The Misadventures of P.B. Winterbottom is a puzzle-solving platformer in the vein of Braid. It’s a commercialized version of a student-project flash game. The game is black-and-white, with written, rhyming text between scenes, grain, piano music, and a glowing aesthetic that makes it appear projected in an old-fashioned theatre. Players take control of P.B. Winterbottom, an infamous robber with a penchant for pies. The player controls Winterbottom as he hunts a massive, complicated pie that slips through his fingers anytime he gets close to it. Following a linear tutorial level, the player can select different movie levels or bonus regions from a primary hub.
Basic controls allow Winterbottom to travel, jump, float, access higher locations through springs, or flick his umbrella to engage switches. The manipulation of time becomes the essential mechanic. Some levels allow you to record a certain number of clones. The player can record Winterbottom’s actions while holding the right trigger and then use the looping clone to reach higher regions or have him operate switches. Multiple clones can often be recorded after each other, and redundant ones can be whacked to erase them by bending time, which was caused when Winterbottom encountered a strange portal while chasing the pie. Winterbottom frequently has to force the clones to whack him to traverse gaps. To progress, the player must work with previous incarnations of themselves, a strategy used in Braid and the Cursor*10 series. The critical difference is that the clones can still be interacted with regardless of their timeline. Several pies or the main pie must be chased to complete a level.
The advanced levels have nasty pies. These produce an evil clone that follows the player’s path to get the pie before the player does. As another bad pie spawns at that location, the player must find a way to retrieve it while avoiding the evil clone’s path. Taking the second wrong pie results in the creation of another evil clone, and so on, making it increasingly impossible to go around the level without being damaged. Aside from those wicked clones, there are no generic foes to defeat, and dying – generally when jumping down a chasm – allows you to retry the level immediately.
