Every Second Counts is a two-person game to compete for which player has the best internal sense of time. The game begins when a player presses start and the system presents a number: the target time in seconds. The game will count off 5 seconds so that each player can internalize the cadence of a second and then keep counting themselves, trying to press their button as close to the target time as they can. Whoever gets closer to the target time wins the game.
The physical design of Every Second Counts was inspired by grandfather clocks, an appropriate facade for a game about keeping track of time. To build Every Second Counts, the team used an Arduino to program the game logic and control the inputs: arcade buttons, and the outputs: an LED screen and buzzer. As the first experience the team had working with Arduino, it was a great learning experience to learn how to put together many digital components to make a physical game.
