November 4, 2018
by Indie Gamer Chick
Fly O’Clock is like a Mario Party minigame that got released on its own. It costs double the Steam version, a whopping $2. Now mind you, during my first 2 1/2 years as IGC, 85% of all the games I reviewed cost $1 (or 80 Microsoft Points), so this is like a throwback review for me. And, like many XBLIGs I covered, there’s really not a whole lot of meat on these bones to review. Fly O’Clock is like mechanically-separated meat. It’s kind of delicious, but made from the spare parts nobody wants.
If only killing flies was as easy as letting a watch hand glide across them. Little bastards have been buzz-bombing my face all week. Then again, I haven’t showered in like a month now, but I can’t imagine the two things are related.
You’re a fly (or some other animal) on a wristwatch. You jump over the minute and hour hands on it. That’s it. That’s the entirety of the game. Jumping is limited to the corners only. You have no control over which direction you jump or how high or how fast. This is single-button gameplay. You always jump counter-clockwise while the hands move clockwise. It’s sort of like the sweeper obstacle from the TV series Wipeout, only instead of being a person getting knocked into the water, you’re a tiny animal being splattered by a personal time-telling apparatus. There’s not a lot to discuss with Fly O’Clock. The idea is fun in a time-sinky sort of way and feels cathartic in the same way competitive bubble-wrap popping would be. It’s so limited that it almost defies criticism, but I’ll give it shot.
Sometimes it’s hard to know where the hit-boxes are. There were instances where it seemed like I should have died and didn’t, and others where it seemed like I had enough clearance to land a jump and got flattened. The time between dying and starting another round is lightning quick, which is nice. I hate it when fast-paced games make you spend more time between menus than actually playing the game, so they did that right. There’s a handful of multiplayer options. One of them is based on survival, while the other is a race. In the race mode, the first player to do X amount of jumps wins, and the hands only stun you. You absolutely need to play it on a TV because the Switch screen is too compressed for four-player split-screen. But the multiplayer is fine otherwise. Like the main game, it’s fun for a couple of rounds. Fly O’Clock is mostly driven by high scores, so I’m not sure why they didn’t include online leaderboards, and it sucks that they didn’t because I have no way of knowing exactly how good I’ve done. And.. uh.. that’s about it.
Don’t even attempt multiplayer mode on the Switch screen. It’s more squished than the bugs in the game are.
Fly O’Clock is fun in short-bursts. It’s got no depth or complexity to it, but give me five solid minutes of arcadey fun over hours of boring but “deep, meaningful” storytelling any day. And cheap little games like this are awesome for one other reason: people focus on titles that are “pick-up-and-play” and Fly O’Clock is certainly that. But they overlook something: when you get bored and put it down, are you missing out on anything? When Fly O’Clock starts to get old (and hell, I put over an hour over the course of a day into it before that happened), when you put it down, likely to never be picked up again, were you ripped-off by it? Nope. When people roll their eyes at games like this, I ask if you’ve ever put $1 into an arcade machine and expected that experience to net you hours of gameplay? Sit down Twin Galaxies types, I didn’t mean you. Something like this is like putting a quarter into an arcade game, only you get to own the game. You get the full experience from your first couple play-throughs and whatever enjoyment you get out of it is the maximum enjoyment in its entirety. For Fly O’Clock, it was enough for me to nod my head in approval. Keep it simple, stupid.
Fly O’Clock was developed by Digital Melody
Point of Sale: Nintendo Switch, Steam
$1.99 got swatted in the making of this review.
Really, this should only cost $1, even on Switch.
Fly O’Clock is Chick-Approved and ranked on the Indie Gamer Chick Leaderboard
Indie Gamer Chick 
Fly O’Clock
November 4, 2018 by Indie Gamer Chick 1 Comment
Fly O’Clock is like a Mario Party minigame that got released on its own. It costs double the Steam version, a whopping $2. Now mind you, during my first 2 1/2 years as IGC, 85% of all the games I reviewed cost $1 (or 80 Microsoft Points), so this is like a throwback review for me. And, like many XBLIGs I covered, there’s really not a whole lot of meat on these bones to review. Fly O’Clock is like mechanically-separated meat. It’s kind of delicious, but made from the spare parts nobody wants.
If only killing flies was as easy as letting a watch hand glide across them. Little bastards have been buzz-bombing my face all week. Then again, I haven’t showered in like a month now, but I can’t imagine the two things are related.
You’re a fly (or some other animal) on a wristwatch. You jump over the minute and hour hands on it. That’s it. That’s the entirety of the game. Jumping is limited to the corners only. You have no control over which direction you jump or how high or how fast. This is single-button gameplay. You always jump counter-clockwise while the hands move clockwise. It’s sort of like the sweeper obstacle from the TV series Wipeout, only instead of being a person getting knocked into the water, you’re a tiny animal being splattered by a personal time-telling apparatus. There’s not a lot to discuss with Fly O’Clock. The idea is fun in a time-sinky sort of way and feels cathartic in the same way competitive bubble-wrap popping would be. It’s so limited that it almost defies criticism, but I’ll give it shot.
Sometimes it’s hard to know where the hit-boxes are. There were instances where it seemed like I should have died and didn’t, and others where it seemed like I had enough clearance to land a jump and got flattened. The time between dying and starting another round is lightning quick, which is nice. I hate it when fast-paced games make you spend more time between menus than actually playing the game, so they did that right. There’s a handful of multiplayer options. One of them is based on survival, while the other is a race. In the race mode, the first player to do X amount of jumps wins, and the hands only stun you. You absolutely need to play it on a TV because the Switch screen is too compressed for four-player split-screen. But the multiplayer is fine otherwise. Like the main game, it’s fun for a couple of rounds. Fly O’Clock is mostly driven by high scores, so I’m not sure why they didn’t include online leaderboards, and it sucks that they didn’t because I have no way of knowing exactly how good I’ve done. And.. uh.. that’s about it.
Don’t even attempt multiplayer mode on the Switch screen. It’s more squished than the bugs in the game are.
Fly O’Clock is fun in short-bursts. It’s got no depth or complexity to it, but give me five solid minutes of arcadey fun over hours of boring but “deep, meaningful” storytelling any day. And cheap little games like this are awesome for one other reason: people focus on titles that are “pick-up-and-play” and Fly O’Clock is certainly that. But they overlook something: when you get bored and put it down, are you missing out on anything? When Fly O’Clock starts to get old (and hell, I put over an hour over the course of a day into it before that happened), when you put it down, likely to never be picked up again, were you ripped-off by it? Nope. When people roll their eyes at games like this, I ask if you’ve ever put $1 into an arcade machine and expected that experience to net you hours of gameplay? Sit down Twin Galaxies types, I didn’t mean you. Something like this is like putting a quarter into an arcade game, only you get to own the game. You get the full experience from your first couple play-throughs and whatever enjoyment you get out of it is the maximum enjoyment in its entirety. For Fly O’Clock, it was enough for me to nod my head in approval. Keep it simple, stupid.
Point of Sale: Nintendo Switch, Steam
Really, this should only cost $1, even on Switch.
Fly O’Clock is Chick-Approved and ranked on the Indie Gamer Chick Leaderboard
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Filed under Nintendo Switch Reviews, PC Reviews Tagged with Fly O'Clock, Fly O'Clock Steam, Fly O'Clock Switch, Game Review, Gaming, Indie Games, Indie Gaming, Jeff Goldblum couldn't be reached for comment, Nindies, Not I Said the Fly with the Booger in its Eye, PC Games, PC Indie, Switch indies, Switch Nindies, Vincent Price either