The Misadventures of P.B. Winterbottom

The Misadventures of P.B. Winterbottom is a platform game focused on puzzle solving, similar in concept to Braid. It is the commercial reworking of a student project flash game. Entirely visualized in black-and-white, the game imitates a silent film style, with written, rhyming text between scenes, grain, piano music and a glowing aesthetic that makes it look projected in an old-fashioned theatre. Players control P.B. Winterbottom, a notorious thief with an insatiable hunger for pies. The game has the player guide Winterbottom as he chases a large, challenging pie, slipping through his fingers whenever he manages to get close to it. After a linear tutorial level the player can choose different movie levels or bonus areas from a main hub.

Basic controls allow Winterbottom to move around, jump, float using his umbrella, reach higher areas through springs, or flick his umbrella as a means to operate switches. The most important mechanic becomes the manipulation of time. Some levels offer the ability to record a set number of clones. Keeping the right trigger pressed, the player can record Winterbottom's actions and then use the looping clone to reach higher areas or have him operate switches. By distorting time, which was triggered when Winterbottom entered a strange portal when chasing the pie, often multiple clones can be recorded after each other and redundant ones can be whacked to remove them. To cross gaps Winterbottom often needs to force the clones to whack him. To progress the player needs to cooperate with past versions of itself, a tactic also employed in Braid or the Cursor*10 series. The main difference is that the clones can still be interacted with, regardless of their timeline. To end a level a number of pies needs to be selected or the main pie needs to be chased.

Advanced levels feature evil pies. These automatically spawn an evil clone that follows the player's path to get the pie before the player does. As another evil pie spawns at that point, the player needs to find a way to collect it without crossing the path of the evil clone. Grabbing the second evil pie spawns another evil clone and so on, making it more and more difficult to move around in the level without being harmed. Aside from those evil clones there are no general enemies to defeat and when dying - usually when jumping down a gap - the section can be immediately replayed.