In a big business dominated by video game giants, Madison's Joe Rheaume created his own game — then navigated a path as tricky as anything Mario faced to get it played online more than 7 million times.

As an independent computer programmer, Rheaume (rhymes with "Liam") broke through the clutter of countless Web-based video games to draw significant attention to Chronotron, a time-traveling puzzle that features an adorable robot. Though Madison is home to Raven Studios and other video game creators, Rheaume is one of the city's only independent programmers to make a splash in the online video game market. And he spent many late nights to make Chronotron during a seven-month period.

"It was all my free time," says Rheaume, 28. "It was a labor of love."

Chronotron earned him acclaim in publications ranging from the Wall Street Journal to the popular gaming site Penny Arcade.  The latter holds considerable sway over video game fans eager to play new online video games. Penny Arcade also presents an annual convention and selects the top new independent games as its PAX 10. Chronotron was selected as one of the PAX 10, adding interest in the video game online and prompting cable outlet G4 to feature Rheaume.

To enhance Chronotron's look and to reach a wide audience, Rheaume needed support from indie game development site Kongregate, which offers free independent games.

"I prototyped Chronotron as a red rectangle, not a robot," he says. "It was a fun game. I showed it to my friends and they liked it."

So did Kongregate, which suggested that Rheaume spice up the art. An artist living in Romania wound up drawing the cute character under Rheaume's art direction. Rheaume expanded the number of levels that a player can advance. Kongregate featured Chronotron on its home page and it began a successful run last May.

Kongregate offered the game for free, but the company pays independent developers to drive up traffic to its online advertising. Because of the way it was developed, Chronotron also could be uploaded on other Web sites — but the new sites would have a link to Kongregate. As a result, Chronotron appears on more than 2,000 Web sites, and reviewers liked it with the influential site Digg.com calling it "quite innovative."

Rheaume has made nearly $15,000 in profits from Chronotron, which he says helped him and his wife place a larger down payment on a Near West Side home.

A 1998 Edgewood High School graduate, Rheaume graduated from UW-Milwaukee with a degree in computer science. He works full time as lead programmer at Madison's Web Courseworks, which handles corporate and educational work.

Chronotron has drawn interest from major video game companies, and Rheaume declined to talk about that more than saying, "That's all up in the air."

Kongregate CEO Jim Greer gives hope to indie video game developers.

"Being a big company or a professional developer gives you an intuition for what makes a good game," he says. "But the indies are still competing very well. Spending $2 million on a game doesn't give you that much of an advantage over a great idea."

For now, Rheaume is developing three more independent video games. As one of the tiny handful of independent video game creators in Wisconsin, Rheaume knows the high hurdles his peers face developing a game and drawing attention to it.

"(Web sites) want the game to be not too hard or too easy. This balance is very important. It's less interesting to finish the game than just making up some cool idea. People rehash games, but there's no value in that unless you're really adding something new to the genre."

Still, Rheaume adds this advice to young programmers: "If you're 15 and you want to program a game, the best thing to do is find a game that's already been made and remake it — then add something of your own."