelchair.

the art style is awesome. it kind of fits perfectly into the mundane yet absurd premise and gameplay. the animations are amazingly smooth, the physics feel real and solid (despite the fly obviously being unusually strong. but its impact on the world, while exaggerated, still feels small enough -- it's perfectly balanced), and the sound design is so crispy clean, they really did find all the perfect sound effects for everything.

so yeah. you should play it.

(i recommend selecting Japan as your country for the maximum amount of lifetime (that i've found))