Chronotron

Reviewers have considered the game innovative. The protagonist is a robot named Chronotron who travels back in time to cooperate with himself. The robot must fetch an item before moving to the next room. Solving the puzzles requires sending the main character back in time to coordinate with previous selves. The gameplay requires thinking ahead. Previous selves will always replay the inputs they did the first time around, not just the positions they were in. A number of web sites have licensed Chronotron, including Kongregate and MTV's AddictingGames. It was featured on the front page of Kongregate. The game appears on over 2,000 web sites and has been played more than seven million times. The developer splits advertising revenue evenly with Kongregate and made more than $1,000 in 2008. The developer had made nearly $15,000 in profits from the game in 2008.

• Title — Chronotron • Developer — Scarybug Games • Publisher — Scarybug Games • Released — May 2008 • Genre — Puzzle, platform • Modes — Single-player • Platforms — Flash • Designer — Joe Rheaume • Artist — Bogdan Ene • Composer — Helge Krabye

Chronotron was developed by Madison, Wisconsin-based Scarybug Games, which consists of a single person: Joe Rheaume. Rheaume was the sole developer of Chronotron. Development for Chronotron took seven months. Chronotrons sponsorship support was handled through FlashGameLicense.com. Interest in sponsoring Chronotron allowed Scarybug Games to hire Romanian artist Bogdan Ene to replace the graphics. Royalty free music was purchased for the game. The music's author is Helge Krabye. Sound effects came from the Freesound Project. Chronotrons time travel elements was inspired by advertising for the Xbox game Blinx: The Time Sweeper and an article on Braid. Rheaume claims to not have played Blinx. Chronotron was released before the release of Braid. Rheaume claims to have "thought of the idea of recording input and going back looping on yourself." Rheaume wanted there to be no limit on how many times you could travel back in time. The game contains references to time travel stories including Back to the Future, Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure, and Doctor Who. The puzzle platformer elements were inspired by The Lost Vikings. Rheaume notes the similarity between cooperating with your self to the cooperation between the three Vikings in The Lost Vikings. Puzzle pacing, with later puzzles building on what is learned earlier, was inspired by Portal. Portal also inspired the use of humorous signs in game as hints. Rheaume is a Flash developer for his day job. Chronotron was built as a hobby project because Rheaume thought it would be fun to play. He developed it further because he "thought it really had legs," and interest from other people kept Rheaume motivated. The name of the game and the protagonist comes from "chrono" for "time" and "tron" as a generic term for "robot."