Development
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. Chronotron's 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.
Chronotron's 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. As a hobby, Rheaume can develop ideas which don't fit the ideas, time constraints, and budgets of his regular job's client projects. Chronotron was developed because Rheaume thought it would be fun to play. Rheaume developed it further because he "thought it really had legs." Interest from other people kept Rheaume going.
The name of the game and the protagonist comes from "chrono" for "time" and "tron" as a generic term for "robot."
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