The Misadventures of P.B.Winterbottom

Preorder is up today for Steam (out April 20th). It's out on XBLA already, as well. $5 for time-travely, pie-eating goodness! Yes please!

$10 on XBLA. Revel in it, you tinker boxers.

I'm ready for it. Bring it on!

I have to get back to this one. I loved the first couple levels, then I got caught up in the winter's monster titles.

Huh. I had no idea it had been out for so long on XBLA. I was following the production a few years ago when I met some of the crew at GDC, but development news sort of quieted down and I more or less moved on. Aside from the "whatever happened to..." thoughts, of course! The best part about the Steam Pre-order is that by the release date I will have been pretty much all moved in to my temporary place in Chicago, so I'll have something to do when I'm not home-hunting

I implore every goodjer on Steam, you must try it—
And only five clams, why, you might as well buy it!
The game oozes charm like fruit filling through crust,
The brain-bashing puzzles are a brain puzzler must!

And, goodjers dear, I assure it's no lie:
While there's no cake, there's delicious time pie.

Gravey wrote:

I implore every goodjer on Steam, you must try it—
And only five clams, why, you might as well buy it!
The game oozes charm like fruit filling through crust,
The brain-bashing puzzles are a brain puzzler must!

And, goodjers dear, I assure it's no lie:
There may not be cake, but delicious time pie.

Awesome. I've been waiting for a good artistic puzzler ever since Braid.

tuffalobuffalo wrote:

Awesome. I've been waiting for a good artistic puzzler ever since Braid.

And I've been waiting for another reference to the fall of cake and rise of pie! That's the third one I've seen in as many days. The difference being that any meme involving pie will never get old because pie, in fact, will never stop being so ridiculously awesome.

Weebl and I agree.

Oh, and I'll pick up that game.

Just bought it!

Have the demo, will dl in the near future!

I snagged it off of Steam. I wonder if the 5 bucks is just for the pre-order and it will go up on release. Kind of like how Valve knocks 5 bucks off to pre-order their games.

I have been looking forward to this since it was first revealed at GDC 2, 3 years ago.

KingGorilla wrote:

I snagged it off of Steam. I wonder if the 5 bucks is just for the pre-order and it will go up on release. Kind of like how Valve knocks 5 bucks off to pre-order their games.

I have been looking forward to this since it was first revealed at GDC 2, 3 years ago.

It usually says if it's discounted and I doubt they'd give $5 off for a $10 game.

So, for those who have actually played it, if I have a love/hate relationship with Braid, will it be the same here?

Hell I bought it on Steam.

Here's the metacritic page for the XBLA version if you need convincing.

I've got the pre-order now too.

garion333 wrote:

So, for those who have actually played it, if I have a love/hate relationship with Braid, will it be the same here?

Maybe It's definitely hard, and unlike Braid you do have to finish the puzzles in order, so you'll sometimes end up either beating your head against a puzzle for while, or just walking away for a bit.

The gameplay isn't really all that much like Braid, though, even if they both tick the "puzzle platformer" and "time travel" boxes. It reminded me more of The Incredible Machine -- a lot of the levels require you to essentially build a set of recorded Winterbottoms interacting with the world, each other, and the player in sequence to complete the level. That's particularly true on levels where you have to collect all the pies in a specific order, or collect them all within a few seconds of collecting the first one.

From what I can see from videos, I actually like this mechanic better than Braid. It's more gamey.

Grabbed this one off steam to use up the last $5 on a Visa gift card. I dig the old tymey silent film vibe. Plus I'm always down for a good platformer.

Thinking about grabbing this one for my wife and I...should it run on her Dell Inspiron 1525 with integrated graphics?

Oooh... maybe if I stop TF2 idling I can get it going.

Looks like there's an unannounced preload that some people have been able to play already.

I'm trying it myself at the moment, seems to be working using "steam://install/40930/", and then manually running the executable after it finishes.

via: http://forums.steampowered.com/forum...

Bought!
Thanks to Steam I'm rediscovering my love for puzzle platformers.

Played through some tutorial-feeling levels. Pretty fun so far.

I stole a pie from myself.

Gotta stop for LOST, but this is fun, will definitely dig in deeper later.

Watching the Pens right now. Gonna give it a go when I get home.

I completed the first level, Savory Salutations, and I like it okay so far. Great style and everything. I'm just a little concerned about the level design. So far, it's no where near the "genius" of Braid. We'll see. The rhyming is pretty great and P.B. has one of the most ridiculous running animations I've ever seen. So funny. I want to make an animated GIF of P.B. running.

And here I started this thread and haven't even played it yet

I'm staying at a friend's house outside of Chicago and for some reason I can't get my computer hooked up to the wireless, so I'll have to wait to download it until I get into my new place.

Fiddled with this last night. I am going to backburner it until Call of Pripyat is done. But this is a fun little platformer. The art is endearing, and I like the Snidely Whiplash quality of Mr. Winterbottom.

Played a few rounds the other night. A Lot of fun, but oddly enough there's a ton of lag when there's a lot happening on the screen. I'm planning on picking up a new video card soon, that should help. Meanwhile, I've turned the resolution down quite a bit.

I played through to the second chapter over the weekend, and I've run into a very frustrating design decision. If you accidentally interact with a clone outside of its recorded scope (so, if you accidentally hit a clone or catapult it into the air via seesaw), that clone will enter into a new loop or else simply won't vanish at all.

I discovered this on one of the puzzles where the solution appears to be to have a clone catapult you from one seesaw onto a higher seesaw by running across the room and jumping on your catapult. However, if you accidentally catapult the clone instead of vice versa (and this is surprisingly easy to do; I found the jumping controls to be surprisingly floaty) the clone jumps to the upper seesaw and stays there; rather than looping for you to take a second chance at the puzzle, you have to delete that clone and re-record his path.

Thankfully, with that particular puzzle, the clone in question is the second of two and so can be easily deleted and re-recorded. But if it were in the middle of a sequence, it'd be difficult to remove and re-record without having to re-record everything else in the sequence, as well.

ClockworkHouse wrote:

I played through to the second chapter over the weekend, and I've run into a very frustrating design decision. If you accidentally interact with a clone outside of its recorded scope (so, if you accidentally hit a clone or catapult it into the air via seesaw), that clone will enter into a new loop or else simply won't vanish at all.

I discovered this on one of the puzzles where the solution appears to be to have a clone catapult you from one seesaw onto a higher seesaw by running across the room and jumping on your catapult. However, if you accidentally catapult the clone instead of vice versa (and this is surprisingly easy to do; I found the jumping controls to be surprisingly floaty) the clone jumps to the upper seesaw and stays there; rather than looping for you to take a second chance at the puzzle, you have to delete that clone and re-record his path.

Thankfully, with that particular puzzle, the clone in question is the second of two and so can be easily deleted and re-recorded. But if it were in the middle of a sequence, it'd be difficult to remove and re-record without having to re-record everything else in the sequence, as well.

That puzzle was tricky. I played through the second chapter as well. I haven't "clicked" with the design of the mechanics quite yet, but with enough fiddling I end up figuring the puzzles out. I think I will get a better sense of the mechanics with more play (I've been sucked into the Dragon Age wormhole for the time being). The mechanics in Braid clicked with me immediately unlike this game. Just one more reason Braid rocks.

Bottom line, I'm enjoying what I've played quite a bit. Can't wait to play more. I may have to make a pie to compliment the experience.

I am into CH2 as well. Maybe my expectations were too high. But I do not feel myself elegantly solving puzzles, rather it seems I am just brute forcing my way to get the pies fast enough. I feel the time/twitch factor in getting numeric pies exacerbates this, and is also ill suited as there is measurable input lag when you must chain several clones on maps limiting you to a single clone at any one time. I feel that rather than promoting experimentation or logic, it is punishing my desire to play a relaxing puzzle/platformer. Less that I am playing with time, and more just an obfuscated Super Meat Boy, except now I am paying for it.

I feel that I will hang this up for Tales of Monkey Island before the week is out.