Published under the 2K Play budget moniker and developed by the aptly named the Odd Gentlemen, The Misadventures of P.B. Winterbottom is a story of the titular gentleman thief getting suckered into a paradox of time, place and the self. His strange-sounding shenanigans are dressed in lavish Victorian-style steampunk and early filmic elements, coated with a glaze of Edward Gorey – rated “E” for “Comic Mischief” by the ESRB – and finally capped by the swinging sounds of a boisterous backing band – sporting harpsichord, bassoon and all – not too unlike Tim Burton’s go-to Oingo Boingo man Danny Elfman’s gothic scores. All this in Adobe Flash!
Did I yet mention pie, the strangest of McGuffins? There exists so much pie in the world of P.B., in fact, that it quite possibly takes the cake of having the most pie in a video game ever. Even the primary villain – a massive magical pie that has eluded P.B. W.B. and ultimately led him to his ponderous predicament – counts for this quota! It is fitting, then, that the game has been rendered with plenty of piety (as you could hopefully gather from my description above), going further than most in its reappropriation of its influences, like the silent filmic era, by using as condiments for instance title cards for explicating plot and having pun-filled subtitles for level names.
As peculiar and confusing as the backdrop sounds, the game establishes its various concepts kindly, one at a time, and lays down a foundation for the core mechanics in a more narrative-oriented, playable introduction at the very beginning of the puzzling adventure.