The Misadventures of P.B. Winterbottom
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The Misadventures of P.B. Winterbottom, created by The Odd Gentlemen, is a puzzle platformer about Gentleman Thief P.B. Winterbottom, a notorious pie thief whose antics have caused much havoc in his hometown. Winterbottom is obsessed with pie and is willing to go to any lengths to get it. So the Universe decides to give the little man what he wants. Winterbottom comes across the coveted Chronoberry Pie, a unique pie that entices Winterbottom with its amazing aroma, causing him to follow it into a tunnel through time. Thus begins Winterbottom's journey through time as he steals pies and chases after the Chronoberry Pie, using his new ability to create time-clones to aid in his deeds.
The game sets forth 75 different challenges that cause the player to think strategically of how they use their number of time-clones. The animation and music are based on silent film, with the art looking like something out of an Edward Gorey story and the soundtrack using a lot of old-timey piano and dramatic organ and harpsichord.
- All There in the Manual: The Chronoberry Pie is not named in-game.
- Cloning Blues: Winterbottom's time-clones are only there as a means to an end, being erased without a care when the man is done with them.
- Cloning Gambit: Winterbottom's clever use of time-clones allows him to nab as much pie as possible.
- Deliberately Monochrome: Used to create the atmosphere of an early silent film circa the early 20th Century.
- The one time color is used serves as a warning. When your clones appear red, they'll destroy you on contact unless you ride on top of them.
- Expendable Clone: The time-clones of Winterbottom have little to them apart from continually doing what Winterbottom recorded them to do. Once they have served their purpose, the clones are gone in a puff of smoke.
- Gentleman Thief: Winterbottom's chosen profession.
- Living MacGuffin: Something of a subversion, since the Chronoberry Pie does have some sentience about it (being a direct creation of the Universe itself), but is still a pie.
- Narrative Poem: All the narration (shown via cue cards between scenes) is in rhyming verse, almost as if the game is telling a children's story.
- Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: Look at what you've done, PB! You've caused the water tower to break, burned down the bakery, and broke the clock tower—meaning children won't get their dessert!
- Parasol of Pain: Winterbottom's weapon, allowing him to float through the air or smack around time-clones.
- Parasol Parachute
- Public Domain Soundtrack: The levels where the soundtrack is based on that one clock song, and in Movie 5 where the soundtrack is sort of a minor key version of the Can-Can.
- Send in the Clones: Though some levels have a limit on the number of time clones you can make, others can let you make an absurb number of copies to do whatever.
- Set Right What Once Went Wrong: Winterbottom is given the chance to go back in time and fix the mayhem he created.
- Silence Is Golden: Combined with Deliberately Monochrome to evoke the atmosphere of a silent film.
- Stable Time Loop: Implied by some of the cinematic scenes, but rarely used in gameplay (see Time Paradox below).
- Time Paradox: The explicit goal of the game is get pie by any means possible, the Laws of Time be damned.
- Trademark Favorite Food: Guess.
- Unstuck in Time: What happens to Winterbottom upon entering the time portal. This is what allows him to create time-clones.
- Victorian...Somewhere: The game's setting is described as a Victorian city, but never specified beyond that.
- What an Idiot!: "For that mysterious Pie, that untouchable Tart, P.B. leaped through the portal (which wasn't too smart)."