Ever wish you could clone yourself, and then have the clones do all your dirty work? Now you can, at least inside an ingenious little Kongregate game called Chronotron. I stumbled upon this gem thanks to Digg, and can honestly say it’s the most fun I’ve had all week.
And before you ask: yes, I haven’t played any GTA IV. I’ll get around to it.
Chronotron puts you in charge of a cute little time-traveling bipedal robot whose Time Pod just happens to break down whenever it deposits him in a new level, catapulting the Pod’s controls into a far corner of the map. At least that’s what I tell myself… I’d hate to think the game’s creator was torturing a poor, helpless android on purpose with an endless series of fetch quests.
Regardless, the objective is then to navigate the industrial levels filled with switches, security doors and crates; and retrieve the controls. But as the game’s perfectly integrated tutorial will tell you, it’s just not possible to scale walls, hold switches and otherwise keep your robot from exploding with glee unless you have some help.
From yourself.
That’s right! Since you’re a time-traveler, you’ll go back in time, sit on your robot tush and watch as your past self flails about just as awkwardly — before realizing the game’s true genius, restarting the level and interacting with your clone(s) to open the path to victory. Since the game records each action of your clones and exactly when they perform them, you can create a timed chain reaction of events, the potential disastrous consequences of which would have Doc Brown spinning in his grave. And wonder upon wonders, Chronotron actually takes those mishaps into account as well.
You see, in order to maintain the space-time you-know-what and avoid a nasty paradox, every clone has to make it back to the Time Pod, and if single clone dies or fails to make it back on time, what was was not and the game’s over. This point adds quite a bit of strategy to the game, as while you could go make a clone army, it’s far riskier than using them with precision.
The levels are clever enough that success here often reminded me of success in Portal, and if that just inspired you to build a game where you bend time and space then you’re my new best friend.
Yes, Chronotron pretty much stole the concept from Timebot, and yes, the game’s Time Pod is almost certainly a homage to the TARDIS. But since you can’t probably shouldn’t play Doctor Who, and since this game improves so drastically on Timebot, we’re more than willing to forgive some minor transgressions — and so we wholeheartedly recommend Chronotron to any and all puzzle fans.
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July 17th, 2008 at 1:31 am
[...] be a very clever gameplay element, but I’ve already played that game — it was called Chronotron. I would quickly discover, however, that Winterbottom manages to execute the time-travel [...]
August 7th, 2008 at 6:01 am
[...] workout, hoping the time-based gameplay would be a good match for recent time-game entries like Chronotron or P.B. Winterbottom. 5 hours of gameplay later, I had experienced a surprising, artistic, [...]
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