Winterbottom FAQ

[2K Elizabeth]

What is the release date?
Early 2010

What other Platforms will Winterbottom appear on?
At the moment, we only have plans for the Xbox 360.

How many levels are there in Winterbottom? How long is Winterbottom?
We are aiming for a gameplay experience of roughly 6-8 hours for the game’s 5 movie levels with additional gameplay available through the game’s shorts and leaderboard competition.

Are there difficulty levels? How difficult is the game?
The game is a puzzle/platform game with a ramp-up from puzzles that are simple to quite complex. Our goal was to make the mechanics easy to pick-up and play but still challenging enough for the thinking gamer. It was important to us to allow the user to be creative in their approach to puzzle solving. Many puzzle games have very scripted solutions where the user is literally trying to read the designer’s mind. We wanted to avoid that and create more of a playground. Winterbottom’s world allows players to experiment with their time clones in a way that permits people to approach the puzzles in their own way. There is not one set way to solve the puzzles.

How do leaderboards work?
We have a series of bonus modes or “Winterbottom Shorts” that are unlocked through playing the game’s main movie levels. These shorts provide a scoring system that allows for results to be posted to leaderboards for competitive play. Because of the wide variety of ways to solve puzzles we are able to score these puzzles in two ways: time taken, and how many clones created.

What sort of locations does Winterbottom visit over the course of the story?
Winterbottom’s misadventures take place in several silent film inspired locations. Winterbottom will scale a giant clock tower, set a pie factory on fire, and flood the city’s undergrounds to name a few.

What other type of time travelling powers does Winterbottom have?
The player has the ability to record themselves whenever, however, and as many times as they want. This creates fully interactive time clones that can be stood upon, smacked, ridden, and can interact with the environment to do your bidding. All of these actions serve one purpose… to eat delicious pie. On top of that, the Chronoberry Pie has a many other time tricks up his sleeves for Winterbottom to navigate. For example sometimes Winterbottom’s actions are rewound and he’ll have to deal with his previous action in the form of evil clones that must be avoided. In other words Winterbottom plays the hero and the villain at the same time. In other places he’ll only have a limited time to record himself and must strategically coordinate his actions to move forward. There are also pies that only exist for a brief period of time coaxing Winterbottom to be in many places at once, pies only past clones can consume, pies that Winterbottom has to race his past selves to, and much much more time trickery.

Is Winterbottom a hero or a villian?
Winterbottom is a villain with a heart of gold and a simple goal… To devour ever pie that ever was, from Mesopotamia to Mars. He causes terrible woes but, it hard for him to see past his own nose. But don’t judge him too harshly, if you had a nose like Winterbottom you too would realize how many sniffs of pie there are in this odd world.

Does Winterbottom ever catch the Chronoberry Pie?
Perhaps… perhaps he’s all about the chase.