Create your own paradox… for the love of pie! Enter a macabre and comical silent film world filled with mischief, time travel and delicious pie in The Misadventures of P.B. Winterbottom. Record yourself and harness your time-bending abilities to cooperate with, compete against, and disrupt your past, present and future selves. Join Winterbottom as he travels though five movie levels with 75 unique puzzles to solve.

The Odd Gentlemen, a developer headquartered in Los Angeles, Calif., originally created The Misadventures of P.B. Winterbottom as a student thesis project at the University of Southern California. The game chronicles the villainous P.B. Winterbottom’s quest as he swipes pies using his extraordinary time-bending abilities to cooperate with, compete against, and disrupt his past, present, and future selves. Set in a macabre and comical silent film world, The Misadventures of P.B. Winterbottom has garnered several independent awards and nominations from IGN.com, GameSpot and the Independent Games Festival (IGF) for its unique art style and inventive gameplay mechanics.

It's easy to compare Winterbottom to Braid, another Xbox LIVE downloadable title that used time manipulation to solve platforming puzzles, and considering that Braid’s Jonathan Blow was an advisor. But the wonderful thing about Winterbottom, is that the game is open to multiple solutions. The Odd Gentlemen built the stages in such a way that you can use the mechanics any way you wish -- you aren't locked into figuring out that "one magical solution."

While the puzzles serve as the primary gameplay, it’s the game’s appearance that is perhaps the most stunning part. P.B. Winterbottom has been crafted to look like a silent movie, with scratches running though the display and with a mostly black/white palette, which will probably cause some people to tweak the color on their displays, but in fact creates a unique and appealing visual. The ragtime-like music matches the appearance, and it changes with the graphics when a recording is started. P.B. Winterbottom is a pretty effective and complete game.

But as charming as the game looks, it's only gravy compared to instantly addictive mechanics. Winterbottom only has a few moves in his repertoire. He can run, jump, and swing his umbrella. These are not enough to collect all of the delicious pies, so Winterbottom must employ one special move -- the ability to manipulate time. By holding down a record button, you tape Winterbottom's trajectory through certain stretches and then release to set the actions in a running loop. Now it's time to interact with your looped clones. To reach ledges, you can hop on top of one of the Winterbottoms and ride the clone beneath the desired platform. Or if you need to really launch yourself to what looks like an inaccessible ledge, record Winterbottom facing the target area and swinging his umbrella. Once the recorded clone is performing his act, run up and let the clone bat you up to the needed ledge.