Chronotron II -- tales of a time traveling robot

Last year at PAX, we took a tour around the PAX 10 booth, a collection of indie games that were being displayed on the show floor. Games like The Maw was there, which recently came out on Xbox Live Arcade. There were a lot of PC games as well, one of them being Chronotron, a puzzle game that stars a time traveling robot.

To get an idea of what we're talking about, you can play the game here.

It's a simple set up in which you play as the happy-go-lucky robot that needs to hit the green key in the level and then return to the elevator door-like pod he started from. Obstacles that stand in your way include platforms that can only be raised if someone is standing on it or doors that need to be held open, so they all require an extra hand (or full-sized robot) so that you could get through. This is when you go back to the blue pod--which acts as a trusty time machine--and travel back in time so that your former self will mimic the movements you just did. Now you can follow yourself as you clear the way and open doors for…youself. The game starts off relatively basic, but as you go through the levels, the difficulty ramps up considerably and it starts to get confusing when managing multiple copies of yourself because sometimes you'll need 3 or 4 robots to help you get through the stage.

This game caught the eye of Santa Cruz Games, who is working on bringing Chronotron II to the Nintendo DS and possibly other platforms. A representative from Santa Cruz Games came by to show us what it would look like on the DS. It looks very much like the flash game that you see above, with the stage displayed in the top screen and the bottom screen is currently where the restart button is. You use A to jump and B to enter the pod to go back in time. The few demo levels that we played were very similar to the first few levels of Chronotron; the only difference is that physics have been included so there are now new approaches to completing certain levels. Instead of hitting a switch to raise a level, you can push yourself against it to get it open. If it only moves one way, you still need help to get back out, but this is just an example of how the game will work. Another example is that platforms will rise at a slower speed if there is something standing on it.

The original creator, Joe Rheaume, had other characters in mind when he worked on the first Chronotron, so we were told that we can expect a story with multiple characters and perhaps a reason that could tie together all this robot time traveling. We'll update you with more information as soon as it becomes available. Right now Santa Cruz Games hopes to have the game come out on at least one platform later this year. In the meantime, be sure to check out the original Chronotron for free at Krongegate.