Interview: P.B. Winterbottom Designer Matt Korba

On February 17th, Xbox Live Arcade will receive an interesting new addition called The Misadventures of P.B. Winterbottom. Winterbottom is a side-scroller in which players create clones of themselves to solve puzzles. Blend Games had the opportunity to chat up Matt Korba, the co-founder of developer The Odd Gentlemen, to find out a bit more about the game. If you're a shooter fan, rest assured we talk about Uncharted 2 at one point.

Winterbottom started off as a Flash game that you created in college. Once you signed with 2K Play, though, you remade it for Xbox Live Arcade. What are the biggest differences between the two versions?

Beside the obvious raise on production values, the student game was more of a presentation of game concepts than a cohesive experience. We used some of the puzzles from the flash game but we have built 75 levels from the ground up. We had to build our own engine and our own tools. The core recording system and mechanic remains the same, but we streamlined it a bit.

The visual style of the game is inspired by silent films. What inspired the central gameplay mechanic of time clones, though?

Back to the Future Part II, and an experimental Polish animation called Tango by Zbigniew Rybczy?ski that deals with time loops.

What are some of the ways that this mechanic evolves over the course of the game? How do you keep things fresh for the player?

Each world has its own twist on the mechanic. There are also different types of clones: there are cooperative clones, evil clones, self aware clones, and limited clones. Depending on the level, you will need to figure out how to interact with your clones in order to solve the puzzle. Remember, there is more than one way to solve a puzzle so let your imagination run free when trying to figure out a solution.

Let's say you had another year to work on Winterbottom. What's the most important change you would've made?

We spent a lot of time on the recording system in Winterbottom solving all the edge cases of a system that allows you to do anything you want was a huge challenge. One day we wrote a flow chart of all the paradoxical issues we had to solve on the board… it was crazy. With another year we would probably just add more content and spin the mechanic around even more.

Some indie developers seem to have a pretty dim view of mainstream gaming. Jonathan Blow said that, over the course of his lifetime, games have gotten bigger but they haven't grown. What are your thoughts on the state of the industry?

Well more and more indie games are becoming financially successful, so that’s awesome. As far as big games go I think they are realizing their old tricks aren’t working and are willing to try new things more so than in 2007, when that interview was given. I think big publishers right now are just trying to figure out what sells. Uncharted 2 is now one of my favorite games and that is not innovative in the slightest, just really well executed. I think there is room for both, popcorn blockbusters and academy award winners. Unfortunately we just have a lot more popcorn blockbusters than art house games, and games cost so much to make that publishers have to make what they "know" will sell. The downloadable space is changing all that though.

What's next for the Odd Gentleman?

We're working on our new IP… it’s just as crazy and ridiculous as Winterbottom.

Are there other genres you'd like to explore besides platformers?

Yes, there are many. 2D Platformers are just the easiest to innovate on because the core side-scrolling mechanics are so easy to understand.