Stopwatch ChallengeStopwatch Challenge

One click starts it. Another stops it. Whoever stops closest to the target time wins. Easy. Now do it with your back to the big screen, counting in your head, while up to seven friends do everything they can to make you miss.

The only rule

Someone picks the target, say 7.43 seconds. You step up to the table, hit the big red button, count in your head and hit it again. The display counts hundredths: stop it on 07:43 and you nailed it, and the whole studio goes wild. Whoever is playing never sees the time running: not on the display, not on the big screen, not by any ticking. Everyone watching sees everything.

Everyone else gets in the way

While you're at the stopwatch, the others roam the studio in first person, shove you, whisper wrong numbers in your ear over proximity voice chat and, once they get close enough:

• Cover your eyes from behind, so you count in the dark.

• Tickle you until your finger slips.

• Bonk you on the head. There's a limit per turn: annoying, never unfair.

• Draw on your back with a marker. Everyone sees it. You find out later.

Six modes

• Classic: someone picks the target, everyone plays, closest scores.

• Machine: the machine draws a target for each player, and the error counts in proportion to it.

• Teams: two teams, or one brave soul against everyone. The team's average error counts.

• Impostor: everyone gets the same secret target, except one player, who doesn't even know they're the impostor. Argue over voice, then vote.

• Knockout: the worst of each round is out and watches from the bench of shame. Last one standing wins.

• No Bust: get as close as you can without going over. Go over and you blow up.

Losing is a show

Every round, the worst player gets a scene: they explode, get flattened by a truck that falls from the sky, faint like in a soap opera or get swallowed by a giant worm. Then they fall back from the sky, slightly dented, and the party goes on. Every player gets a character generated on the spot, new in every room, so no two parties look alike.

Online with friends

Public Steam rooms, or private ones with a password or a 6-character code, invites through the overlay, bots to fill the seats and a new host when the old one gives up halfway. With several tables, up to eight people play at once, side by side, so nobody waits around. And whoever deserves it gets voted out.

Features

• 1 to 8 players online, or with bots.

• Six modes, from Classic to Impostor.

• Proximity voice chat: shout across the studio, whisper in someone's ear.

• Pranks: cover eyes, tickle, bonk, shove and draw on backs.

• Procedurally generated characters, new in every room.

• Four ways to leave the stage, a sky that drops people and a bench of shame.

• Fair timing: clicks are read 1,000 times per second, so frame rate never decides who wins.

• Steam achievements, Steam Timeline markers and a streamer mode that hides names and room codes.