PanicI don’t want to alarm you, but you’re going to cease to exist. Maybe not soon, but one day, your time will run out. You’ll be gone, having left behind countless things you never got the chance to do. You won’t take that trip you always wanted to, or learn to paint, or even finish that book, and you probably should have called your mom more. But, hey, things could be worse. You could be a house fly.In Time Flies, you have exactly 76.4 seconds to live, at least if you’re living in the United States. When the game begins, it asks you to select your country, and its average life expectancy turns into how many seconds you have until your fly avatar perishes.Times Flies isn’t about trying to outrun your mortal fate; it’s about what you do with the time you have left. In each of the four levels, you’re given a bucket list. Check off all the items, and congratulations — you’ve lived a fulfilling life and can move on to the next stage. Fail to accomplish everything, and you start over as a brand-new fly, full of vigor and ready to seize the next minute and change.Like in fellow checklist sim Untitled Goose Game, part of the fun is in figuring out exactly what your goals are. How does a fly bring people together or travel the world? Questions like those make Time Flies a game of exploration and experimentation. Each level is a series of screens rendered in a minimalist black-and-white style, a sketchy, almost wireframe look that calls back to early PC games. All around this outlined world are objects you can interact with, from guitars and rocking horses to light switches. Figuring out how to fulfill your aspirations by bumping into these strange collections of objects is fun, no matter how many lives it takes you.Decoding your bucket list is half the fun of Time Flies. | PanicOnce you’ve figured out how to advance, the goal becomes to do it quickly. Only by crossing off your entire bucket list in one life will you beat each level, so finding shortcuts and working out the best order to do everything becomes crucial. It feels like a tiny dose of speedrunning, as you shave off precious seconds and figure out routes with the fewest wasted moments. It’s in this frantic trial-and-error phase that Time Flies hits hardest. Each time you fail to complete your list, your fly drops dead, and it stays there the next time you come back. You’re not one fly, but many, each buzzing as hard as they can to finish everything they want to do. The joy of first discovering what it means to spend time with family or explore sexuality as a fly gives way to a race to get it all done, turning the best parts of your short life into mere goals to chase for fear of wasting your time.Time Flies has a big message, but isn’t afraid to make you laugh at it. | PanicTime Flies lets its silly and somber sides coexist without ever stamping out the other. Despite the theme of mortality, this is a goofy game full of sight gags and gallows humor. It’s funny every time the soundtrack cuts out when your fly plunks into a glass of water and immediately drowns, or when you stumble upon what it means to make friends with an ant. A level set in a museum is packed with jokes about the meaning of famous paintings, making you see the humorous side of serious artwork.Time Flies is a rare accomplishment, a game with a sincere message that doesn’t beat you over the head. It acknowledges that since life is so short, it’s worth coming to terms with that and trying to live well, but that trying too hard might just take all the fun out of it. Fittingly, it’s a good way to spend a bit of your limited time.Time Flies is available now on PlayStation 5, Nintendo Switch, and PC.