Every Second

Every Second is a sci-fi themed action puzzle platformer developed for the 2019 Summer #ue4jam with the theme ‘Make It Count’. Set in a futuristic environment, the game combines classic platformer mechanics with slider puzzle-type gameplay as players race against the clock to complete challenging quests. This side-scrolling 2D game offers a unique blend of platforming action and puzzle-solving under time pressure.

Every Second: A Forgotten Gem of the 2019 Summer #ue4jam

In the vast and ever-expanding universe of indie game development, countless titles are conceived, developed, and released into the wild, only to vanish into the digital ether. Some, however, deserve a second look, not for their blockbuster budgets or genre-defining innovations, but for their earnest attempt to fuse ideas into a cohesive, challenging whole. Every Second, a 2019 action-puzzle platformer from the micro-studio CP-Dimensions, is one such title—a fascinating, flawed, and ultimately poignant artifact of a game jam that encapsulates both the boundless creativity and the harsh practical limitations of its origin.

Development History & Context

Studio and Vision: Every Second was developed by CP-Dimensions, a developer so enigmatic that they appear to exist primarily as the entity that submitted this single game to databases. The game was created for the Summer 2019 #ue4jam, a game jam centered around Unreal Engine 4 with the theme “Make It Count.” This context is crucial to understanding everything about the game. Game jams are pressure cookers of creativity, where developers have a severely limited timeframe—often just 48 to 72 hours—to conceptualize, build, and polish a complete experience. The jam environment prioritizes a core mechanic and a cohesive theme over scalability, extensive bug testing, or user-friendly progression systems.

Technological Constraints and Landscape: By 2019, Unreal Engine 4 had become a powerful and accessible tool for indie developers, capable of producing visually stunning “AA” games. However, for a small team or solo developer operating on a jam timeline, its complexity had to be carefully managed. The choice to create a 2D side-scrolling platformer within the 3D-centric UE4 suggests a pragmatic approach, leveraging the engine’s robust physics and rendering capabilities for a simpler, more focused project. This was the same year that saw the release of indie darlings like Disco Elysium and Katana ZERO, titles that set a high bar for narrative and style. In this landscape, Every Second was a small, quiet contender, not aiming for grandeur but for a clever twist on established formulas.

Narrative & Thematic Deep Dive

Plot and Characters: As a jam game, Every Second foregoes a traditional narrative. There is no epic lore, no character backstory, and no dialogue. The “plot” is purely environmental and mechanical. The player controls a simple, unnamed protagonist navigating a stark, futuristic complex. The story is told entirely through the imperative of survival: you must solve the puzzle to proceed, or you will perish. This minimalist approach focuses the player’s attention completely on the central thematic hook: the relentless, terrifying value of time.

Underlying Themes: The theme “Make It Count” is executed with brutal literalness. The game is a meditation on time management, pressure, and precision. Every action, every hesitation, and every mistake is measured against an unforgiving clock. The futuristic “vibe” mentioned in the description isn’t just an aesthetic choice; it reinforces the theme of cold, impersonal efficiency. You are not a hero on a quest; you are a component in a vast, uncaring machine, and your only purpose is to function correctly before your time is up. This creates a surprisingly potent atmosphere of existential anxiety, where a simple puzzle becomes a life-or-death struggle against an invisible, absolute master: time itself.

Gameplay Mechanics & Systems

Core Gameplay Loop: Every Second is described as a fusion of “classic platformer mechanics” and “slider puzzle-type games.” The core loop is straightforward yet demanding:
1. The player enters a room.
2. A countdown timer begins.
3. The room is filled with movable blocks (the “slider puzzle” element).
4. The player must rearrange these blocks by pushing them to create a path to the exit.
5. A key mechanic adds a layer of strategy: you cannot move the block you are currently standing on.
6. If the timer reaches zero, the player character explodes, and you must restart the puzzle.

This is where the “action” element merges with the puzzle. It’s not a turn-based puzzle; it’s a real-time race. You must platform across blocks while simultaneously calculating which ones to move and in what order, all under immense pressure.

Innovation and Flaw: This fusion is the game’s most innovative and most flawed aspect. The idea is brilliant—a spatial reasoning test performed as a speedrun. However, the jam-time development led to a critical flaw in the progression system, as highlighted by the one available player review: a punishing lack of mid-level checkpoints and a complete reset upon quitting to the menu. This transforms a theoretically short game into a grueling test of endurance, where a mistake on the final puzzle can force a player to redo 30 minutes of perfect previous work. This isn’t a difficulty choice; it’s an obvious oversight born from a lack of time to implement a proper save system, and it fundamentally hampers the experience.

World-Building, Art & Sound

Visual Direction and Atmosphere: The game boasts a “futuristic vibe” achieved through a clean, minimalist aesthetic. While no screenshots are available in the source material, we can infer from similar jam games a likely visual style: simple geometric shapes, a limited color palette likely emphasizing cool blues and stark whites, and a sterile environment that feels more like a testing facility than a living world. This aesthetic perfectly supports the theme. There are no distractions, no decorative flourishes—only the puzzle and the timer. The world-building is entirely environmental, telling a story of a place designed for efficiency and nothing else.

Sound Design: The player review notes the game has a “good soundtrack.” In a high-pressure game, sound design is paramount. We can surmise the audio likely features a persistent, rhythmic, and likely anxiety-inducing soundtrack that amplifies the tension of the ticking clock. Sound effects for block movement, player jumps, and the inevitable explosion would be critical, crisp, and unambiguous, providing essential audio feedback for the player’s actions within the minimalist visual framework.

Reception & Legacy

Critical and Commercial Reception: Every Second was a free release on platforms like itch.io, with an option for donation. As such, it had no commercial aspirations or reception. Its critical reception is virtually non-existent; it garnered no professional reviews and only a single user review on the sources provided. It was not included in any major “Best of 2019” lists, which were dominated by titles like Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice and Disco Elysium. It existed quietly on the periphery, discovered by few.

Evolution of Reputation and Influence: The game’s legacy is that of a hidden curio. It did not influence the industry or spawn a new subgenre. Its influence is microscopic, a testament to what a small team can build under constraint. Its reputation is defined by its interesting core idea being hamstrung by its jam-born lack of polish. It serves as a perfect case study for developers on the importance of user experience (UX) fundamentals, like save systems, even in the smallest projects. For players, it remains a brief, challenging, and frustrating experience that demonstrates a compelling mechanical concept worthy of exploration in a more fully realized game.

Conclusion

Every Second is not a great game, but it is an important one. It is a pristine, unvarnished artifact of the game jam process. Its brilliance lies in its perfect alignment of theme (“Make It Count”), mechanics (time-based slider puzzles), and atmosphere (futuristic sterility). Its failure lies in the absence of basic quality-of-life features, a direct result of its development context.

The final verdict is that Every Second is a fascinating footnote. It is the video game equivalent of a promising prototype or a compelling first draft. It possesses a kernel of a truly great idea—the fusion of real-time pressure and spatial puzzle-solving—that could, with a more robust structure and progression system, form the basis of an exceptional game. It earns its place in history not as a masterpiece to be played, but as a lesson to be learned: that even the most ingenious mechanics are nothing without the player’s comfort in mind. For historians and developers, it’s a worthy subject of study. For players seeking a complete and satisfying experience, it remains a beautiful, explosive, and ultimately frustrating proof-of-concept.