The Misadventures of P.B. Winterbottom

Overview

The Misadventures of P.B. Winterbottom is a two-dimensional platformer which features thievery, time manipulation, and more importantly, pies. The game was concocted as a thesis by The Odd Gentlemen, a group of students in the University of Southern California's School of Cinematic Art's Interactive Media Division.

Mechanics

That devious P.B. Winterbottom

The controls for the game are simple, as players can run, float, take bows, and use the umbrella as a weapon. A little more advanced, however, players will also have a trigger that can record your moves when held and have the moves played back as a loop when the trigger is released. At any time during the playback of the looped stage a player can interact with the reproduced character, as this will mesh to become the basis for successfully completing levels.

In each set of missions, a different mechanic is applied to Winterbottom's time powers. There are missions where pies can only be collected for a short time after a button is pressed, and sometimes in a specific order. There are missions where only clones can collect pies, while Winterbottom is tasked with ensuring that they do not catch on fire. There are missions where Winterbottom can only activate his clones from within portals, and only for a short amount of time. On some of those levels, there is the additional mechanic of clones being toxic to Winterbottom. Finally, there are levels where pies can only be collected when lit up by a spotlight that requires activation by a switch, and can then be passed between Winterbottom and his clones.

Bonus Scenes

After each story mission is completed, a Bonus Scene including the mechanics of that mission is unlocked. These scenes give the players time restraints and recording restraints to attempt to beat. There are leaderboards for each level, ranked first by time and then by number of recordings. While it is possible to collect both the timing award and the recording award during the same playthrough, it is often easier to tackle each goal separately.

Inspiration

An Example of the Game's Narrative Approach

Matt Korba, lead producer and designer for the game, has said to get the main inspiration for the game from the 1983 Best Animated Short Oscar winner Tango by Zbigniew Rybczynski, which was first shown to him by one of his university professors. The macabre silent film approach to the game has to relate with Korba's passion for film, as he studied film production as his undergraduate.

Above and beyond that, the visual styling takes a large cue from Edward Gorey. In one interview, they specifically state that ' The big note was always “What if Edward Gorey made a silent film”'. From the same interview the authors indicate that, perhaps surprisingly, children's books were another major form of inspiration. In particular, the game is designed such that that to get the whole story, the player needs to pay attention to the words, the illustrations, and even the backgrounds.

PC version

April 8th, 2010 2K Games announced that they would release the game for the PC exclusively on Steam on April, 20 2010. The PC version of the game is being developed by 2K China and it adds five additional puzzles, 12 Steam Achievements, Steam Cloud and Steam Leaderboards.

System Requirements for PC version

Minimum:

OS: Windows® XP (Service Pack 1 or higher) / Vista / 7
Processor: Intel Pentium 4 @ 2.0 GHZ processor or equivalent
Memory: 512 MB on XP, 768 MB on Vista/7
Graphics: DirectX® 9.0c-compatible 128 MB video card with Shader Model 2.0, GeForce 6200 or better, Radeon X1300 or better
DirectX®: DirectX® 9.0c
Hard Drive: 500 MB Free
Sound: DirectX® 9.0c compatible

Recommended:

OS: Windows® XP (Service Pack 1 or higher) / Vista / 7
Processor: Intel Core 2 Duo E6420 Dual Core 2.13Ghz or equivalent
Memory: 1.0 GB on XP, 1.5 GB on Vista/7
Graphics: GeForce 7800 GT or Radeon HD3600
DirectX®: DirectX® 9.0c
Hard Drive: 500 MB Free
Sound: DirectX® 9.0c compatible

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forum	Problems with Steam Version?	Scribbly
forum	P.B. Winterbottom for £0.39	GetEveryone
forum	Overheating	emem
blog	Quests and misadventures.	Dalai
forum	Free copies of Winterbottom (maybe)	Winternet
forum	Crazy lag on my PC...anyone else had this problem?	Ashby

Game Name	The Misadventures of P.B. Winterbottom
Platform(s)	Xbox Live Marketplace PC
Publisher(s)	2K Games
Developer(s)	The Odd Gentlemen 2K China
Genres	Add a new genre Puzzle Platformer Action
Themes	Add a new theme Espionage
Original US Release	Feb. 17, 2010 need a fuzzy date?
Original US Release	2010 know the real date?
Aliases
ESRB	ESRB: E