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Professor Layton and the Curious Village

Published: Sat 15 Nov, 2008 | On:

Professor Layton and the Curios village is a Puzzle based mystery game by Level-5 for the DS.

When the game starts out you receive a letter from Lady Dahlia who’s Husband the Baron has recently died. It seems that the baron also had quite a habit of leaving puzzles for everyone. This includes in his will which states that whoever shall find the “Golden apple” shall receive his entire estate.

Of Course this is where you come in. No one has been able to find this “golden apple” so you have been requested to come to St. Mystere and help. St. Mystere is quite an odd place; everyone seems to be obsessed with puzzles. It’s not as easy as it seems though. Along the way to finding the golden apple you must solve many other mysteries from murder to kidnappings.

As you may have worked out, the Main bulk of the game is about solving puzzles. There are many different types of puzzles that you will encounter; Maths based puzzles, Problem solving, word puzzles, and generally anything that will make you have to actually think to be able to solve. As with the types of puzzles there is also a wide range of difficulty to the puzzles. Some are dead easy while others will have you tearing your hair out in frustration, then realising how blatantly obvious it was.

So far I have managed to complete every puzzle I have encountered, but not all the way you’re supposed to. Sometimes I just ended up going through all the possible answers until I got it. This will not go unpunished though. Each puzzle has a certain amount of “Picarats” that you may earn. The harder puzzles are worth more. But as I said before, guessing will not go unpunished, each time you get the wrong answer the amount of Picarats that you earn will decrease until you reach a point where you won’t lose any more (usually after about 4-5 tries).

If you get really stuck with a puzzle you can use hints. These hints will cost you though, each time you use a hint you must pay with one hint coin. These can be found throughout the town by tapping random objects with the stylus. You are allowed up to three hints per puzzle. Sometimes these hints will just be a waste of your hint coins, they will sometimes just tell you things about the puzzle that already know and others will just say the same time each time but in different wording, other times they will pretty much tell you exactly what you need to do to pass.

The sound in Professor Layton was nothing spectacular but it was quite good and assisting with creating mood in different parts of the game. The music could get quite repetitive at times if you were stuck on a certain puzzle or area.

The graphics were very good. I was quite surprised at how much effort the put into some of the scenery and details. I have one complaint though. The other characters didn’t really move much, they just stood on the spot repeating the same action again and again.

One feature I found quite interesting is the ability to download new puzzles every week or so over the Wifi. I think this is one game that I’ll be taking down to the mall and trying to access shop’s Wifi for, or even cruising round the neighbourhood trying to find some unprotected access points. Too bad my neighbour locked theirs after I used a fair bit of their cap…

If you commute a lot this would the perfect title for those long trips to and from home. This game is the perfect title for just picking up and playing. If you do get really stuck there are plenty of guides on the internet, or you can just ask me.