Now, however, Time Flies finally has an official release date: July 31.
The announcement arrived alongside a new trailer for Time Flies, which shows a number of housefly rites of passage, like tickling a sleeping human’s foot, getting stuck in a gelatinous dessert dish, and spinning around on a record player. Houseflies have notoriously short lifespans — generally around 15 to 30 days — and Time Flies takes this into account. The game challenges players to check items off the fly’s bucket list before it meets its inevitable demise.
The game’s tagline sums things up pretty well: “You are a fly. Your life is short. Make the best of the time you have. Because we are all going to die.”
“I was interested in having a fly as being something meaningless, almost annoying, and to do something meaningful as a fly in the world with a bucket list,” designer and animator Michael Frei told Polygon in 2022.
The length of the fly’s life varies depending on what location players live in. Upon starting the game, players are prompted to select a country. Each country is accompanied by a number representing its average (human) life expectancy, and that number determines how many seconds the fly will live for. Of course, when you die, you can start over, and there’s no requirement to complete bucket list items — players are free to tell the bucket list to buzz off, ignoring it in favor of simply zooming around the game’s environment until the fly expires.
“I think that’s something we ask ourselves every day,” Frei said. “Like, ‘What is meaningful to me? What should I do with my life?’”
Time Flies is set to launch on Mac, Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 5, and Windows PC on July 31.
